What happened today created one of those “Ah Ha” moments that I wanted to share with car dealers and our industry.

You first have to know that Google changes the search engine results page (SERP) if you are logged into your Google account. While logged in, Google records your past activity with the goal of making sure that it can display the best search results for your online behavior.

So, with this in mind, have you asked what happens when you click on the +1 button next to a website you like, or own.

Automotive Social Media Searches

Here is the SERP for the search phrase “Automotive Social Media” when I am logged out of my Google Account:

Notice that TK Carsites website located at AutomotiveSocialMedia.com is ranking in position #1 over the PCG website at www.AutomotiveSocialMedia.org.   To clarify this screen capture, notice there are no “+1″ buttons or thumbnails of my friends since I am logged out of my Google account.

Now look at the same search result while I am logged into my Google Account:

Notice a few things.  First, Google PULLED from Page Two our Automotive Marketing Boot Camp website which has content optimized for “Automotive Social Media” into first position.  Secondly, it placed our microsite AutomotiveSocialMedia.org into position #2,  It also pushed up websites that I visited frequently or +1′d which in effect pushed the TK Carsites website into position #5.

Also see how the thumbnail effect colorized the SERP and reminds me that my friends ALSO liked certain pages or companies.

Identifying The Googlized Consumer

Now, think about what this means.  If your dealership is implementing a proactive reputation management process in your dealership which uses 3G iPads or iPhones to get “Googlized Consumers” to post a review from inside the store using the Google Places App, why stop there?

When they are done with their 60 second review posting using the Google Places App, why not setup a boomark on your browser for a search that shows your key website pages one the iPad?

Hand the iPad back to the consumer and ask the consumer to click on the +1 buttons next to your key pages or at least just your home page.  Here is what a Google search using the site command does, which in some cases is all you need to show for your dealership:

In this case, many key pages are displayed like the home page, service page, parts page, and used car pages.  So if this page was bookmarked, it would be a breeze to touch the +1 button next to the pages that the customer chooses to +1.

If your website has the +1 button on each page, most do not today, then you could also have them go to the page directly and click the button.

Now the bonus.  Since they are logged into their Google account, their +1 activity is recorded.

Since they are logged into their Google account, their +1 activity is recorded.  This means that when they search for car dealers in your area in the future from their home or mobile device, your website assets will get priority placement.

In this example, my +1 activity significantly changed my top SERP placements.  If you liked this article, please click on the +1 button on the top of this page and also share it with your network om Facebook.

Mmmmmm the benefits of connecting with your Googlized customers are getting better by the day.  If your dealership needs assistance with a comprehensive IRM, SEM, and SEO strategy, give us a call.
Brian

Brian Pasch, CEO
PCG Digital Marketing
Text PCGedu to 75674 get information on our upcoming conferences
Brian Pasch

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Have you thought about how much color has been added to Google’s search result pages?

It’s as if they took a cue from a broadway play and have created their own Technicolor Dream Coat.

Businesses that understand the importance of implementing an in-store process to collect customer reviews get an additional benefit with yellow stars next to their Google Places listing.

Yellow is a color that draws the eye.

The Amazon effect has clearly trained consumers to click on the “products” and now companies FIRST that have the highest ratings. This is an untapped opportunity for most car dealers.

Check and see how many stars you have compared to other dealers in your market.

Suggestion: Download the Google Places App and start a strategy to get your customers to post a review when they are engaged with you!

Are Your Friend’s Photos Showing Under Your Assets

But now, the technicolorization of SERP include photo thumbnails (enlarge photo below) of people who “+1″ the listing. Imagine the charge in click behavior when a person searches and sees 5 of their friends profile photos under the SERP listing for a specific business.

The addition of photo thumbnails add color and relevance to people from their network of friends. The colorization and personalization of SERP pages can be leveraged to increase click behavior of online shoppers.  You can see how powerful these thumbnails can be from the example below:

Do you have a technicolor search engine optimization strategy in place?  If you have not updated your Automotive SEO strategy to include these new opportunities, give us a call.

Brian Pasch, CEO

PCG Digital Marketing

Text PCGedu to 75674 get information on our upcoming conferences

Brian Pasch

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I am looking forward to helping car dealers implement the latest Automotive SEO strategies for their dealership on October 5-7th in Park Ridge New Jersey.  I’ll be speaking at Jim Ziegler’s Internet Battle Plan 7 on the opening day, October 5th.

This is the first time a conference of this size and scope has been scheduled in Northern New Jersey.  The location is perfect for dealers in NY, CT, RI, and PA to attend.

The hotel is located right off the Garden State Parkway and minutes from the New York Thruway.  Any dealer in the tri-state area can save on airfare costs by having their team drive to the Marriot and participate in this great conference.

Special SEO Offer For Early Birds

If you register by September 1st, PCG will prepare a custom SEO Analysis and Market Review of your dealership.  We’ll bring the report to the conference and take time to personally review our findings with you.  This offer is only for dealers who register by September 1st.

This full report would normally cost a dealer $1,000 but if you register early, you will have it included in your registration fee.  This is another example of the VALUE the Internet Battle Plan is offering dealers that attend.

Conference & Hotel Information

Park Ridge Marriott
300 Brae Boulevard
Park Ridge, NJ 07656

The Group Room Rate is $129… YOU NEED TO BOOK EARLY to receive the $129 rate.  Book Online

To make your reservation over the phone, you must provide the following call-in code: IBPIBPA
Room Reservations: 800.882.1038

See you in New Jersey in October!

Brian Pasch, CEO

PCG Digital Marketing

Text PCGedu to 75674 get information on our upcoming conferences

Brian Pasch

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It is clear that organic search results shown on Google Page One are being influence by social media posts, likes, fans, and now +1.  Just this week I noticed that a dealer’s Facebook page moved to the second spot on Google Page One over well aged and well linked microsites.

This dealer has over 35,000 likes to his Facebook dealership page.  The highly trafficked Facebook Page outweighs the SEO strength of his other web assets.  Change is here and documented!

Google +1 Implementation

Now we have Google +1 to play with and people are asking how they can leverage this new search “stamping” tool.  According to Google’s website:

“Click +1 to publicly give something your stamp of approval. Your +1′s can help friends, contacts, and others on the web find the best stuff when they search.”

Do you believe that your business provides great products and service to local consumers?  Do your employees feel the same way?  If the answer to both questions are “YES”, then what strategy do you have in place to educate and energize each employee to +1 your key digital assets.  These assets are MORE than your website.

Your Google +1 strategy should include your Youtube Videos, microsites, press releases, slideshare docs, etc.  Any web assets that will help consumers connect with your brand and that show your company in a positive light.

Have you started tagging your web assets with the +1?  What are you waiting for then!

Empowering Your Customers

Once you and your employees have been educated and a strategy put in place, next comes family, friends, and customers.  This means that you email templates and communication process for soliciting reviews can be enhanced to leverage the Google +1 tag.

Have you added the +1 toolbar on all your blogs like the one at the top of this page? This toolbar makes it easier to get your readers and fans to engage in your +1 strategy. By the way, have your new customers been encouraged to +1 tag your Google Adwords ads?

By the way, before you leave this page, use the toolbar at the top to +1 the article and share it with your network.  What are friends for, correct?

When You Use Google +1 – SERP’s Change

Here is a quick task, please follow along with me.  Log into your Google Account.  Go to Google and search “Automotive SEO“.  Here is what you will see if you are logged into your Google account:

The first two listings should be www.dealer-seo.com and www.automotiveseo.co. 

Click on the +1 button for these two listings.

What happens after your +1′d these two listings, the next time you search for this same phrase “Automotive SEO“.  What changed?

Now was that hard to do?  You know the top search phrases that consumers use to find your goods and services.  If your website is not at the top of search listings, these +1 tags from local consumers can make your listing stand out.   Do you want your website assets to stand out?

The Bigger Picture – Socialized SERP’s

Google is aligning business interests and search engine result pages (SERPS) to get more consumers to create a Google account and use Google tools.  Once Google decided to get into the review business, a clear signal was sent.  Reviews posted with GOOGLE accounts can be leveraged top increase SERP visibility and traffic; that’s Google Boost.

Now that Google allows consumers to “mark” their favorite search engine result pages, once again businesses will educate and encourage consumers to mark THEIR listings to create a more visible SERP listing.

The future of SERP’s is socialized and personalized results for local markets.  The sooner your business engages with a proactive review collection process and now a proactive +1 process, the faster your SERP listings will be standing out.  The faster your PPC campaigns can be enhanced with “stars”.

Do You Have A Search Strategy

If you need assistance implementing a strong search marketing strategy that includes reputation management, SEO, Google Adwords, or Google Boost, we would love to discuss your needs and come up with a customized plan for your market.  Call our team at 732.450.8200 and ask for Matt O’Such for a free consultation.

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It’s amazing how many people have called to ask about the JC Penny and Overstock.com SEO scandal. Let me assure you that anyone who has taken my Automotive SEO Workshops or attended my webinars, the strategies that these unnamed SEO companies implemented is NOT anything I would have recommended.

I made a video to help car dealers understand that good Automotive SEO strategies are compliant and effective. If you have any doubt,you can read some of the success stories on this blog. Let me give you a few recent examples of winning SEO strategies.

Fiat 500 Dealers

Recently the Fiat 500 was launched in the US and Fiat dealers were scrambling to get their facilities completed in time for March delivery of the car.  For many dealers their Fiat branded website is still not completed as of this writing.   Using Automotive SEO Strategies, we have been able to assist Fiat dealers with lead generation.

If you search Google for “Fiat Dealer” or “Fiat Dealers” for example, you will see the AAN microsite on Google Page One:  http://www.fiatdealer.org.  As we add names, addresses, and websites for Fiat dealers across the United States, this site will provide an annuity of leads for Fiat dealers using SEO strategies.

Fisker Dealers in California

Just yesterday I received a call from Fisker of Orange County and was told that the microsite we built resulted in two Fisker Karma cars being sold in one week.  One of the cars was from a man in Texas and the second car was from a famous movie star.  One did a search on the Internet for “Fisker California” and another for “Los Angeles Fisker Dealer” and found the dealership website assets that I linked.

Keep in mind that the first search was very broad (the whole state) and the second was a large market outside of Orange County (LA) that the dealer wanted to attract shoppers from.  Automotive SEO strategies can increase the paths that lead consumers to your products, services, and cars.

Automotive SEO Requires Patience

So, Automotive SEO strategies are alive and well when authenticity, good content and design are implemented.  When you take your time to invest in SEO over 12-18 months, you can really increase your local search visibility.  Check our Brickell Honda’s search visibility in Google for the phrase “2011 Honda Accord Miami“.

When you optimize content on your main website, create microsites, utilize press releases, and post videos you increase the paths by which consumers can find you.  In this case, Brickell Honda has published their message in multiple places to gain 80% of the organic listings.

Digital Marketing and Social Media Education

If hope that articles such as this and others on this blog will inspire you to increase your investments in digital marketing and social media education.  the 2nd Annual Automotive Marketing Boot Camp is coming up on April 16-18th and your return on investment will be rewarded 10-fold.  Check out the conference brochure below and register today at:  http://www.automotivemarketingbootcamp.com

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With all this power, and SEO value that this platform provides, it’s odd that so few dealers have leveraged the website.  Content publishing must be a part of a comprehensive automotive advertising strategy.  Free platforms like CarDealerWiki.org, press release websites, blogs, bookmarking sites, and social media tools can all be part of a low cost, high ROI strategy.

Capital Ford in Regina

There are many examples of dealers who have leveraged CarDealerWiki to increase the “paths” by which consumers can find their dealership.  One of the best examples of Capital Ford Lincoln in Regina Canada.  They have created a number of great pages to market their dealership and best off all their investment in content publishing is paying off.

You can visit their main Wiki page at:  http://www.cardealerwiki.org/Capital_Ford_Lincoln

Their main dealership page, demonstrates the power of the customizes automotive Wiki platform.  Their main Wiki page contains YouTube customer testimonial videos, their blog feed, customer reviews, and live inventory from their daily inventory feed. One of the biggest advantages of  CarDealerWiki.org is that is can accept RSS feeds.  That means you can feed in live reviews from DealerRater.com and PrestoReviews.com.

Members of the Automotive Advertising Network (AAN) can use this feature to create sustainable links to their dealership Vehicle Detail Pages because each night the cars that are displayed are updated by what is in stock.  This feature creates free “mini-sites” that help increase the visibility of the cars you have for sale.  Basically, members can create their own automotive classified pages, without limit.

Capital Ford Lincoln’s ability to make pages for each model year that they sell is also paying off. As you can see from the screen capture below, a year, make and model search for the city clearly shows the power of CarDealerWiki for Automotive SEO.

Anytime you use a free platform for content publishing, you need to check if the links that are being created are being respected by the search engines.  That is because some platforms place “no follow” tags on all outbound links.  CarDealerWiki.org offers strong Automotive SEO value and “follow” links.

Yahoo provides a link checking tool, and you can see that some of the pages that the dealership created are showing as trusted link sources to their main website.

CarDealerWiki in Competitive Markets

In competitive US markets like the Boston suburbs, innovative dealers like Marlboro Nissan use create CarDealerWiki pages to add additional paths for consumers to find their brand and be linked back to their primary website.

Creating an Account on CarDealerWiki

CarDealerWIki is free but accounts must be approved first.  Accounts must come from a dealership email address or from a company that serves the automotive industry.  All vendors that serve the auto industry should create a profile page for their business on CarDealerWiki.org.  Now that you know about a great content publishing and Automotive SEO tool, what is stopping you?  Create an account today for free automotive advertising resources.

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Brian Pasch, CEO of PCG Digital Marketing said, “We are passionate about helping dealers face and overcome increasing competition on search engines, and a tactical SEO strategy will play a large role in their success. We are proud and honored to have been named a top SEO company.”

The DrivingSales Dealer Satisfaction Awards measure satisfaction with services provided by vendors by allowing dealers to rate and review their vendors online at DrivingSales.com. Only vendors who achieved top rankings in dealer satisfaction in each category, as determined by the thousands of auto dealers who are part of the DrivingSales.com community, received awards.

PCG Named Top Rated Automotive SEO Company

“We are proud to present a DrivingSales Dealer Satisfaction ‘Top Rated’ SEO Award to PCG Digital Marketing said DrivingSales CEO and Founder Jared Hamilton. “This award is a reflection of the excellent results PCG Digital Marketing has generated for dealerships across the nation, and we are proud to recognize their accomplishment.”

Full award results are available online at. Full broadcast coverage of the DrivingSales Dealer Satisfaction Awards ceremony is available at drivingsalestv.com.

PCG Digital Marketing is a full service digital marketing agency that serves the Automotive Industry. PCG is nationally recognized as a leader in Automotive Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and automotive digital marketing.

Brian Pasch, CEO and founder of PCG Digital Marketing is an active blogger, writer and speaker at automotive conferences, 20 Groups and digital marketing forums. PCG Digital Marketing is also the creator of the Automotive Website Awards which recognizes the best automotive websites platforms based on their search marketing effectiveness, the Digital Marketing Strategies Conference and Automotive Marketing Boot Camp.

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Every week it seems that a new social media website or micro-blogging platform comes to market and your circle of friends invite you to join.  I don’t know about you but how does the average person evaluate the benefits of using these new digital marketing tools? Are you overwhelmed?  Do you feel that you are dodging bullets?

In the past 60 days you may have been invited and joined:

• IMfaceplate.com
• CarDealerWiki.org
• Amplify.com
• Thoughts.com
• Quora.com
• Branchout.com

I thought I would share with you some of the processes I use to evaluate the many requests that come across my desk each month.  In my experience, some websites serve as useful Automotive SEO tools, others as Automotive Social Media tools, and some just fail to do anything.  The key is to know how to evaluate your investment in these websites.  You must have the tools to evaluate which websites are worthy of your continued investment of time and energy.

Your time is valuable so treat it that way!

Automotive Advertising Strategies

For car dealers, automotive advertising strategies have never been as diverse and confusing as they are today.  Dealers are faced with deciding how to find the correct balance of traditional marketing, social media, SEO, SEM, blogging, email marketing, re-marketing, and the list goes on.  All of the sites that I listed above may have been presented to dealers as “worthy” of their staff time and content.

Which new websites are really delivering on those claims?

All of the sites listed above may be suited for car dealers.  However, some may be better for personal branding.   In either case, the question comes down to your time investment.  Should you engage or not?

Sites You Think Are Good For SEO

If a website is introduced to you as a new Automotive SEO tool, there are some quick ways to measure that claim.  First, make sure you are using Google Alerts, Yahoo Site Explorer and Google Webmaster Tools.  Setup Google Alerts for your dealership name and your personal name.

I like to use Google Alerts to see how fast a blog post I created is picked up by Google. This is a measure of how often Google pulls and indexes content.

For example, I posted content on www.Quora.com, recommended by my friend Eric Miltsch, under my name this past week.  One question I posted was about Frank Herbert and Dune books. I received a Google Alert within an hour of posting and from the screen shot below, you can see that it is now in the Google index.  This site is definitely respected by Google.

In contrast, all the social media sign-ups that I have done on Branchout.com in the past two weeks have not triggered any Google Alerts.  In the first case, Quora.com is getting into the Google search stream and Branchout.com seems to be limited to inside of Facbeook.  Branchout.com fails on the SEO front and we will have to see how it does on the networking front.

Automotive Advertising on CarDealerWiki

As I stated in another blog post this week, www.CarDealerWiki.org is showing strong SEO visibility and links.  Take a look at this search query for a dealer who is leveraging the page publishing power of CarDealerWiki:

You Should Be Seeing Increased Links

Secondly, if your posts or articles on micro-blogging platforms are being respected by the search engines, any hyperlinks in your posts should be showing in Yahoo Site Explorer and Google Webmaster Tools to your main website.   If after 30-60 days your links are not showing, you can assume you are not getting SEO back-link benefits from these posts.

Sites You Think Are Good For Networking

Other websites that are not designed for Automotive SEO may claim to increase your networking potential.  In these cases, I recommend that you use a tracking phone number on all posts to these sites.  This can be in the form of a user profile or a signature block that you add to all articles.  In addition to tracking numbers, you can see how many people are commenting on your posts.

For example, IMFaceplate.com is a new micro-blogging platform.  I have posted about 12 articles on my profile so take a peek:  Brian Pasch.  The comments on my articles have not been very interactive or meaningful.  In addition to low engagement, I have not been seeing Google Alerts coming in for my efforts.  I will give this website another month or content and if I don’t see any positive confirmations form the search engines, I will stop.

As a side note, www.imfaceplate.com has slow website response times which I think is hampering their search engine credibility.

Prioritizing Your Time

With so many new websites in play each month, just be careful about how you invest your time.  Measure the search visibility, link counts, or contacts you get by engaging in any new community.

If you want some proven strategies for content publishing and link building, there are many articles that I have published in the past.  If you need an updated Top 10 List, just send me an email:  brian@pcgdigitalmarketing.com.  I’ll send you my Top 10 Content Publishing websites that can assist car dealers with search visibility, links, and traffic generation.

P.S.  Dealers who want to develop the strongest digital marketing strategies for 2011, are coming to the 2011 Digital Marketing Strategies Conference Feb 1-3rd in the Napa Valley prior to NADA.  You can be there as well, register at: http://www.digitalmarketingstrategies.org

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Jared Hamilton sent out a Tweet today about the recent report from Compete that Bing powered search is now 29% of the search market share so I thought it was time to share a few insights into Automotive SEO with Bing and Yahoo.  Car dealers need to have a digital marketing strategy for Bing and Yahoo that is independent of what they are doing in Google. Do you have a Bing and Yahoo strategy?

In general, Automotive SEO “basics” apply to Google, Yahoo, and Bing which includes strong page titles, URL names, and relevant content.  However there are some big differences.  Yahoo and Bing favor sub-domains that are keyword targeted more than Google.  Having hundreds of SEO tests running a year, I’ll share with you a two examples that demonstrate this sub-domain preference.

Toyota Sale

When you search Google for the phrase “Toyota Sale” you will see among the Page One results “www.toyotaforsale.org” which confirms what I have witnessed thousands of times; Google favors exact match domains or near match domains.

Yahoo and Bing on the other-hand will often favor sub-domains more than exact matches when they are properly optimized.  A search in Yahoo and Bing show similar results and shows the site http://toyota.cardealersale.com on Page One.  The Home Page title on this site is “Toyota Sale | Toyota For Sale”.  This sub-domain is NOT on Google Page One.

What this means is that you can get on Bing and Yahoo page one for important keywords using a sub-domain microsite strategy.

Jacksonville Hyundai

When exact match domains are not available you can see that sub-domains can also play a major role in achieving visibility for short search phrases. The sub-domain http://jacksonville-hyundai.fl.cardealersale.com is showing on Bing Page One.  You will also see in the example below that Bing shows a domain with TWO dashes in the name “www.jacksonville-hyundai-fl.com” which you will normal NOT see appear on Google Page One.  Bing and Yahoo like these dashed domains!

OEM Compliance Issues Lessened With Sub-Domains

Most dealers also should know that OEM are more tolerant with sub-domain microsites that stand-alone microsites on a new domain.  For example, http://service.irvinebmw.com is a service microsite but it is associated with the primary dealer domain and thus complies with BMW microsite regulations.  For Toyota warranty information, Acton Toyota created http://warranty.actontoyota.com which indexes nationally on Page One for a search on Toyota Warranty.

In summary, there are more ways to gain Page One exposure on Yahoo and Bing than in Google and this means that the early bird will get the worm.

Automotive SEO Education

If you would like to keep up with the latest Automotive SEO Strategies, you can join a free community dedicated to Automotive SEO at http://automotive-seo.ning.com (which ranks #3 in the USA on Bing and Yahoo for the term Automotive SEO).

You can also get the latest SEO strategies live by attending the 2011 Digital Marketing Strategies Conference February 1-3, 2011 which is right before the NADA Convention in San Francisco.  Register online at:  http://www.digitalmarketingstrategies.org. The conference has attracted some of the top speakers and educators in the automotive industry and if you are looking to lock in a successful digital marketing attack in your PMA in 2011, you need to be in attendance.

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With that said, I am actually very pleased with the course that I have set for PCG Digital Marketing clients and the design of the Automotive Advertising Network.  Both strategies draw their strengths from targeted microsite strategies.  My microsite strategies are often exact matches to common search phrases. This exact match could be a dealer’s name to improve their POD Score™.  A microsite could also be created to match a broad search phrase like “Los Angeles Dealers”, which produces the search result shown below:

In the search results shown above, you can see that an “exact match” domain with good content, links, and relevance PRECEDES the massive block of results shown in green that are enhanced by Google Places data.  You can also see the other two websites that rank above the Google Places block are not slackers at all: Automotive.com and Cars.com.  A car dealer that is listed on www.losangelesdealers.org has a strategic advantage.

Google SERP Find Exact Matches First

I’ve said this before and will repeat it again, Google always tries to present, on a search results page (SERP),  the best matching assets in its database.  Google, Yahoo, and Bing all weight exact matching domains very high as long as the websites have relevant content.  Redirected domains that are not hosted will never appear in search results so all those parked domains you may own are not helping you.  It may be time to get those parked domains on a real content publishing strategy!

When Google integrated Google Places, the normal 8-10 organic listings were changed dramatically which created a “jump ball” once again in the search marketing Olympics.  Some of you may know that I won that jump ball during the Cash For Clunkers program as well as the Toyota Recall fiasco.   Once again, I’m pleased with what I am seeing in the revised search results presented by Google.

Don’t Forget The Stars

Before I continue about changes in SERP listings, I would like to remind all car dealers that they MUST develop a comprehensive Internet Reputation Management (IRM) strategy to increase participation of their clients to posted reviews.  My recommendation is that a successful dealer should have TWICE the number of positive reviews “stars” of their nearest competitor.  That may be harder in years to come but all dealers should have a few HUNDRED reviews posted from authentic customers.

Testing Search Results Start To Show A Trend

From recent testing that I have done, websites hosted on great domain names may actually have an edge over local car dealer websites.  Take a look at the search listed below.  The websites that Google felt were best matches and NOT in Google Places were listed first.  Then the local dealers were listed.  I don’t know about you but I’m happy for Brickell Motors who is in position #1 for that broad search phrase on an exact matching microsite domain.

Once again, the TOP websites above the integrated and enhanced Google Places organic listings are two heavyweight contenders UsedCars.com and Yahoo Autos.

Broad Searches Continue To Show Trends

This trend continues as you type in even broader searches, and you can see that websites that are EXACT matching or that have high SEO inbound links on targeted keywords, appear on Google Page One.  So, in essence, Automotive SEO strategies are still in tact and dealers that have EXACT matching microsites are getting a boost.

In the example below, CarsForSale.com (in red)  is an exact search and displayed prominently. www.CarDealerSale.com (in blue)  is on page one because of optimized inbound links on this search phrase.   You can not easily see that but since I created those links, but I know that to be true.  What is interesting to note is that the Google Places listings shows just local dealers because it has determined that this search is not for any particular region.

The Future Automotive SEO

Since I am an advocate of Automotive Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies, you would expect me to substantiate my work but I will be the first to say that the changes with Google Places is still a dynamic event.   I’ll keep you posted on what I find and make recommendations to take advantage of opportunities I see.

One last screen capture below shows that Automotive SEO strategies that include VIDEO (green), document publishing (pink), and microsites (red) can help a local dealer increase the number of paths that bring consumers to their dealership.  In this case, Alexandria Hyundai dominates the “above the fold ” SERP listings.

Now the marriage of a well designed Adwords Campaign and Automotive SEO, that is heavenly!   We’ll discuss that at a later date as well at the 2011 Digital Marketing Strategies Conference in Napa Valley, February 1-3, 2011.   I hope to see you there.

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For example, if you are a Chevrolet dealer in Paramus New Jersey test out a few basic phrases:

• New Jersey Chevrolet Dealer
• Paramus Chevrolet Dealer
• Chevrolet Impala Paramus
• Chevrolet Service Paramus

There are differences in how the Microsoft technology and Google technology work and after you have studied this for a while, those differences become clearer. I would like to challenge all readers to take a moment to take 10 popular search phrases that are part of your SEO strategy and check your rankings in Yahoo.

You can place you name beside each listing to see which your business controls and the work to raise those positions over the next few months.

Practicing What We Preach

For PCG Digital Marketing, the new Yahoo is actually recognizing our leadership in content publishing. We practice what we preach.  Some of our top keyword targets are “Automotive SEO“, “Automotive Reputation Management”, “Automotive Social Media“, and “Automotive Microsites”. You can see that our focus on SEO has rewarded us with good placement in Yahoo.

If your Yahoo results and Bing results are not as strong as Google, or visa versa, it’s a good time to roll-up your SEO sleeves and make some investment in updating your Automotive SEO strategies.

In these snapshots taken on 8/30/2010, TK stands for www.tkcarsites, PR stands for Paul Rushing from www.dealerbytes.com and ADM stands for Ralph Paglia’s ADM Community.  These are companies that are active members of the automotive digital marketing forums.

Yahoo Search: Automotive SEO

Automotive Reputation Management

Yahoo Search: Automotive Microsites

Yahoo Search: Automotive Social Media

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Webinar Registration Link

Reserve your Webinar seat now at:  https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/603596369.  Since this offer is only for 100 dealerships, we encourage you to register quickly while space is open.  There is no cost for the webinar.

Ever wonder what free tools are available for Search Engine Optimization for automotive dealers?

Find out from PCG Digital Marketing experts the best tools in the industry that are just a click away.  You’ll also get access to tools developed by PCG and for the first time, 100 dealers will get login accounts to utilize these tools.

This is a must see webinar for Automotive Internet Managers focusing on getting results from the little time available in your week to do research and development for expanding your brand online.

This webinar will be conducted by Brian Pasch, CEO of the PCG Digital Marketing. Brian has penned a series of white-papers to help automotive professionals understand the challenges and opportunities that exist with online marketing.

Details

Title: Free Automotive SEO Tools by PCG Digital Marketing
 
Date: Wednesday, August 18, 2010
  
Time: 11:00 AM – 1:00 PM EDT
 
After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.
 
This webinar is open only to employees of dealerships. The tools and logins are designed for internal employees of car dealers and not consultants and vendors.  Registrants must have valid car dealership email and no Google, Hotmail, Yahoo, etc. email accounts.

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As you know,  PCG is an advocate for both strategies and we are passionate about the return on investment, not cost, that these services provide.

Benefits of A Strong Automotive SEO Strategy

In a nutshell with Automotive SEO, car dealers get:

• Search Relevance
  • Good Content
  • Good Website Architecture
  • New Content Added To Website
• External Links
  • From A Diverse Group Of Sites
  • From Authoritative Automotive Sites
  • With Quality Anchor Text
  • And Proper Page Positioning
• New Sources of Traffic
  • Social Media
  • Content Publishing
  • Automotive Forums
  • Advertising Portals

Car dealers are in the weakest position when it comes to building external links.  Links are the “votes” from other websites and the links authenticate your web site’s value for specific search phrases.  Over time dealers should have THOUSANDS of good links pointing to their websites.

When dealers realize that there are about 25 third party websites that I see on Google Page One every day pushing their website off Page One, the issue of links will become more apparent.  Dealers have given their inventory to free advertising portals that have created sites that rank above them in their OWN TOWN.

I estimate that less than 5% of dealers nationwide understand that if they only have ONE website to market their goods and they are not concerned about links, then they will be at a significant disadvantage.  The disadvantage is getting larger each day.

If you want to validate this claim, type in a year, make and model search for your town and brand of car you sell.  See just how many dealers vs. third party lead collectors/advertisers are on page one that are NOT dealer centric in their ad model.

The days of consumers going to one car advertising website because of a million dollar off-line branding campaign is being diminished by many new paths to searching and researching a car.  Consumers are getting more sophisticated in their search behavior and are more empowered to find their own “best” deal.

Search 2008 Toyota Corolla Downey

There is a Toyota dealership in Downey California. When you look at the Page One search results, the dealer’s website is no where to be found and its their own city.  80% of the page is occupied by third party lead collectors or third party advertising portals.

Check it out yourself:  View Search (shown in photo on right)

Automotive SEO strategies that include microsites, content writing, link building and social media do not make sales and visibility changes overnight.

Most dealers do not have the patience so in the end they spend 2x more on pay-per-click investments over the long-haul.

Automotive SEO is a long-term investment in your multi-million dollar franchise.

In the past 6 months we have seen a 200% increase in competitive search traffic for year, make and model searches and it’s not looking good for dealers who ignore SEO strategies.

AAN Members Can Fight Back

Do a similar search for a member of the Automotive Advertising Network (AAN) which is the first dealer centric advertising network.

Search: 2008 Toyota Camry Englewood

You will see their AAN local advertising page in the 3rd postion on Google Page One, shown in the image below:

Note: The dealer’s own Dealer.com website is not on Google Page One.  This is not a criticism about their DDC website but rather commonplace from what I can see.  Car dealer websites are under attack and they don’t yet see the problem.

Members of the AAN get both Automotive SEO and Social Media integration benefits that include:

• Inventory Plugin For Facebook
• Customer Testimonial Channel Plugin For Facebook
• Unlimited Blog Posting on the AAN’s Automotive News Network
• Inventory integration to their own blogs
• Cars listed on national, regional and local advertising pages
• Numerous links back to dealer’s primary website
• Unlimited leads from optimized SEO advertising pages

Social Media ROI

Social media is more than Facebook and Twitter and it includes tasks like Reputation Management, FourSquare, Social Communities and Blogging.  As dealers participate in online communities and social media platforms they can connect and engage with consumers in their marketplace.  As the video points out, if you compare everything in social media with outdated ROI standards you will be missing the point of social media.

PCG’s own advertising budget is primarily based on social media.  We participate in blogs, social networks and communities to get our services and expertise in front of business owners.  Our company’s growth is based on practicing our own SEO strategies and social media participation.

Dealers as a whole are impatient with the process. I understand that impatience but I would not stake my reputation and career on vaporware.

Someone said it best, “Don’t bet against Pasch”.

I took that as a great compliment but it reflects my passion.   I work around the clock testing new ways to assist car dealers increase their search relevance and authority.

The Automotive Advertising Network is a delivery on that passion (SEO and Social) and promise those that participate will be rewarded…just not overnight like a PPC campaign would deliver.

Automotive SEO and Social Media engagement is a critical investment that must be a part of all car dealer budgets.

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The first thing I questioned was the relevance of the patent since so much has changed in the past 6 years in search.  The patent data include this text:

Ranking documents based on user behavior and/or feature data
Invented by Jeffrey A. Dean, Corin Anderson and Alexis Battle
Assigned to Google Inc.
United States Patent 7,716,225
Granted May 11, 2010
Filed: June 17, 2004

SEO pundits have differing opinions on the specific value of this patent but to save you the internal banter, I will try to distill what I think is most important.  This patent is focused on how Google will “weight” links on a web page.  The weighting may include predicting what a consumer would most likely click on a web page.  So a text link in the first paragraph of a blog article, with interesting anchor text, could have more “weight” than a link in the bottom page footer.

Links are critical in the overall visibility of any website and this patent is part of that discussion.  The discussion that has surfaced pertains to where is the best place for links on a page and how do different types of links “rate” with Google. 

For example, a link from the home page of Automotive News to any dealer’s website is a great link to have since that site is a recognized authority in the automotive industry.  This link would have more “weight” than a link from a brand new microsite or a friends landscaping website.

Building Inbound Links

Car dealers who have launched effective off-site SEO campaigns that produce high quality inbound links from well ranked websites normally have an edge over their competition with all other things considered equal. 

However, it is difficult for dealers to independently create hundreds or thousands of high quality links to their websites.   Dealers can obtain high quality links from press releases, social communities, car forums, article syndication, document publishing portals and business directories.  Increasing links is like an annuity of good will and create a digital marketing foundation.

If you have been considering increasing the links to your website, you should understand some of the basics of link building.  Some of the questions you may have are:

• How many links do I have directed to my website?
• What is a good link?
• Where can I find places to create links back to my site?
• Where should that link be located?
• Are image links better than text links?

To find the number of inbound links pointing to your website, and to make it easy for anyone to get a correct count, I recommend that you go to www.websitegrader.com .  Type in your domain name and then click on the “Create Report” button.  The free report and analysis includes the number of “inbound links”.

While you have the report, take a look at the data and one thing to spot is when your domain is going to expire.  If it’s less than two years, renew it today.  Also, if your score is under 70/100, it would be a good time to give PCG a call.

Dealers who want to be competitive in online search should seek to have a diverse set of high quality sites linking to their website.  I bring this up because often I see hundreds of links coming from only one website and so the number of links masks the problem of low diversity. The total recommended links will vary but I would like to see over 1,000 links to the dealer’s home page and hundreds of links to key inside web pages like service, parts, and used cars.

A good link is one that comes from a reputable website that has real content, real visitor activity and relevance to your business.  The site can also be unrelated to your business but one that has a high Google PageRank. There are many link building scams on the market, so be careful that you don’t waste your money.

 The Reasonable Surfer Patent   emphasizes what I have been recommending for years. Content based SEO strategies that include blogs, press releases, article publishing, posting articles on technical forums and social communities can deliver high quality links.  The key is to place that link in such a way that enhances the page and that links to the right page on your dealer website.

An example would be posting an article, outside of your website, about the different types of Nissan extended warranty plans available to a consumer.  In the article you would place links to the extended warranty page on your dealer website or even Nissan brochures on your website.  Car dealers who have been blogging for years or participating in automotive forums already know this. 

How Many Links Do You Have?

Do you know how many links are pointing to your website?  How about your competitor’s website?

You can see inbound links on any website by going to Yahoo and typing in your competitor’s domain name or your domain name with the “link” parameter.   For example, if you wanted to see where ABC Ford (www.abcford.com) was building links from you would go to Yahoo and type in the search box:

link:www.abcford.com 

No spaces. This will bring up the Yahoo Site Explorer  and it will show you the first 1,000 inbound links to any website. 

There is a debate whether a text link will not be as strong as an image that is linked because a “surfer” may be more likely to click on a photo or banner that is above the fold.  There is no uniform agreement on this matter.      Should you bold the text anchor?  Should you use larger fonts for the anchor text?  That is where the art of link building and testing comes into play.

What is most uniformly agreed is that a list of links in a sidebar or footer will not be as strong as links inside an article.  Of course I am talking about a well written article with links on anchor text that point to relevant pages on a dealer’s website.

If you want to target high value keywords that you want your website to appear on Google Page One, then a combination of good on-site content and a few hundred links from external sites may be just what you need.   The strategy for off-site links will be to use the keyword in content and hyperlink that keyword to an appropriate page on your website.   It’s a two part strategy that must be in place to win.

 If your keyword goal is very competitive you will most likely need thousands of links.  The point is that over time, you can compete and win against your local competitors if you have a strong content writing and off-site link building strategy.

Need help with link building?  Give us a call at 732-450-8200.

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As PCG Digital Marketing has expanded its own offerings to car dealers, none are more apparent than Fixed Operations digital marketing and optimization.

In this case, car dealers don’t have to go far to see that most car dealers are invisible on Google Page One for searches for tires, brakes, oil changes and parts in their own PMA.

Fixed Operations SEO is not widely discussed within online communities or at trade conferences, and yet it is a true bread winner for car dealers.  I have been working with a number of car dealers that have decided to aggressively advertise that they offer competitive prices on the most common car repairs and service.  The key is to take that offline decision to the search engines for consumers to see online.

There are a few ways to attack generating more calls and leads for service, so I will create a multi-part series on this topic and also schedule a webinar to help dealers with implementing effective Fixed Ops search strategies.

Before we talk about search strategies, it is vitally important that you do local market research on competing dealers and independent service center.  Use this data to establish your pricing and marketing message. Ask your digital advertising agency to create online and offline branding graphics and messages that can be used in print, television, banner ads and on your website.

Once you have the graphics and message worked out, add service pages to your main website or dedicated service website that match your offline message.  I suggest that you have specific landing pages for oil changes, brakes, tires, transmission service, etc.  Each of these pages should have a lead capture form and a clear call-to-action button to schedule a service appointment.

Once your dedicated service landing pages are in place, you can start a Google Adwords campaign which buys keywords that can be directed to the appropriate service landing page.  For example, if you bought the words “oil change” or “Oil and Lube”, you should direct those clicks to the oil change landing page that you just created.  Do not send consumers to a generic service appointment form with no message about why they should have their next oil change done at your dealership.

In Google Adwords this is called setting up Ad Groups, so I suggest that each Ad Group be directed to the best landing page you created.

Fixed Operations Videos

On your service landing pages, I suggest that you consider creating videos that address the common fear that getting a service done at your dealership is more expensive than at an independent service shop.  If you want to see two good examples of videos that talk to the consumer about dealership service benefits, click on the links below:

• Checkered Flag Service Video
• Mac Haik Service Video

In the case of Checkered Flag, their video team created a series of service videos that address specific services.  If you click on the oil change link on the Checkered Flag service site, you will see that Christine’s video is different than the home page and talks specifically about oil changes.

If you would like to create a video package of 10 service videos, drop me a line because there are a number of companies that can do this for your dealership at a very reasonable cost.  Fixed Ops videos will turn those boring pages on your website into selling tools.

It is wise to note that by creating a separate and optimized service website, car dealers can run TWO Adwords campaigns at the same time.  This means your normal new and used car sales Adwords campaign can be running at the same time as your service Adwords campaign.

This has some added competitive advantages as well as addressing consumer behavior that clouds accurate assessment of sales campaigns. Consumers often click on car sales PPC ads when what they really want is service.  Next time you want to see this, just listen to the phone calls recorded from your PPC campaign.

Dealers can create a service ad group which buys your dealership name and in that ad group create ads that are service specific messages. This can reduce the contamination of your car marketing PPC results by reducing the number of service clicks out of the sales campaign.

Automotive SEO for Fixed Ops

In addition to Adwords SEM, I suggest that dealers create a stand-alone service website that is optimized for their PMA and the most common services they offer.  A service Microsite will create an annuity of high quality service leads once it is indexed every year without advertising costs.  The interesting fact is that most car dealers are NOT appearing in the organic search results for services like oil change, tires and brakes.

The market is wide open for those who respond first.

The organic listings in Google for service searches are filled with franchises like Jiffy Lube, Meineke and Discount Tire stores.  It’s time for car dealers to fight back and give consumers a choice when they search online.  Search optimized websites for Fixed Operations actually index rather quickly because local dealers have ignored this aspect of Automotive SEO.

Also, buy creating a separate service website, you can choose a URL that will better match consumer search.   For example, if you purchased www.seattlejeepservice.com you would have a better change of appearing in service related searches in Seattle.

Fixed Operations Digital Marketing

If you have not been exploiting the profit and revenue associated with a dedicated Fixed Ops digital marketing campaign, there is no better time to start than today.  If you need assistance, drop me a line and we can coach you through the process.

PCG has a new Fixed Operations marketing package and stand-alone website that may be the right fit for your business for as little as $395 per month. Give us a call 732-450-8200

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As part of the process, we will also take customer testimonial videos and load them in a custom YouTube Testimonial Channel for the RMP home page; see www.iloveprestigevolvo.com. We also load their testimonial videos on their Facebook Fan Page.  (If you haven’t purchased a FlipCam yet, do it immediately!)

As we were checking the Google Page One Management for a new client, Prestige Volvo we were surprised to see how many things are starting to appear in the Google stream for social media websites.  Take a look at the screen shot below:

Facebook Videos in Google SERP

In this case an actual customer testimonial video was indexed by Google from inside of Facebook.  You will also notice that it ranked well, page two for now, for a search on their business name.  As we have discussed in previous article, Google Page One Management (GPOM) is key to protect your brand and push lead collectors off page one and two.

This observation indicates the growing relevance that Facebook is having in search results.  I wonder if the custom TABS in Facebook will be indexing that include our new CarPort App which posts cars inside of Facebook.  You can see an example of CarPort in action on Marlboro Nissan’s Fan Page.

Four Square Tips Indexing

Facebook is not the only social media website that is indexing in Google.  From the screen shot below you can see that our “Tip” that was posted at Newark Airport is showing up in search results.

If you have any doubts on the potential of social media for additional benefits for IRM and Automotive SEO strategies, the proof is shown above.  The rules of digital marketing seem to be changing every week and new strategies need to be tested all the time.

It keeps me busy!

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A recent post on an automotive social networking forum brought up the question about back links to their dealer website.  Having high quality automotive website linking to your dealership website is an important part of an Automotive SEO strategy.  However, getting links from other automotive websites is not an easy task.

Before I make some suggestions on how to build links, it is important to stay away from offers that sound too good to be true.  Every week I get email solicitations from companies from India, Russia and the UK offering one-way links for a low fee.  Most of these services create links from websites that will add no real value to your Automotive SEO strategy.

Automotive User Groups

In the automotive space, consider becoming a sponsor of popular automotive user group forums for your specific brand.  Many offer links building opportunities and banner advertising at a very reasonable cost.  For example, if you are a Nissan dealership you may consider becoming a supporting member of www.nicoclub.com  or www.nissanforums.com.

There are dedicated user groups and forums for every brand of cars.  These sites have high keyword density and relevance for the dealer brand they represent.  Articles posted on these sites, posting your cars for sale, or just advice to forum members can produce high quality links back to your website.

A word of advice; become a supporter and clearly identify yourself as a vendor. Also, take it slowly and build up your reputation and trust in the forum or you will be thrown out on your ass.

Outside of well ranked automotive user groups websites, look for automotive blogs that offer advertising space; many exist.  An alternative is to look for automotive blogs or communities that will allow you to post articles in a field of your expertise for free.  This is perfect for automotive professionals that like to write and share ideas.

If you don’t have the time or the motivation to write, considering hiring a firm to write articles on automotive topics and post these articles on “ezine” websites like http://ezinearticles.com or article directory websites like http://www.articledashboard.com .

The articles you write must be informative and not sales pitches. When done properly they can create powerful links and attract organic search traffic.  For example, writing an article on the benefits of purchasing a Toyota ExtraCare warranty over a third party warranty would be a good article to gain link relevance on extended warranty keywords. You can link to charts or warranty information on your website  and pickup a good back link.

Local Business Directories

Outside of these two strategies, look for ways to also establish local relevance for OEM car sales in your state.  These opportunities are normally found on reputable statewide business directory websites. Make sure that the website has a Google PageRank of 3 or higher. Banner ads or sidebar articles can often generate hundreds of links to your website from one advertising sponsorship.   The optimal advertisement will include some text that you can hyperlink with a strong anchor tag. An example is: http://www.newjerseyvisitorsnetwork.com

Press releases are another great way to build quality links and there are about a dozen great websites that you can utilize for PR and back links.  The key is to use press release websites that allow hyperlinked text in the body of the press release.  This allows for you to create “votes” for important keywords surrounded by relevant text. Try www.prlog.org and www.webwire.com .

If you donate to local charities, schools, colleges and churches ask for them to create a sponsors page and add a short note about your support with a link back to your website.  Links from these websites can be very valuable to establish credibility.

Free Linking Exists

Other opportunities like Yahoo Answers, Merchant Circle Blogs, Fast Company and SlideShare are just a few of the dozens of free sites that can provide a good back link that will raise your relevance for the keywords you are targeting.  Try to build links from blog articles that are about automotive topics.

You can also look for blog posts that you can reply to that allow links to be followed.  Firefox has a nice plug-in that will show you which website forms have a “no-follow” tag and those that do not.  Reply boxes that have a no-follow tag will not build back links.

In the end, link building is very important but it takes time and experience to know how to build the most effective links. Car dealers often do not have the time or expertise to build a consistent monthly link building campaign.

In the ideal situation, link building and other Internet Marketing tasks should be a shared responsibility between car dealer and outside consultant.  Techniques and strategies are constantly changing and someone who builds links all day is normally finding new sites every week which can be an advantage over your competitors.

If you have questions, drop me a line or an email.

Brian Pasch, CEO

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Google Insights for Search will allow car dealers to create a better local keyword strategy to increase the visibility of their brand.   Google Insights will allow car dealers to refine their Automotive SEO keyword list and to be more proactive in their content writing.

From a high level perspective, search engines like Google query “best matching” assets in their database of web pages, videos, images, and social media feeds when consumers type in a search phrase. When it determines what the best items to show, it creates the infamous “Google Page One” search result. (SERP)

A big question has always been: “What search phrases are consumers using in my area?”

The questions that should follow are:

• What assets can I upload and tag with text that will be a good match? (SEO)
• What am I willing to pay per click for that search phrase? (SEM)
• How will I track if clicks from that search phrase results in a conversion or sale? (GBP )

Diversity of Best Matching Assets Increases

Most recently “best matching’ includes real-time Twitter tweets and Facebook posts; this is an Internet Marketing strategy game changer. I’ll be posting an article on real-time search results and the effect on Automotive SEO strategies shortly. So now, Google Page One Management (GPOM) and IRM strategies have to deal with social media feeds, videos, static images, press releases, ecommerce images, Google Maps and text links.

It’s a good reminder to state that localized search is a part of the equation of what search engines will serve on Page One in addition to best matching keyword assets. When a consumer types in “Nissan Sentra” from their home, the search engines have to decide how to balance local content and national content when they display a search engine results page (SERP).

If you type in “Nissan dealers” from a PC in Irvine, California, Google will show you local California Nissan dealers on Google Maps. That fact that you did not type in “Irvine” or “California” does not matter since Google knows the geo-location of your IP address roughly. The same query from a PC in Preston Maryland should show a different result, as shown below.

As a side note, please make sure that your dealership’s Google Maps listing is correct and that it is showing for broad searches like the ones given above. Google Maps normally pops up with a city, county or state is included in a search phrase. If your Google Maps listing is not tagged properly, you may be missing hundreds of free advertising views per month.

Google Adwords Keyword Research Tool

Many dealers have come to know that Google provides a free tool called the Google Adwords Keyword Tool which can show them how popular search phrases are on a monthly basis based on total USA data. The Google keyword tool can be used to help select domain names as well as keyword strategies that have a broader target. A screen shot below shows how you can track national use and global use of certain search phrases.

A new tool that I would like to discuss is called Google Insights and this tool has a different spin on Google search data that will help car dealers with localized content development in 2010. The tool is designed to help online marketers research seasonal and regional trends in search phrases.

Google Insights will also show which search phrases are picking up in volume; I like this feature the best. This insight can help car dealers decide what they should be targeting in terms of their blog posts and the wording of their press releases, tweets and online ads.

Using  Google Insights

Automotive retailers approaching the end of the year may want to know which search phrases local consumers are typing in that are looking for an “end of year” car sale. In your area, Google Insights could tell you which phrase was on the rise; “Nissan Year End Sale” or “Nissan Clearance Sale” or some other variant. Once you have that data in hand, you could create a blog post with those search words in the title to increase your chances for a “best matching” asset in your local market.

The tool can also help refine local vocabulary and terms that might be unique to a market. Some areas of the country use the word “pop” to describe a soda so regional differences that can be exposed with Google Insight. Dealers should research the top search phrases for their brand, in their local market, so they do not base their strategy on national data or worse yet, a guess.

“Honda Civic” Keyword Research

Below is a screen shot of research done in Google Insight for the search phrase “Honda Civic” for the State of Arizona. Notice how Google Insights gives you other phrases that are increasing in volume; see bottom right of charts. This is good data to have and it allows proactive content writing.

Google Insights also maps areas of search interests on your state which can also show further localized trends in your PMA and beyond. There is so much that can be done with this data, but there is a limit to what you’ll read in one sitting.

Google Insights is another tool that should be in your Internet Marketing toolbox for 2010. Since content and asset matching is so important for search visibility, this tool can help your hard work go even further. If you have questions, just ask.

Brian Pasch
http://twitter.com/automotiveseo
http://facebook.com/paschconsulting
732-450-8200

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His advice and leadership has helped to create a better awareness of the importance of Automotive SEO , Internet Reputation Management and Social Media tools. 

Brian was recently featured at the Driving Sales Executive Summit in Las Vegas and will be presenting at the 7th Digital Dealer Conference in Nashville on November 1, 2009.

Brian’s Automotive Blogs

You can follow Brian’s automotive blogs and marketing articles on these websites:  

• DrivingSales.com – http://www.drivingsales.com/blogs/paschconsulting  
• AutomotiveDigitalmarketing.com –  http://www.automotivedigitalmarketing.com/profile/NJSEOExpert  
• Dealer-SEO.com  – http://www.dealer-seo.com  
• InternetSalesManager.org – http://www.internetsalesmanager.org/profile/brianpasch  

You can also catch Brian Pasch on a weekly webcast on www.drivingsales.com/blogs/webinars with fellow Automotive Marketing experts Paul Rushing and JD Rucker.  The webcasts air every Wednesday at 12:00 noon EST.

Practicing What We Preach

The PCG Digital Marketing implements their effective search marketing strategies for their own business.  We practice what we preach and the National and State wide search results for our marketing websites is clear proof what we can offer competitive car dealers for their PMA.

To validate, just go into Google and type any of the phrases below to see, that our articles and microsites appear on Google Page One Nationally:

• Automotive SEO – #1 in USA
• Automotive SEO Speaker – #1 in USA
• Car Dealer SEO – #2 in USA
• Car Dealer SEO Marketing – #1 in USA
• Automotive Webinar – #2 and #3 in USA
• Automotive SEO Marketing – #2, #3, #4 in USA
• Automotive SEO Microsites – #1, #2 and #3 in USA
• Automotive SEO Specialist – #1 in USA
• Automotive Internet Marketing – #2 in USA
• Automotive Internet Reputation Management #1 thru #5 in USA
• Automotive WordPress Microsites – #1 in USA

For a Complimentary Review of Your Internet Marketing Visibility – Call 732-450-8200

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Dennis Colome will demonstrate to owners and sales managers how to bridge the gap between Internet department and showroom floor. As the creator of iConsult Performance Coaching Program, Colome is as an industry leader in sales and marketing strategies with over 32 years of automotive dealership experience. Over the past 15 years Colome has trained over 1,200 dealerships and has assisted 16,000 dealership and OEM personnel.

This course will cover phone scripting that will allow managers to create a relationship with the prospect. In addition, the psychology of the buyer and the basic human behaviors to get the prospect to open up and build positive relationships will be uncovered. 

Doug Hadden is the manager of Training and Development for DealerTrack Inventory Optimization, powered by AAX. Doug helps Dealerships and large Dealer Groups to sell more vehicles, faster, with higher gross profits utilizing DealerTrack’s Inventory Optimization Solution.

 Hadden will show managers how to utilize key data points to make smarter decisions when it comes to managing inventory. Specifically:

• How to identify the right inventory
• How to close more trades
• How to maintain profitability

The goal is for attendees to walk away with process and practices that they can put in place immediately to begin driving change for their dealership. 

This year’s Digital Dealer Conference takes place in Nashville, TN, November 1^st-3^rd. 

Car dealers who would like to learn more about the Digital Dealer Conference or wish to register to attend can visit http://www.digitaldealerconference.com/ for more information.

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The data is the start of a discussion that goes into why some search phrases yield ZERO page one search results when the same phrase yields top placement on another search engine.  As you develop an Automotive SEO strategy for your dealership, it is important that you track the results in all the major search engines.

The difference in being Google page 1 position 1 vs. position  7, considered under the fold, can be huge.

Google may represent 65% of all organic search traffic but that other 35% is very important.  As you look at one example below “Ford Massachusetts” the microsite does very well in Google but after 4 months the site is still not listed on Yahoo page one.   Since traffic from Yahoo is not insignificant, a special strategy is obviously needed.

Content SEO Strategies

The point of this article is to say that content SEO strategies will vary with the search engine you are targeting.  There are some very valuable insights that this data hints at including how the different search engines treat:

• Sub-domains
• Exact Matching Domains
• Short domain names
• Long domain names
• Free blogging portals (Vox, Ning, etc.)

At the upcoming Digital Dealer Conference I will be going over specific Content SEO strategies that will not only show you how to write content for better search visibility but to discuss how domain names and platforms play a direct role in your ultimate success.

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At the last Digital Dealer Conference in Las Vegas, I predicted in my Automotive SEO seminar that within the year, major platforms would include a blog into their base infrastructure. That has come to pass in just under six months.

WordPress Gaining Popularity

This week I had the opportunity to view two car dealer platforms that will release integrated WordPress skins into their core technology. In one case, the WordPress technology was a menu choice off the main navigation with seamless integration. The basic WordPress functionality is in place with customized widgets for automotive services like lead collection.

The second vendor raised the stakes even higher with multiple WordPress skins at the touch of a button with the powerhouse kicker: SEO compliant inventory module PLUGIN for WordPress. This brings the concept of a microsite to the next level. A low cost WordPress website, that dealers can edit and expand, with live embedded inventory. Remember that WordPress allows dealers to leverage their brand on multiple DEALER OWNED domains with affordable CMS technology.

Automotive SEO Is Maturing

Automotive SEO challenges are changing in our industry. Our automotive website report (2009 ASMA) which will be published on November 1st, will be a forward indicator that will highlight companies that are changing the rules for content based SEO strategies.

This is the topic that I will be discussing at the 7th Digital Dealer Conference in Nashville which runs from November 1-3rd. I hope you can come to my seminar and be the first to get the ASMA report. (www.digitaldealerconference.com)

It is my conviction that the reason why sites like Edmunds.com, Automotive.com and Motortrend.com dominate so many national page one search for car models is fundamentally about good content. Over 90% of car dealer websites do not have 5 paragraphs of well written CONTENT on any one car that they sell. They may have features, specs and option lists but no real consumer targeted CONTENT.

With that in mind, the fact the forward thinking website platform providers are adding WordPress technology into their base platforms will be revolutionary. With the free plug-ins available for WordPress, car dealers can start to create attractive CONTENT so that when they drive consumers to their website via PPC, social media or SEO, they have compelling content as well as an interactive experience.

Looking forward into 2010, the saavy website providers will take away the criticism that their platforms don’t have on the fly page creation. They will include blogging software integration to leverage content based SEO strategies. Once that happens, dealers will be moving toward a common ground of SEO compliance.

This begs the question: What will SEO consultants be doing then?

Not Just META Tags & Titles

Once our industry moves to providing website platforms that are fully Google SEO compliant, we can move on to more important factors that drive traffic and conversion.

Allowing car dealers to add unlimited content pages without programming knowledge is the next big thing. Once the tools are in place for car dealers to have MORE control over their SEO destiny, they will come to the realization that they never hired someone on their staff to write good content, let alone follow “data directed” SEO content writing.

In 2010, I predict that the most valuable hire that progressive car dealers will make is an Internet Marketing Writer that is focused on automotive content building for their brand in their PMA.

This can be an internal employee or a consultant that has a cost effective content development team. These “writers” will take the new content based SEO tools, like WordPress, to new heights. Dealers will start to dominate their local markets with well written content that delivers SEO benefits as well as conversion benefits when social media drives traffic to their websites.

So let me repeat that: Hire someone who can write and understand the basics of Automotive SEO

This new role will compliment that work that other staff members in the dealership are doing to attractive more consumers to visit the dealership website using social media, PPC or other traditional media. It will be an interesting evolution as car dealers wake up to the fact that they can attract consumers via organic search through better content and well targeted content.

Social media and traffic driving strategies will ultimately rely on platforms that can deliver good landing pages with easy to edit content that in the end, creates a call to action. WordPress can do this unlike any HTML editor on any platform today but it is NOT the only technology solution. There are other options, but that is top secret.

Get ready for major shifts in SEO tools for 2010…the strategies will not change…however the teamwork with SEO consultants and dealer staff will never be more important!

Will I be out of a job? Never…but my role will change in 2010 for sure!!

If you are going to Digital Dealer in Vegas, make sure you come to my Halloween Party on the 31st, known as the Pasch Bash.

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The ASMA study will identify automotive website providers that offer SEO compliant platforms using Google’s guidelines as well as best practices in the search marketing industry. All automotive website providers are invited to participate in our study.

The PCG Digital Marketing’s 2009 ASMA white paper will be released in time for the 2009 Digital Dealer Conference in Nashville which takes place November 1-3.   The Digital Dealer Conference is the automotive industry’s premier tradeshow which focuses on the latest trends in automotive digital marketing.

The 2009 ASMA study will evaluate and assign rankings to car dealer website platforms based on key components that represent the best in search engine optimization (SEO) architecture and consumer search experience.  These study parameters are established by Brian Pasch, CEO of the PCG Digital Marketing.

For many car retailers, their inventory pages make up over 85% of the total content pages on their website.  Organic search optimization and search ranking are heavily skewed to reward good content and good SEO architecture.  The report is designed to provide car dealers with an independent view of website platform technology as it relates to organic search marketing.

Last year, the 2008 ASMA report reviewed over 16 automotive platforms with only 2 providers receiving a perfect score for SEO compliance. In the past year car dealer website providers have released or announced many changes to their platforms which should make this year’s report even more interesting.

2009 ASMA Logo

A new element to this year’s study will be an official ASMA logo which will be awarded to automotive website providers that rank at the top of their peer group.  The ASMA logo will allow leaders in the field of automotive website design to proudly display their award on their marketing materials and on their websites. The ASMA logo will represent the best in SEO architecture for the automotive industry.

Automotive website providers who would like to participate in the review must submit three working websites which utilize their latest technology to the PCG Digital Marketing by 9-30-09.  Dealer software providers who do not submit examples of their technology may still be included in the report.  However, the website PCG reviews will be based on those found randomly on the Internet or referenced on their company websites.

Dealer software providers can contact Brian Pasch at info@paschconsulting.com for more information.

About the Digital Dealer Conference

The annual Digital Dealer Conference attracts hundreds of dealership attendees that are looking to learn more about Internet and technology-related issues.  Speakers who are experts in the field of Automotive Digital Marketing present seminars which help forward thinking dealerships stay ahead of the ever changing technology curve.   For registration or sponsorship opportunities, visit http://www.digitaldealerconference.com/

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On September 8, 2009 I received a news alert triggered by a press release from Dealerskins; a company that offers car dealers website marketing platforms.  This announcement was for a new offering called Dealerskins Hybrid Sites.   Since I have worked on client Dealerskins websites before, I thought I would look into what this new offering entailed.

The official press release contained a statement that caught my attention:

“Dealerskins, a division of Dominion Dealer Solutions and leader in automotive web solutions, has launched a new series of websites, Dealerskins Hybrid Sites, that incorporate state-of-the-art SEO practices with its award-winning website designs.”

I wanted to see if some of my past criticism of their SEO compliance issues were corrected.  Two dealers where mentioned in the press release.  The first was Shaker Auto Group’s Mazda dealer in Massachusetts which I tracked down to be www.wellesleymazda.com

The second dealer mentioned and quoted was Heather Moran:

“Since we started using Dealerskins, all of our sites have seen an increase in traffic and SEO searchability,” said Heather Moran, director of marketing for Stevinson Automotive. “We show up on the first page for major search terms.”

Since this dealer group had a number of Dealerskins websites, I picked www.stevinsonchevrolet.com in Lakewood Colorado.  The press release did not specifically say that these two dealers are using their new Hybrid site technology but since they were sited as happy customers, I decided to see how their SEO designs were implemented by Dealerskins.

Google SEO Starter Guide

I use Google’s own SEO starter guide as a basic of checking compliance with what Google recommends for websites.  Since they control 70% of the search market, it is a good practice to read their SEO Guide.  On page two of the manual, Google recommends that each page on the website have a unique title. This gives Google a way to measure what the page is targeting and it also serves as a call to action to the consumer who reads the listing on a Google SERP page.

So I checked both websites to see if their Google titles were unique using the “site:’ command.  Here are two screeen shots from that analysis:

SEO Quick Analysis

Page Titles

From the site commands taken on the same day the press release was issued, you can see that what Google considers as a “basic” SEO requirement, unique page titles, is not implemented.

In the first screen shot for  Stevinson Chevrolet, their service specials page has the same title as their payment calculator page.  These are two separate and distinct pages that should be titled to reflect the content on the pages according to Google.  You can also see that their META descriptions have many duplicates.

On the screen shot for Wellesly Mazda, I would make the case that starting many pages with the dealership name is a waste of valuable Title tag space.  If someone types into Google “Wellesley Mazda” the main website will always be #1 in Google search because the domain is an exact match for the search phrase.

One goal of Automotive SEO is to attract NEW customers who don’t know the name “Wellesley Mazda”.  A better tag for the service page would be:

Mazda Service Massachusetts | Wellesley Framingham Newton MA

because it covers customer searches for Mazda Service and also includes key towns in their PMA.

META Description

On Page four of the Google SEO Starter Guide, Google recommends that web designers take advantage of using the META description tag.  The META description tag appears under the Page Title in a Google search result page (SERP).

When we looked at the Wellesley Mazda Dealerskins car inventory pages, like the one listed below:

http://www.wellesleymazda.com/sitemap/index.cfm/new_inventory/2009-MAZDA-CX_9%7CSport/5875394

The META description tag was misssing.  It seems that many of the car inventory pages are missing the META Description tags.  We agree with Google that from our testing META tags are important and make SERP results more readable and result in a better call to action.

Here is what the Wellesley Mazda inventory pages look like to Google:

Inventory Page SEO Review

The Dealerskins inventory pages have very broad title tags that do not always include the model.  The Title tags also have Wellesley repeated twice which is not needed since its in the domain name.

We do not consider these title tags optimized for organic search.  The fact that the pages are missing the META description tag results in random text being displayed from the inventory page.  This impacts the call to action ability that META description tags can offer.

Conclusion

The dealers listed in this press release do not pass the basic recommendations from Google’s SEO started guide nor do they pass our basic guidelines for Automotive SEO.   These two dealer websites do not represent “state-of-the-art SEO” practices. Again, they were not explicitly mentioned as using the new Dealerskins Hybrid website technology.

I hope that the new Dealerskins Hybrid Sites are much better than the two dealers quoted in their press release.  We invite Dealerskins to send us examples of websites that demonstrate this new technology to review.  If the technology is truly state-of-the-art SEO, we will want to tell the industry about it on this blog.

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I had a great time speaking in Las Vegas at the last Digital Dealer Conference and I was honored to be invited back and recognized as one of the top 5 rated speakers at the previous conference.  Now that I have a better understanding for the format of the conference, I will be preparing some special surprises to make the seminar more interactive.

From the Digital Dealer Conference Website, the organizers include some feedback from participants that attended my last seminar that included:

• “Awesome!”
• “Brilliant”
• “Great presentation”
• “Best class I attended all day”

I’ll be working hard to live up to these high accolades.  I take it seriously that professionals take their time out of the office at a significant cost to attend these important conferences.  If anyone is attending the conference and would like to suggest topics that I include in my presentation, just give me a call or send an email to: info@paschconsulting.com

Cash for Clunkers Is A Perfect Content SEO Case Study

The PCG Digital Marketing has found great success with content based SEO strategies for car dealers.  We have been able to leverage content to increase the visibility for car dealers which translates into more traffic, leads and sales.  One of the greatest recent examples of Content SEO was our Cash for Clunkers microsite project.  The website was an experiment to see how content combined with our Automotive SEO strategies could work to create a nationally dominate website.

At the peak of the Cash for Clunkers frenzy, our website located at www.cashforclunkersfacts.com had over 120,000 unique visitors in one day.  Over the course of 60 days, the website had over 7 million page views from consumers, dealers and I suspect the NHTSA.  This is a perfect case study for the upcoming seminar to see how content based SEO strategies can propel a website to high visibility in the major search engines.

Renaissance Nashville Hotel

The 7th Annual Digital Dealer Conference will be held at the Renaissance Nashville Hotel located at 611 Commerce Street.  Conference room rates, while supply lasts, are $129 per night up until September 18th.  If you are attending the conference, I recommend that you book your rom early.

The Renaissance Nashville Hotel is located in the business district and is connected to the Convention Center. The conference hotel is within walking distance of the Sommet Center, LP Field, B.B. King’s Blues Club, Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum, Schermerhorn Symphony Center and Historic Second Avenue District.

This vibrant Nashville luxury hotel has a 24-hour fitness center in case sitting all day at seminars messes with your exercise schedule.  I just hope that their high speed Internet is truly high speed.  For additional information about the hotel, you can contact them at the numbers below:

611 Commerce Street
Nashville, Tennessee 37203 USA
Phone: 1-615-255-8400
Fax: 1-615-255-8202
Toll-free: 1-800-327-6618

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Residents of Albuquerque have awarded Don Chalmers Ford with outstanding customer service reviews so working this New Mexico Ford dealer will be a distinct pleasure.

The New Mexico Ford dealer will  utilize PCG’s latest automotive SEO tools which will include the creation of a WordPress microsite, which will offer New Mexico Ford shoppers enhanced  information on new and used Ford vehicles.

The PCG Digital Marketing’s automotive microsites have been a factor in the success we bring to car dealers across the United States and Canada.  The use of targeted SEO tactics will give Don Chalmers Ford a major edge over competitors competing to sell Ford models like the Ford Edge, Ford Flex, Ford F-150 and the all new Ford Transit Connect van.  Each Ford car and truck model will have an optimized content page on the Ford microsite.

Brian Pasch CEO of the PCG Digital Marketing commenting on their first client in New Mexico added, “Don Chalmers Ford is a great organization and our new automotive SEO strategies will create a new gateway for consumers looking for information on any Ford model to connect with their dealership.  With one click, New Mexico Ford shoppers can get detailed information at their fingertips.”

Don Chalmers Ford will also be utilizing the PCG Digital Marketing’s content marketing strategies which includes press releases, blogging and social networking.  We look forward to dominating organic search results for Don Chalmers Ford since their customer service and sales professional are simply outstanding.

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All websites that you own should have a sitemap and if the site is a blog, it should have a self-generating RSS feed like WordPress and Blogger creates.

That said, I also suggest that you setup the best free measurement and diagnostic  tools that will help you fine tune your automotive microsite marketing strategy.

Sitemap and RSS Registration

First on the list  is to create a free Google Webmaster Tools account and register the website’s sitemap. By doing this you can be alerted when links are broken.  You will also get basic diagnostics on your website. Google Webmaster Tools will give you insight into how Google sees your website and will report common errors like duplicate META descriptions.

Now head over to Yahoo which has a tool called  Site Explorer . Open a free account and register your sitemap and RSS feeds. Here you can register both your sitemap and your RSS feed if you have one.  This tool also has a more reliable inbound link counters to see how many web pages are linking to your site.

Lastly, head over to Microsoft Bing and setup a Webmaster account where you can register your sitemap and get feedback from their search engine.

Add Google Analytics

As an Automotive SEO consultant, I can’t encourage you enough to take advantage of Google Analytics which is free and provides a great deal of information about your visitor traffic and what they are doing on your website.  Google Analytics combined with Google Webmaster Tools is a great toolkit for fine tuning your SEO and content development strategies.

To install Google Analytics you will need the help of your website developer because the Analytics code has to be added to the bottom of every web page.  In the WordPress Microsites that we create, it takes only a minute to add the code to the footer.php  file.  Once this code is in place, you will start collecting valuable data on the people that come to your site.

Register Your Blog

Now that you have registered your sitemap and RSS feeds with the major search engines and have data tracking installed, you should register the website or blog with a few of the better directories.

If you have a microsite with blogging built in like WordPress, Blogger or NING, I would recommend you register your site with Technorati. There are also great blog sites like www.blogcatalog.com and www.bloghints.com.  

Technorati

Create a free account on Technorati and then go through the process to “claim” your blog. 

Follow the steps below to get it right the first time:

1. Create a Technorati Account.
2. Choose to Claim Your Blog.
3. Enter the URL of your Blog.
4. You will be given a piece of code to add to a blog post.  It looks something like this:
5.             <a href=”http://technorati.com/claim/8254cgryhm” rel=”me”>Technorati Profile</a>
6. Highlight and copy this code to your clipboard.
7. Create a blog “post” and not a page on your site. 
8. Switch to HTML mode and paste in the code they gave you.
9. Save the post.
10. Now go back to Technorati and  click to verify your claim. Technorati  will go to your blog and find the snippet of code you just added to a blog post.
11. Once you are verified, complete the details about your site that Technorati asks.
12. You can go back to your blog and delete that post you made to verify the Technorati claim.

In addition with Technorati, you should register you blog with other blog directory sites.  These will create additional inbound links to your site.  If your microsite is not a blog, there still are a number of great places to register your new site for inbound links. 

The key is not to just create a microsite and “hope” that everyone will find you.  Jump start your Internet marketing success with quality links to your new microsite.  Here are a few proven places to register your new microsite: www.merchantcircle.com, www.aboutus.org and www.insiderpages.com.

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The focus of this article is to help you with that decision making process. Domain names can make or break your marketing budget. A few assumptions have to be made for this discussion to be meaningful.

Mega Bucks Projects

The first assumption is that you are not building a multi-million dollar project that will be a national brand that has a HUGE marketing budget. An example would be Uggs and the domain www.uggs.com. No one was typing that word into Google before the brand launched. This is both good and bad. The good part is that the name had little competition once the word got out. The bad part is that it costs money to get the word out.

Short Term Goals

The second assumption is that you don’t need an immediate blast of visitor traffic or the website is for a short term sale. If you need an immediate blast of sales or traffic that means you will most likely need to use paid advertising campaigns. Think Google AdWords or Yahoo Search Marketing.

In this case, you might not be concerned that your domain name is search friendly. Examples of this could be a short term promotion or sale that you don’t need organic rankings to develop over time. In this case you could pick a domain name like www.cars100.com if you were selling 100 cars over a weekend and were using radio, print and web to drive people to the event. A domain name like www.cars100.com is something that could be easily remembered from a radio spot.

Domain Purchasing Guidelines

So, with those two cases put aside let’s make sure we consider all our options before we purchase a domain name. I will attempt to condense years of testing into a few points of guidance. Time to put on your search engine optimization learning caps.

Look For Exact Matches

For most cases, an exact match on the services you offer will results in the most visibility. So, if you are a divorce lawyer in New Jersey, owning www.njdivorceattorney.com is a much better choice that www.charlesschwartzmcfeen.com. Use free keyword research tools to decide if “divorce attorney” or “divorce lawyer” get more monthly search traffic to help guide decisions. Search traffic is not the only tool to consider but it is important.

Buy the .NET if the .COM is parked

If you have a search phrases you want to target and the .com is taken the .NET may be just as good. A “parked” domain is one that has no website. If a .com domain is parked or forwarding to another website, that is actually GREAT for you. Forwarded domains will never be in a search result. So, if you wanted www.bostonnissan.com and it was parked or forwarded and you could buy www.bostonnissan.net , purchase it immediately and setup a microsite.

Dashes Are OK

If have a website called www.dealer-seo.com and it is #1 in the USA for searches on “automotive SEO” and “car dealer SEO” and the domain has a dash. Following our previous example, if www.bostonnissan.com and www.bostonnissan.net were taken, see if you could buy www.boston-nissan.com. If you can, purchase it and start your microsite strategy.

Does Size Matter?

It seems that size is not as important as the words in the domain name. If you are in the business of precision metal casting and you purchased www.precisionmetalcasting.com you would not be penalized that you domain is long. The focus should be on the search phrases you want to attack and since you can put up microsites very inexpensively using WordPress, you could in fact have multiple microsites placed on long tail keywords.

Content is King

Keep in mind that any site you create should have good content and should have over 10 pages of content as a starting base. There are no sustainable shortcuts to top Google rankings without good content.

WordPress as a Microsite Tool

WordPress microsites are easy to maintain, self-publishing and they have SEO marketing plug-ins that be installed. WordPress combined with an effective domain marketing strategy can yield amazing results. Here are some examples of taking this domain strategy in conjunction with WordPress to market:

• The term “mass bmw” or “bmw mass” is searched over 5,000 times a month and a WordPress microsite placed on www.massbmw.com is on Google Page One
• The term “Ford Massachusetts” gets over 6,000 searches a month.  We just completed a WordPress microsites on www.fordmassachusetts.com and in a few weeks this will start to move to the top of Google Page One.
• The term “salon lights” and “salon lighting” is searched in Google approximately 2,000 times a month and a WordPress microsite placed on www.salonlights.com is on Google Page one for both terms.
• The term “house painting nj” is searched about 400 times a month and related search phrases “house painting Somerset County”, “house painting Hunterdon County” represent smaller but targeted potential clients. A WordPress microsite on www.housepaintingnj.com is on Google Page one for these search phrases.

The point is that regardless of traffic as little as 1,000 hits a month, if that search phrase it resulting in good leads and sales, that is all that matter. A WordPress microsite can pay itself back with one car sale.  You should always addd Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools to your WordPress sites to track the visitors and usage of the microsites just like you would on your main dealer website.

Microsite Benefits

A good microsite strategy gives you many benefits:

• Keyword Targeted Websites
• Website That You Own and Not Lease
• Easy to use Content Publishing Tools

Questions? Give us a call. 732-450-8200

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You can check out Brian Pasch’s Automotive Internet Marketing contributions at:

• Automotive Digital Marketing
• Driving Sales
• Internet Sales Manager
• Dealer’s Edge

We Practice What We Preach

In fact, when you search for the term “Automotive SEO” in Google this website (www.dealer-seo.com) is #1 in the USA.   The PCG Digital Marketing is also #1 in the USA for “car dealer SEO” and dozens of other search phrases.  If PCG can achieve national page one results for their own business, image what they can do for your car dealership in your state.

The PCG Digital Marketing has partnered with ClaraMark to provide optimized websites in the Spanish language.  If your car dealership is located near communities with a large percentage of native Spanish speakers, a Spanish SEO strategy could yield incremental sales.  Be the first to dominate Spanish search phrase in your PMA for the brands that you sell.

Effective Automotive SEO Strategies

The PCG Digital Marketing has help dealers across the county dominate organic search results in their state. In fact, our unique business model is embraced by car dealers because we only work for one brand per state.  Only one BMW dealer in Florida, only one Chevy dealer in Illinois can utilize the expert strategies pioneered by Brian Pasch.

 We can assist you with expanding your current Internet marketing strategies with: 

• WordPress Microsites
• Press Releases
• Blogging
• Twitter & Facebook
• Reputation Management
• Consumer Reviews

If you want to dominate Google organic search for your brand in your State, setup a free consultation. We will only work with one brand per State which means we will not be working for your in-state competitors.

Call us at 732-450-8200 and ask to have a free consultation with Brian Pasch.  You can also visit our website at: www.paschconsulting.com

References

If you would like to see examples of our work and a list of auto dealers you can call to validate our expertise in Automotive Internet Marketing, click here:  PCG Digital Marketing References

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As Twitter develops and becomes its own “search engine” of articles and best ideas, car dealers may want to rethink their Twitter strategies. I would image that car dealers who have very passionate staff who are subject matter experts on the brands that they sell, could leverage Twitter in Interesting ways.

So, I encourage anyone interested in Automotive SEO to follow me on Twitter and share.

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Our firm may be known for its work with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) but we have been helping business owners balance their Internet Marketing campaigns with Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing as well.

The need for PPC is very clear when you study the search phrases patterns in Google Adwords to see that consumers are often lazy and do not add a “geo” word in their search phrases that an SEO campaign can pickup.

Boston BMW Searches

For example, you would think that a consumer looking for a BMW X6 in Boston would type “BMW X6 Boston” or “BMW X6 Prices Boston” but in fact that many people will be typing in “BMW X6″, “BMW X6 Prices” or some other non-localized search.

Since we can’t re-educate the nation overnight and until Google search engine includes more local web pages in their search results, PPC is needed.  So, setting a 15-25 mile radius around your dealership, and purchasing some generalized search phrases is a way to attract more local shoppers.

Without PPC, business owners would have to rely on long tail searches which may be high in conversion but very low in volume.  So, SEO is excellent is attracting web surfers who are educated enough to include localizing words in their search phrases and SEM is ideal for capturing the rest of the world.

Managing Your Automotive PPC Campaigns

Of course, evaluating the ROI of PPC for each phrase you bid on is important.  Be careful that the search phrases that you bid on are not too broad which could yield unprofitable conversion ratios.

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This automotive Internet marketing webinar will include detailed discussions on using Facebook, Twitter, Vox and NING for promoting your brand.  WE will also touch on a few other promising strategies we are testing.

Webinar Trends

There were a few common threads that ran through the Q&A periods but one that stood out the most.  Most people did not know how to login to their automotive web platforms and update META descriptions and Page Titles.

Internal website marketing professionals who are responsible for the organic search marketing visibility of your dealers should know how to develop strong page tags and descriptions and then how to edit them.  If you are not sure, call your platform provider and ask.

One common trend was that many dealers had most of their page titles starting with the Dealership Name.  I strongly advise against this practice and I feel that it is a huge waste in very valuable SEO real estate.  Your page titles should start off with the strongest keyword messages that reflect the content of the page.

Need Assistance?

If you would like help updating the META tags and Page Titles on your dealership website, give us a call.  We can do these updates in a few hours of work and it will make a big difference in your organic search results in your PMA.

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The first in a series of Automotive Internet Marketing webinars offered by Brian Pasch and DealersEdge.com was a tremendous success.  Over 350 automotive professionals participated in the 2-hour webinar on March 10, 2009. There will be one webinar offered per month for the next 5 months as part of a new Internet marketing series offered by Dealers Edge.

The first webinar offered practical advice for automotive sales professionals who wish to leverage their dealer website for greater sales and web visibility. The goal of the webinar was to provide low cost strategies to attract additional Internet sales leads.

The free webinar explained the importance of  Web 2.0 automotive marketing strategies that included social networking, blogging, microsites and Internet reputation management. The seminar also reviewed website design guidelines that were included in Google’s free SEO Starter guide.

Upcoming Internet Marketing Webinars

The next five webinars will have a cost of under $100 per webinar making the webinar series both timely and affordable.  In fact, many dealers indicated that they had multiple staff members in a room participating in the webinar. 

We want to thank everyone who sent us a note, and all the feedback was extremely positive.

“The webinar was very informative. I read too many articles that just say, you need to be using social marketing media, but not telling you why and how it can enhance your organic search. That’s what was so great about this session-you thoroughly explained the benefits of each tip you suggested. “ Dionne Andrews, Marketing Director West Virginia

 ”By the way, very well done! The information was excellent it was presented in a way that even a GM or Dealer Principal should be able to get it” Jim Chamberlain, Ecommerce/BDC Director Florida

“This was one of the most informative webinars I have participated in. Not only does Brian offer a great process for SEO he actually takes the time to educate the audience. “ Brentley Jones, GSM Quantrell Auto Group, Kentucky

“Your webinar was first class and information packed.” David Griffith, GM Griffith Motors, Oregon

For the next 6 months, Brian Pasch will be hosting monthly webinars in conjunction with DealersEdge.com.  The next webinar is titled “How to make your dealership’s website Google compliant” will be held on April 2, 2009.  To register for future webinars and get important updates about the dates and times, visit http://www.dealersedge.com

You can also subscribe to the Pasch COnsulting Group’s RSS feed by clicking here.

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I’m often asked by car dealers what they can do themselves to save on Internet marketing costs. I always try to find ways in which their staff can be a part of the success.

I have outlined one project that everyone who is reading this can implement. Automotive SEO does not have to be the sole responsibility of any outside consultant.

Check Your Page Titles

Just this week I was on the phone with a dealer group reviewing their six websites.  I showed them that many of the primary website pages (see below) had the dealer name starting in the HTML title tag. Their domain was an exact match for their dealership name so this was something that should be fixed.

Hypothetical Example: Your website is located at bmwpeabody.com and on every primary page you started the title text with BMW Peabody.

It is my experience that if your domain name is an exact match for your dealership name, you do not need to have it on every HTML page title.  In fact, this will hurt your Automotive SEO strategy because the TITLE tag is an important part of Google and Yahoo’s indexing algorithm.  If you have any questions about this, read the Google SEO Starter Guide.

Fixing Page Titles

Correcting website page titles is something that an Internet Sales Manager or IT staff member can edit on their own and make an immediate impact on their search visibility.

Anyone reading this article should do a quick check to see that your page titles are in compliance. The basic “commandment” is: page titles should be descriptive of the page and they should not be a duplicate of another page.

Check your page titles by typing into Google this command:  site:www.xxxxxxx.com

Replace the xxxxxxx with your domain name.

Primary Pages for Optimization

Many dealer website platforms give you the ability to edit META tags on all pages except inventory detail pages.  Check with your website provider to see how you can update the META Titles and META descriptions on each key page.

For many automotive websites, their are about 20 primary web pages.  These pages would include:

• New Cars Specials
• Used Car Specials
• Service Coupons
• Parts Coupons
• Service Appointments
• Order Parts
• About Us
• Contact Us
• Directions
• Price Quote
• Financing

If someone follows this outline, your page titles can be updated in as little as one hour once you do your research.  It takes some tweaking and testing but it is better to try and fix your titles than to leave them sloppy or duplicated.

Page Title Guidance

Any time an SEO consultant suggest a strategy there is a risk for criticism that someone has a better strategy so review what I have to say and check with out credible sources.  Also see how your competition is titling their main pages to get soem ideas.

In this example, let’s take a Chrevrolet dealer located in my old home town of North Plainfield, New Jersey.  If you were a Chevy dealer in North Plainfield, you might write page titles follows (in red):

Service Page -“Chevy Service Repair Center North Plainfield – Chevrolet Dealer Somerset County NJ“

Used Car Specials – “NJ Chevy Used Car Dealer – Preowned Chevrolet Cars North Plainfield“

About Us Page – “Somerset County Chevy Car Dealer – North Plainfield NJ“

The idea is that you should not start the page titles with “Brian Chevy“ if your website is at www.brianchevy.com and your page titles should be focused statements, without fluff words, that are keyword rich.

Do not create page titles like this “Brian Chevy is the Best Chevy Service Center in the North Plainfield area”.  This is to say don’t make the HTML title a sentence but rather a condensed statement about the page with keywords in mind.

I hope this is helpful to anyone who wants to do some search engine optimization internally.  If you have any further questions, you can drop me a line at: 732-450-8200.

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The webinar will explain the power of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and how free Internet marketing tools can provide a steady stream of organic, no-cost and low-cost internet leads.

The free webinar will take place March 10^th, 2009 and offer dealers 90 minutes of priceless education from Pasch.  Topics to be discussed include:

• How to put your dealership website through a SEO diagnostic test.
• Five things you can do to increase visitor traffic for free.
• How to use social tagging to create a viral marketing machine.
• How to create a “controllable” social network for your dealership.
• How to use free inventory distribution websites to sell more cars.
• Why blogging works for auto dealers and tips on how to start your own blog.
• How to use press releases to drive traffic to your website.
• How to increase your visibility outside your PMA.

Advance registration is required.  The seminar is ideal for Internet Sales Managers, BDC Professionals, General Managers and car dealer marketing professionals.  At the completion of the webinar participants will be able to improve the Internet visibility of the car dealer websites without cost with the knowledge they gain from Brian Pasch.

 Register Free Here – Automotive SEO Webinar

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Russian SEO

The two sites that were at the top were both sites for our Automotive SEO business. So who knows how other searches engines will effect search behavior in the future but according to CNN.com, Yandex is coming to the US and setting up shop down the street from Google.  Interesting.

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The competition for Google page one placement in the automotive industry is hot!  Car dealers are continually bombarded with offers from SEO companies to improve their Internet rankings and dealers have no way to really know how they are doing their work.  As an SEO consultant, I urge all car dealers to be mindful that for every reputable SEO company there is an SEO company that will do anything to gain higher listings, even at your expense.

In the SEO community there are “White Hat SEO” and  “Black Hat SEO” consultants.  These may be new terms for car dealers but this article is should clarify the roles they play. The goal of black hat SEO experts is to manipulate the search engines to achieve higher rankings; the ends justify the means.  Oddly enough, I have been noticing some “gray hat”  and “black hat”  SEO  tactics being employed by car dealer platform companies and Automotive SEO companies. 

The Risks of Black Hat SEO

I will outline two examples, which demonstrates a technique that I consider very dangerous.  I say dangerous because if this technique causes a car dealer website to be banned from Google, a dealer could suffer from tens of thousands of dollars of damage.  Imagine of you dealership website was blocked from organic search listings and your only venue for visibility was Google PPC?  Is it the end of the world? No?  Would it be expensive? Yes!

The technique I am referring to is creating a “More Information“ link at the bottom of the home page of a dealer website that actually hides a codepage of keyword rich text.  This text may also include Heading Tag spam designed to target high value keywords and search phrases.  For some General Managers or Internet Sales Managers this may sound like a foreign language so I’ll try to lay out my concerns to create a call for action.

Google Sets Guidelines for SEO Consultants

These footer hyperlinks in question, actually display a new section of text that was once hidden.  In my opinion this text is not something that a car dealer intends a consumers to see.  Read the text for yourselves and you will see that its not written to flow.

It’s not that the text is bad, it is just hidden text with questionable intent.  It is my contention that it is designed only for the search engine spiders. 

This extra text, in my opinion, is in direct violation of Google Webmaster Guidelines.  You have to decide if you agree with me so I have outlined Google exact words on this matter.

Here are  the specific sections of the Google Webmaster Guidelines that brings me to write an article to warn car dealers about these techniques:

• Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines. Don’t deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as “cloaking.”
• Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you’d feel comfortable explaining what you’ve done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?”
• Avoid hidden text or hidden links.

When you click through to the examples I will show you, I would say that this technique violates the Google Webmaster Guidelines.

Abuse of Website Heading Tags

Secondly, in the HTML programming language, you have Heading Tags known as  <H1>, <H2> and <H3> tags which are supposed to mark “sub-headings” on a web page to tell Google and a Reader what is important.   The bold “blue” text on this page are Heading Tags.

Think of a “Table of Contents” outlining the major points on a page. In general the top of a web page would start with <H1> tags and then as the page goes on, you would use <H2>, <H3> and even <h4> tags.

Here is Google’s exact guidelines from the Google SEO Starter Guide regarding Heading Tags:

• Imagine you’re writing an outline – Similar to writing an outline for a large paper, put some thought into what the  main points and sub-points of the content on the page will be and decide where to use heading tags appropriately.

Avoid:

• placing text in heading tags that wouldn’t be helpful in defining the structure of the page

• using heading tags where other tags like <em> and <strong> may be more appropriate

• erratically moving from one heading tag size to another

 Use headings sparingly across the page – Use heading tags where it makes sense. Too many heading tags on a page can make it hard for users to scan the content and determine where one topic ends and another begins. 

Avoid:

• excessively using heading tags throughout the page
• putting all of the page’s text into a heading tag
• using heading tags only for styling text and not presenting structure

If an SEO consultant builds a home page that stuffs H1 and H2 tags in a hidden section of home page code that only pops up when someone clicks on a link in the footer of the website, I would feel very confident that this violates the Google SEO guidelines.  The fact is that very few, if any, consumers will even click this link at the bottom of a page. 

Regardless of what the web designers may say, if this was meant to be seen, they would have included the text in the clear or added the page to the main navigation structure.  In my opinion, if it was meant for consumers to see they would also have written the text very differently.

That is my concern.  Car dealers may be blind to the fact that someone could be putting the primary domain name in jeopardy.

“Grey Hat” SEO? You Decide

Carmichael Honda

If you go to http://www.carmichaelhonda.com and go to the bottom left side of the home page you will see a link that say “More Information“.  When you click on this link, the text area expands to show a series of keywords and targeted search keywords in a list format that I think has no value to a consumer.  In my opinion, it was designed for the web crawlers to improve organic search rankings.

This section of text has five <h1> tags and five <h2> tags.  There is no reason to MULTI tag a hidden page of text unless a web developer was trying to fool the search engines that this text was for reader use and important.  In my opinion, this is not anything but keyword and HTML spam.  There are no H1 and H2 tags in the normal readable text on the home page because there is no place for text. 

To me, this looks like a work-around for a dealer who wanted a graphical home page  Someone told them a way to fool the search engines by providing text that they need for indexing in another way.  This is a dangerous choice in my opinion even though it is working now.  I am not saying that Dick Hannah Honda is doing anything illegal or underhanded. In fact they probably are not aware that this may violate Google’s Webmaster  guidelines, but they need to know. 

John Jones Automotive Group

Take a moment to click through to http://www.gmcity.com  and go to the bottom of the home page. In a very similar  technique, in the footer of the website,  there is a “More Information“ hyperlink that pops out a scrolling text window that is clearly designed for high value search phrases that are hyperlinked.   Google likes good “anchor text” keywords but this implementation on off-page text smells funny.

In this example, the web developers did not abuse the Heading Tags. However, they created a page of text that is practically not intended to be clicked and designed to feed the search engine spiders.  You will see that keyword phrases are hyperlinked.  This page is well designed for SEO, but my question is that since it was stuffed in the footer and the text is really not anything a consumer would appreciate, would you agree that it smells of “Grey Hat” techniques. 

Would you want to roll the dice with your primary domain name with Google?

The fact that the text has formatting errors is an even greater testimonial that no one ever reads this page or they would have told the dealer to correct the formatting errors.

SEO Cat Fighting?

The fact that I’m an SEO Consultant that is criticizing other SEO consultants is dangerous but this is not a cat fight. I like competition and often praise competing companies fine work; there is enough work to go around.  What I don’t like is that a dealer may be risking their Internet business on questionable techniques that they are unaware of. 

The purpose of this article is to raise the awareness and to bring to the forefront that some questionable SEO techniques could be introduced to car dealer websites.

Buyer Beware.

• Article Archives

For many dealers their name and brand awareness is very strong in their local community and close surrounding towns.  When I meet with dealerships to discuss their Automotive SEO strategies the conversation always seem to turn to marketing outside their official PMA.  They ask how SEO can be used to get web traffic for people who search for “towns” in or near their major competitors.

With sales and revenue down, dealers are looking for ways to increase their marketing radius into and around their competitors PMA.  This conversation has some gray areas because there are some brand rules about traditional marketing channels. There are emerging rules for Internet marketing but all are not very effective or smart. 

In high density areas of the country it gets even sillier because in a 20 mile radius there can be three dealerships competing for the same local eyeballs.  In California for example, Irvine BMW and Shelly BMW are just 20 miles apart.  When consumers have many local choices for one brand, how do you control Automotive SEO to a PMA?  You can’t and that is why controlling localized SEO is practically impossible.

Car manufacturers are scrambling to set rules but for every rule they make, there are large dealerships that break the rule. Internet marketing rules are often unenforceable.  So while Automotive SEO tactics are somewhat unregulated, here is a proven strategy, in this first article in the series,  that can help expand your awareness in a larger marketing radius.

Clever Client Testimonials

In California, Glendale Infiniti and Infiniti of Santa Monica are close in proximity and rivals.  Infiniti of Santa Monica has hundreds of customers over the years that live near Glendale but purchased in Santa Monica.   There is not an Infiniti dealership in West Hollywood and this town sits in between these two competitors.  The demographic is perfect for a foreign performance car like the Infiniti brand.

Knowing how Google organic indexing works, a clever dealer could create a page on their blog or dealer site with a customer testimonial (300-400 words) for towns near Glendale where they have customers.  When they create the page, they could use an HTML structure like what is shown below.  Keep in mind that the META keyword tag is not really used by Google.

Automotiove SEO – Web Page Design

Title:  West Hollywood Infiniti Owners Drive to Santa Monica for Savings

META Description:  West Hollywood Infiniti car owners drive to Santa Monica for great car prices and excellent Infiniti service.  West Hollywood Infiniti owners deserve the very best Infiniti car prices in Los Angeles County.

META Keywords:  West Hollywood Infiniti cars, West Hollywood California Infiniti prices, West Hollywood Infiniti car dealer, West Hollywood Infinity, West Hollywood Infiniti, West Hollywood Infiniti service, West Hollywood Infiniti parts

HTML page name:   http://www.yourwebsite.com/west-hollywood-infiniti-cars.html

For examples that demonstrate this technique in action, you can search Google for:

• Inglewood Infiniti
• Sherman Oaks Infiniti
• Burbank Infiniti

which are other towns in the LA area and you will see that Infiniti of Santa Monica is #1 or #2 in organic search for these town names.  This goes for many of the surrounding town in LA County. 

For aggressive Internet marketing clients, we have created a software program to create static optimized web pages for every town in their surrounding communities.   For non automotive clients, we have created a page for every town in their state.   There are some design issues to avoid the pages from becoming too identical but we have found ways to make it easy for the pages to exist.

Don’t Re-Invent The Wheel

This web page architecture is the same that many major car lead collector websites use.  They often create a page for every town in the USA and a page for every car brand.  Here are example pages from www.cars.com and www.carsdirect.com that are in the Google Index when searching for a G37 in Massachusetts:

www.cars.com/go/buy-cars/kdcu/Infiniti/G37/Cambridge-MA/ -

https://www.carsdirect.com/used_cars/listings/Massachusetts/Marlborough/01752/Infiniti/G37

You can see how they have created a directory structures for brand, model and towns in the USA.  If this model works for them it will also work for any car dealer; big or small.  Employing localized web page push-outs we have clients that are on Google Page One for every town in a 100 mile radius.

Food for thought….are you ready to dominate your PMA and beyond?

• Article Archives

Over the last six months I have been testing the value of publishing car inventory listings to a group of free websites. The idea behind this test was to measure the effectiveness of the efforts needed to post cars based on the increase of:

1. Car Sales
2. Web Traffic
3. Inbound Links

This is Part One of a series of articles that I plan to write tracking the success of various free listing services.  This is the introductory article and some initial results for our testing which is showing a clear front runner.

We were also interested in this project because it would give us some data on consumer interest and behavior on social networking websites and stand alone car marketing portals.   To keep automotive marketing budgets as effective as possible, we want to know where to invest time and resources.

Dealer Owned Car Marketing Portals

As a side note, we see a growing trend for car dealer groups to create their own regional car sales portals, to compete with sites like Cars.com and Autotrader.com.   Specifically, larger dealer groups that have multiple brands under their management in any given state can build very effective direct car marketing website at a reasonable cost.  There is a debate out there that questions why any dealer would create their own used car site even if they had multiple locations.

 Each dealer project has to be evaluated on a case by case basis.  Our experience has demonstrated that a strong domain name and a good inventory platform can be an effective in-state lead generation tool for a larger dealer organization or a friendly group of dealers.

Car Websites Included in Testing

Our testing has included a number of websites, listed below:

1. Vast.com
2. Google Base
3. Craigslist
4. BackPage.com
5. AOL Autos
6. MyRide.com

We have created a tool that can post automobiles from existing car dealer inventory feeds to these sites.  To date we have some clear winners and some clear losers but testing will continue.   To see the impact of this added traffic on PageRank and Inbound links is not something that can be immediately measured and the initial data is somewhat vague so I will have to create a second update.

Craigslist is the clear front runner by a mile for generating web referral traffic.  The effectiveness of Craigslist for generating inquires is undeniable but some of our clients feel that the quality of the leads is not great.  I have also noticed that the bounce rate is higher for Craigslist that other web referrers.

 Internet lead quality is often a reflection of the clarity of your ad and the information you provide.  We suggest that your Craigslist ad be as specific as possible so as to minimize the chatter between consumers and your Internet sales staff for basic things that should be included in your free listing.

Second in traceable traffic is Google Base, but this is not consistent across the country.  Traffic from Google Base comes into Google Analytics as a “Google.com referral”.  This is not a clean measure since there are a few other referring sites that can come in under this category.  We will be doing some better tracking on this matter.

The traffic from Backpage.com has been insignificant and disappointing.   The VAST.COM network of listings is looking promising and may in fact be better than Google Base, but more testing is needed.  There will be a second part to this article as more data is collected.

Craigslist.com is the clear winning for generating extra calls and traffic to your dealer website to date. If car dealers need help posting their cars to Craigslist, please give us a call.

• Article Archives

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.

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There are a good number of articles available to car dealers  that advocate automotive digital marketing as an important budgetary item  however for some  managers it can be difficult to quantify the actual ROI to their dealership in any given week or month.  

Short Term Digital Marketing

The work to build consistent cars leads from an SEO campaign is spread over weeks, months and even years.  So you can imagine my excitement when I had a chance to measure the short term impact of a proven set of Automotive SEO strategies on a single promotion event for an Infiniti dealer in Arizona.

The event was held December12-14th in Chandler Arizona at the Adesa Auction Grounds; a direct to public sale of used Infiniti and Nissan Cars coordinated by Nissan and a third party marketing company.  Eight area Infiniti and Nissan dealers were invited to participate in co-op advertising costs for the event which presented about 650 cars for sale over a three day weekend. 

The event was not an auction.  It was a factory direct sale of lease end cars, repossessed cars, and demo cars which dealers could sell at the event on a first come basis.   The advertising campaign from participant co-op dollars would go into radio, TV, and newspaper ads.  The company who organized the event also had a website which included the basic details on the event: date, location, and time.

Automotive Event Marketing Tactics

The marketing strategy set by my client was to secure appointments in advance of the three day weekend event.  I was given three weeks’ notice to come up with an Internet marketing plan.  We created an action plan to determine what the dealer’s staff would be doing and what my company would be doing. 

The dealer would be contacting all unsold prospects in their database as well as starting a small pay-per-click campaign that would send direct leads to a microsite that I was to create.

I was to create the automotive marketing microsite for the event which would load all of the 650 cars into an online searchable database, a concept which no other dealers participating in the event implemented.  The event site was http://www.arizonausedinfiniti.com .

An ADF feed was created from an Excel Spreadsheet provided by the event organizers.  This ADF feed was also loaded into Infiniti of  Scottsdale’s used inventory which in turn was distributed to a number of third party car marketing platforms.  This allowed the Infiniti dealer to promote the cars in the event to a very wide audience in a very short period of time.  

Since Infiniti of Scottsdale was the only dealer that displayed the event inventory in advance of the sale, they had a distinct advantage on capturing and confirming pre-event interest.  The sales staff could walk people through the site on the phone to find cars that met their budget and then book an appointment to see the car.

As part our Internet Marketing strategy, we emailed their entire customer database with a simple text email designed to get in under the spam filters and direct people to the event website. We issued a series of Internet press releases that directed consumer traffic to the site organically.  This helped to compliment the buzz that was being created on radio, TV, and newspapers.  

The Power of Automotive Press Releases

Since we knew that the traditional marketing campaign would generate online interest, we made sure that our site would come up in Google searches for a few variations of the event name.  If you go into Google and type “Chandler Surplus Sale”  or  “Arizona car surplus sale” you can see that we dominate the first page of Google which lead to over 300 visits per day in advance of the car event.   

In the three week prior to the event, we unleashed the Internet marketing “hounds” at a very reasonable cost to the dealership.  We utilized social networking platforms, Craigslist, Google Base, and a few proprietary marketing models.  The event site was getting over 300 hits a day from interested parties which were not generated by any of the co-cop advertising dollars for this event.

The results?  Infiniti of Scotstdale had the most appointments of all Infiniti dealers at the event and they sold more cars to consumers than any other Infiniti dealer .  The bottom line is that the event was very profitable and the ROI on the Internet marketing costs was very high.   When the event was over, the General Manager clearly understood that the success at the event was a great partnership between his outstanding sales team and aggressive internet marketing strategies.

The residual benefits are that the 150+ leadsthat came into our marketing microsite are still being pursued and matched up with used cars from their used car inventory.  The event created a fresh list of leads of  Arizona car shoppers looking for used car values. The ISM is confident that he can turn these unsold event leads into sales this month.

The event marketing website will be repurposed for selling Infiniti used cars in Arizona year round. It has already started to gain some organic ranking for Infiniti used car searches in Arizona.  It’s great to know that when the pressure is on, organic search marketing and Automotive digital marketing techniques can make a short term difference and return a fantastic ROI.  The long term benefits of SEO have been discussed on this forum at great lengths. In this case, a short term Internet marketing campaign outside of Pay-Per-Click, resulted in outstanding results.

Looking For New Automotive Marketing Stratgies?

Contact Brian Pasch, CEO to discuss how the PCG Digital Marketing can help energize your new and used cars sales in the year ahead.

• Article Archives

With ever increasing competition for Google page one ranking, I decided to test some of the newer social marketing platforms to see if they can supplement my existing web marketing strategies. Since many companies hire an outside business to build their primary business website, I wondered if these social platforms could also provide fast, easily deployable content that Google would respect.

Automotive Marketing on VOX

So, I started searching on Google using search terms for a few of my business niche services.  One phrase I tested was “automotive seo”.  When you type this into Google, I have two of my marketing websites appearing on Google Page One: www.dealer-seo.com and www.paschconsulting.com .  However, the very first listing I saw was http://automotove-seo.vox.com, and my eyes went wide.  What is VOX?  I didn’t know it at the time but it actually is a very good website marketing platform that anyone can setup in minutes to attract people with similar interests or new customers. 

Instantly I created http://automotiveseo.vox.com and started to complete my profile.  Take a look at what I have started in the past few weeks to see what a new VOX site looks like. Since the site is new, I only have four articles written. Being that Google respects this platform, I’m convinced it’s a place to create a social networking site.  One of the reasons I believe in the VOX platform is that it creates a “sub-domain” for your VOX site name. A sub-domain is the text to the left of the vox.com domain, so in my case the subdomain is exactly the search phrase I want “automotiveseo”.  Google uses the text in a sub-domain to match search results.

 So, savvy marketers could snatch up wine marketing keywords such as:

• http://usedcars.vox.com
• http://bmwcars.vox.com
• http://chevycars.vox.com

These subdomains may have been already taken, but you get the idea; snooze you lose. Pick your VOX site name carefully and I suggest that you use Google’s free Keyword Tool to find the best search phrase for your VOX site name.  Since your primary website is most likely under the control of your web master, you can use VOX to post regular articles as a blog, photos, and special offers with a very easy interface.  If you commit to the platform, you will find that Google will rank the your VOX site in their index, and maybe you can pin a top search phrase in your marketing niche like “automotive seo” .

Ning – Another Successful Platform

You will also see on Google Page One a site called Ning.com when you search for the phrase “automotive seo”.  Ning is another instant website platform that Google respects from the search results for this phrase.  I created a profile on http://automotive-seo.ning.com/. Once again the site is new, but from other research on the web, this platform is designed to reward good content with top search results.

Squiddo – Creating a Marketing Lens

Quiddo is anotehr marketing platform that shows equally exciting potential.  My Dquiddo page is located at: http://www.squidoo.com/automotive-dealer-seo.  They ket to the ultimate success of each of these platforms is to make sure you create original ocntent on each website platform.  If you don’t have time to write, then just pick oen and focus on building that site with content.  Having too many sites with light content will not achieve the goals that you would liek to achieve.

Automotove SEO Tools

Each of these website platforms provide ample places to create back links to your primary website.  This means that all blog posts can have a live link back to a page on your website where additional information can be found.  This is a big win for enhancing your SEO strategies in a professional manner while increasing your search placements in Google search.

There are a number of great sites that we are testing at PCG Digital Marketing and the early results have been very promising.  If you are serious about increasing the visibility of your company on the Internet, platforms such as VOX and Ning are an inexpensive way to grow links, traffic, and awareness of your primary marketing website.

• Article Archives

If your inventory module is ONLY good looking, you will have to rely more heavily on paid advertising to get direct traffic for model specific searches.  Specifically, if your inventory module is not presenting unique page data for each car in stock, it will be hard for Google to match long tail searches.

For example, if a consumer in Massachusetts types in “2008 BMW X5 Black Boston“, only those dealers with optimized marketing pages will be on Google page 1 or 2.  If a car dealer does not have an SEO friendly inventory module, they will have to rely on getting on page one for the broader search of “BMW X5 Boston”.    Most dealers will fail this test since third party lead collectors normally appear on Google Page One for broad car model/city searches.

The point of this discussion is that dealers should show up for both BROAD and LONG TAIL searches.  Since most dealers have a choice on inventory modules, why not choose one that is strong for organic search optimization; broad and long tail searches.

What is blocking Long Tail Searches?

There are a many technical reasons why car dealer platforms are not SEO friendly, but in this article we will mention two reasons that we have found from our automotive SEO consulting projects.  Dealerships have been chosen at random from Google searches or manufacturer websites to demonstrate our criteria for inventory modules that are NOT SEO friendly. 

The provider of the website platform used by the dealerships we have reviewed may have other software alternatives than those implemented on the sites we visited, so please check with them directly if you have any questions.  This is because the dealership websites that are contained in this review may have elected not to purchase a new inventory module from their software vendor, so please confirm our findings with your own research.

Reason #1 – Flash Based Inventory Modules

On these websites the inventory lookup tool is 100% flash, and as you select different cars from a list, the page titles and page description tags do not change.   This is a very common problem with flash websites.  Google claims that it can now read the text on flash pages; however it does not resolve the architecture problems.  This means that even if Google can read the text, there are no unique page titles and descriptions.  In a head to head test, an inventory module with unique HTML pages, titles, and tags will always beat a single page flash module in organic search.

If you visit www.accollinsford.com you can see a perfect example of a flash based inventory module that does not have unique page URL names and unique HTML page titles.  If you go to their new car inventory module and click on a few new cars in stock, you will see that the page Title in the browser bar stays fixed and displays:

“AC Collins Ford | Pasadena – Houston – Deer Park – La Port – Clear Lake – Channelview – Dickinson – Webster – Alvin – Seabrook – Kemah | New – Used Car – Pre-Owned Ford Dealership | Texas”

The HTML Title should be specific to the car that is being displayed.  According to Google Webmaster Guidelines:

“Make sure that your <title> elements and alt attributes are descriptive and accurate.”

So, this <title> tag should really be about the specific car displayed on the page.  If a 2008 Ford Edge in Ice Blue Metallic was shown, the <title> tag would be better formatted to read

“2008 Ford Edge – Ice Blue Metallic – Pasadena Texas”

Having the same <title> tag for every car forces you to create a “one size fits all” tag which is what AC Collins Ford’s website tried to create.  It’s inaccurate since this is a new car page and not a used car or pre-owned page.  It’s inaccurate since it does not mention the primary focus of the page’s information.  It’s also too long and does not fit in the Google <title> display area, from our experience.

Reason #2 – Framed Inventory Modules or Ajax Inserts

On these websites, HTML coding is used for the outer wrapper of the website page, but the inside of the page , which is the car details, changes as different cars are selected by the shopper.   This is often described as a webpage inside another webpage.  A good analogy is a digital photo frame with the word “Family Photos” printed on the wooden frame.  The frame always says “Family Photos” regardless of whether the photos being displayed are of a car wreck or famous celebrities.

Using this analogy, a framed inventory module has static page <title> like: “ABC Dealer – New BMW Cars in California.” When Google sees the page, all cars have the same HTML Title and Description tags.  This can results in hundreds of website pages with the same titles and description which is in exact opposition to Google Webmaster Guidelines. In the worse case, it generates one page for ALL new cars in stock and one page for ALL used cars in stock, turning your dealer website into a few dozen pages in size.

A good example of this is Marlboro Nissan, (www.marlboronissan.com) and you can click on any new car in stock and the page titles and page descriptions are all the same, pinned at:

<title> Marlboro Nissan | Marlborough Nissan Dealers | Nissan Boston MA | Nissan Cambridge MA | Nissan Worcester MA | Nissan Quincy MA | Massachusetts New Nissan Dealership</title>

<meta name=”description” content=”Marlboro Nissan, your Boston Massachusetts Nissan dealer. With Nissan cars, trucks, SUVs, and Vans for Marlborough, Boston, Cambridge, Quincy MA, Worcester, and Lowell Marlboro Nissan Where it’s all about you”>

Once again, the title is not specifically identifying the content of the page.  As the consumer uses the inventory module, the outside frame stays the same and the inside changes. Unfortunately, Google reads the tags on the outside frame for tags associated with the URL page name.

In this case, if Marlboro Nissan has 200 new cars in stock, Google will only see the outside framed page called http://www.marlboronissan.com/New-Inventory.html .  Thus they will never have 200 individual car pages that are associated with www.marlboronissan.com, only one.  They will never have 200 new car pages with optimized HTML <title> tags and META descriptions associated with www.marlboronissna.com.   This reduces their ability to have exact matches for long tail searches like “2008 Nissan MDX Boston”

Finding a Better Mouse Trap

There are a few dozen companies that offer website inventory modules.  Of these, a few of the companies are getting closer to the ideal inventory module.  For example, Chrome Systems Corporation*** has the copyright notice for the new car inventory module software used on www.billsullivan.com, and their inventory module has dynamically changing <title> tags.  They do not have SEO friendly URL names so the module does not get a perfect score. 

If you go to this page:  http://www.billsullivan.com/VehicleDetails/1115829624  you will see that the <title> tag is very accurate and descriptive. In our opinion, it is a bit too long.  It reads:

2009 Buick Enclave CXL Black 4 Dr. Wagon.  A Buick Enclave at Sullivan Buick Pontiac GMC Arlington Heights IL

Even the META tags are dynamic, which is very good for reaching long tail searches.  The Chrome Systems software generated META tags are:

<meta name=”description” content=”A 2009 Buick Enclave CXL 3.6L 6 cyl Black 4 Dr. Wagon. This 2009 Buick Enclave CXL is available at Sullivan Buick Pontiac GMC in Arlington Heights IL. This  Buick Enclave is a Black 4 Dr. Wagon with a Automatic transmission. The stock number is 5631 and VIN is 5GAEV23D59J130141. Call (847) 666-5973 for more information.” />

<meta name=”keywords” content=”2009, Buick, Enclave, CXL, 3.6L 6 cyl, Black, 4 Dr. Wagon, Sullivan Buick Pontiac GMC, Arlington Heights, IL, Automatic, 5631, Gas, %VEHICLE_STYLE%, Invoice, MSRP, Online, 2009, Buick, Enclave, CXL, Internet, Price, Sale, Research, Information” />

This inventory module is very good with one exception.  The URL name is:  http://www.billsullivan.com/VehicleDetails/1115829624.

It would be better if it included the model information in the URL.  This example is closer to the ideal platform, but in our opinion, this platform still leaves the ball on the 10 yard line. 

That said, this module is probably better than 50% of the dealer sites on the market today.

The Ultimate SEO Friendly Inventory Module

The PCG Digital Marketing is coming to the market with what we believe is the most SEO compliant car dealer inventory software for the Internet.  The software will be fully compliant with Google Webmaster Guidelines and will be offered to a select number of car dealerships across the USA in November.  If you are a General Manager or Internet Sales Manager and would like more information on the PCG Inventory module, give our office a call.  732-450-8200.

 
*** Chrome Systems Corporation is not affiliated with PCG Digital Marketing nor have they submitted their website for review.

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If this is a reality, car dealership owners need to understand the implications of changing their web platform.  Dealers need to understand how website changes can affect their search rankings on Google, Yahoo and MSN. If a majority of car buyers shop the Internet prior to a purchase, then changing your rankings on the major search engine is a serious matter.

Two cases this month urged me to write this article.  The PCG Digital Marketing provides search marketing strategies for car dealers.  PCG builds secondary Internet marketing websites for dealers that are not leased; they are the property of the dealership.  

Readers may not think that these two examples are typical, but they happen more than anyone would admit (or document).   I had a hard time finding people writing about their SEO experiences in changing an automotive website platform, so here is a start.

As automotive SEO consultants we are not involved in selection the base inventory management website.  In both of these cases, we raised our concerns about the platforms because we were invited in for comment. In both cases, management had a hard time understanding the potential impact of the platform changes.  Now they know. 

Since we don’t compete with primary automotive platform dealers like Dealerskins, Reynolds & Reynolds, Cobalt, Data One Sofware or TK Carsites, in offering a base inventory website platform. Our concerns are simply based on our previous knowledge that website cutovers need to be planned to avoid big drops in search traffic and sales.

BMW Dealer Cutover

In the first case, a BMW dealer left DataOne Software and moved to a company we will refer to as “DealerSoftwareX“.  In this cutover, the homepage of the dealer’s website went from a Google PageRank of 4 to a PageRank of 0.  That’s correct, zero. I’ve been involved in many website cutover’s and this should not have happened. I am a bit puzzled why this happened.  I’m not saying that DealerSoftwareX deliberately made this happen but the cutover caused it and I’ve not seen such a drastic drop before; I have done many cutovers.

Secondly, the BMW dealer had over a thousand indexed pages for new and used cars included in Google’s index. The cutover to DealerSoftwareX created new HTML page names for all the inventory pages on their website. All of the old indexed pages in Google and Yahoo were now effectively broken.  DealerSoftwareX did the right thing.  They redirected the old pages to the home page which is the correct step to take   This ensures that anyone clicking on an old indexed page in Google or Yahoo, gets to the new website.

But what most car dealers don’t understand is that in the next 30-60 days, the indexed pages that are redirected will be dropped from Google’s index.  That means the dealership website has to restart their page indexing and hope that Google indexes the new pages quickly.  In DealerSoftwareX’s case, Google has already indexed a number of the new website names indicating that their platform is searchable by Google. 

The bad news is that the new Page titles and META tags implemented by DealerSoftwareX are not ideally optimized for search; we would do it differently. They have dozens of pages with duplicate HTML page titles.  The second piece of BAD NEWS is that all the new pages start with a PageRank of ZERO.  That’s not DealerSoftwareX’s fault but it’s a high price to pay for a website switch.

In the cutover, hundreds of older pages that could have matched buyers search queries will no longer be there.  In the second case study that you will read, this will result in the number of indexed pages in Google going from 461 to only 22.  That’s a tough hit if your business attracts buyers from organic search.  In the case of the BMW dealer, the drop is not as severe.

This drop in the number of indexed pages, after a cutover, is not unique to DealerSoftwareX. In fact, unless you own your own website platform, this will happen with all cutovers if you don’t mirror the exact page names in the previous website.  That’s were PCG’s marketing microsites stand out.  Since they are owned by the dealership, they can be re-skinned without changing the page names.  This allows the dealer to create a new look for the microsites without breaking well indexed pages.

In our opinion, DealerSoftwareX should have made sure that the website homepage ranking did not drop to zero.  This is something that is going on with their home page redirect because I have personally cutover websites to new platforms and the home page PageRank never dropped to zero.  It can drop, but not to zero.  The fact that they did not alert the dealer to such a drop is concerning.

In summary, this BMW dealer now has to plan for the natural drop in search traffic for the next few months as well as dealing with the issue of a much lower PageRank.  If we were not involved with this client, I am not confident that these conversations would be going on.

 Nissan Dealer Cutover

In this case we had a Nissan dealership move from Dealer.com to a company we will call ”DealerSoftwareZ“.  In this cutover, DealerSoftwareZ forget to redirect all the old pages to the homepage.  So, the 461 pages that they had indexed in Google, when clicked, gave an error message for 460 of the 461 pages.  Only the homepage link worked.  No one noticed this until we brought it to our client’s attention. 

Wow, this could have been a big mess if we did not diagnosis the site post cutover.  If we did not alert DealerSoftwareZ to fix their 404 Redirects, the dealership would have lost a significant amount of organic visitor traffic since 99% of their previously indexed pages were broken in Google search results.

The cutover also created a dilemma for organic search.  Their old website had 461 pages included in Google’s index.  The new website provided by DealerSoftwareZ uses an inventory model that hosts their inventory “off-site” so when Google looks at the new website, it will only see 22 pages.  That’s a big drop in potential “fly-paper” pages that can attract car buyers to their website.

If quality content and web page count is a fact in organic search, dropping from a 461 page website to a 22 page website is certainly a concern for us.  This news was a bit of a shock for our client.

In this case, the cutover did not change the dealer PageRank for their home page.  It is still pegged at 4, which is what should happen. What happened with the BMW website is just plan scary.

Summary

These two cases highlight the need to have an independent consult working with car dealers that are committed to Internet Marketing.  It also shows why a third party consultant needs to be involved in a automotive website cutover.  The web platform provider is NOT going to critique their own product. 

If you would like to discuss your specific Automotive SEO needs, give us a call 732-450-8200.  We used replacement names for the software platforms because in this industry, writers like myself, have been threatened by lawsuits for telling our side of a story.  So much for freedom of speech.   If you want to know the exact cases study names to check the data yourself, give us a call.

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When we were first informed of this change we were first concerned about all the indexed pages on the DataOne website that could be lost in the cutover.  We were comforted by the fact that ALL of the microsites designed by PCG, that are owned by BWM of Peabody, would not be damaged in this cutover.  The only things we would have to do is “re-skin” the websites to look more like the new hosting platform.  The good news is that 100% of the pages that are in Google indexes would not be changed.

This is not the normal case when car dealers change website platforms.  When car dealers do a cut from one website platform to another there is no guarnatee that you’ll be able to use the exact page names that were indexed in Google for the new website.  This is NOT a small matter to ignore.

If you are a BMW dealer that is considering changing to a new website platform, be very careful.  If you want the bottom line, give us a call to discuss your cutover.  We can help you avoid big mistakes and costly drops in search engine indexes.

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