Social networking websites are growing in popularity and car dealers should start to make it easy for their visitors to mark their web content and photos for inclusion in Facebook and other popular websites.   

The thought is that if a consumer was passionate about a car, an article on your website or just wanted to promote your dealership you should make it easy for them to add the page to their Facebook profile page.

I created a Facebook post link on the homepage: www.infinitig37convertible.com to allow people to mark the website and to share the hot photos on the upcoming G37 convertible.  On the homepage you will see a Facebook icon  that has this hyperlink:

http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.infinitig37convertible.com&t=Infiniti+G37+Convertible+Photos

When you hyperlink the Facebook icon with this command, Facebook will automatically read the page and upload summary of the page and pickup a photo on the page (if it exists) and post it in Facebook.  You can see how it looks on my homepage of Facebook if you would like to join my Facebook community.

Creating Your Own Facebook Post Icon

The syntax of the command is broken out as follows:

http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=http%3A%2F%2F  + (website URL) + &t= + (Subject Title with the words separated with a “+” sign.)

If you follow this syntax you can add Facebook post tags on key pages.  Eventually this should be on every car detail page just like the CARFAX logo is.

This is another example from my Automotive SEO blog:

http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dealer-seo.com&t=Automotive+SEO

I would recommend that you add icons for other sites that have good SEO and traffic value like www.digg.com.   A dig submission for the same page would look like this:

http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dealer-seo.com&title=Automotive%20SEO

Let me know if you have any questions.

Car Dealer Website Links

Beware of automated link building software and service companies offering automated link submissions for your car dealer website.

As soon as you hear claims that your website can be submitted, for a low cost, to hundreds or thousands of “quality” websites, hang up the phone.  Throw out the mailer.  Get back to reality.

Please DO NOT participate in link building scams or you will pay a very expensive price.

Most of these automated website submissions result in a flood of emails that offer all sorts of SEO services, logo design services and related Internet marketing “crap”. These SEO submission websites are lead generators for unscrupulous SEO companies that put up web directories that have ZERO Google PageRank and little true visitor traffic. Many of these services place your dealership website on a LINK FARM, which Google has already banned.

For the first time in my career, I saw a high quality website get banned from Google and Yahoo because they participated in a “link building” service from an India based company. This New Jersey branding agency, which had a very good Google PageRank, is now out of the Google index. They thought a free offer to build links to their website was harmless. They are now working with us to fix this big problem that was created by spam link services.

When I looked into why this happened, I saw that HUNDREDS of links were created from link farm to their website. Some websites had dozens of links to my client’s website under different business sub-categories. Google is very keen on tagging this link building scams and if your website gets caught in the crosshairs, you could be de-listed. My word of advice is NOT to use an automated link building service.

There are about 20 “universal” directories that have value on the Internet. Many of these directories are free and you can easily add your business information. Some of these site include:

• DMOZ
• Yahoo Local
• Google Maps
• www.MerchantCircle.com
• www.InsiderPages.com
• www.Yelp.com
• www.DealerRater.com
• www.Topix.com
• www.Local.com
• www.Yellowbot.com

After the “base” list, each industry has another few dozen websites that are valuable for link building. It is well worth every car dealer’s time to make sure that they are in the “best of the best” and then work on building links through reputable sources.

Reputable sources for car dealer would include:

• Internet Press Releases
• Expert Articles on a Topic You Know
• Blogging on industry websites
• Car Industry Forums
• Social Networking Websites

Link farms and automated links services are short lived success. Your dealership website and brand must be protected at all costs. Participating in link building scams is a recipe for disaster.