No One Is Talking About This
Once a car dealership understands the power of search marketing, especially organic search marketing, they will appreciate the implications of using a third party dealer website platform for their business operations. No one seems to be talking about the potentially dangerous situation car dealer place themselves in when they “lease’ a website platform from an automotive website provider. I use the word lease because once the dealer wants to change platforms, all of the existing website code and content is returned to the website company.
Companies like www.dealer.com, www.cobalt.com and www.reynoldswebsolutions.com all offer complete dealer website packages that are very popular. The services they provide range from basic car inventory control to complete web marketing services. In most cases, these website services are billed monthly with an annual contract required. The dealer websites are hosted on servers that the providers own and control. The website code, even if you pay to customize the website, is the property of the website company.
Since organic search marketing relies on good content, good links and TIME, imagine what happens when a dealer invests in building indexed links and content and then decides to change website platforms. Since the site has to be built from scratch, the new site will most likely not replicate the same indexed page names and content structure. Pages can be redirected and mapped to eliminate broken links but in reality, your pages are at risk of dropping in the rankings since many things will be changing.
The alternative for dealers is to create a hybrid approach that utilizes these large website platforms for the basic operations of the business like inventory management but to create a dealer owned website that is utilized for Internet search marketing. By creating a marketing website that the dealer owns, there will never be a time where page names and structures have to change. The only change would be the “skin” of the site, if a platform changed.
Over time, dealers inevitably will change dealer platforms due to complaints about service, up-time or ease of use. Since this is a reality, car dealership owners need to think long term and not reset the clock every 3-4 years. An effective microsite, created by PCG, is owned by the dealership with no recurring license fees. This puts the critical elements of organic search engine optimization and marketing in a platform that can adapt, change and respond to the changes in market conditions without a step backwards in rankings.