Automotive Car Marketing Websites

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.

Automotive advertising agencies – you are being called to task.  It is very common for car dealers to have their ad agency create a sheet of monthly specials like the one shown for Audi cars. These ads are used in local newspapers but they are also being used for dealer websites.

Unfortunately, the ad agencies are not telling automotive sales managers that these graphical contribute practically NOTHING to attractive car shoppers via Google and Yahoo search. Most traditional automotive advertising agencies don’t understand search engine optimization (SEO).  They didn’t grow up with SEO.  Their job is to produce auto ads every month, on schedule, and they are happy for the business.

Well, if I was the owner of a car dealership, I would not be happy how these ads are being used on the web. You see, these ads have text that Google cannot index.  Google cannot read the text on a photo.  They are in effect a blank page to the search engine spiders.  If car dealers expect for consumers to find their monthly specials online, they have to take the time to type the details in plain text.

You may think this is a simple task and one that should be commonplace on dealer websites.  But take a look at 20 car dealer websites by clicking on their “Specials” page and you’ll find that most are graphical ads with the pertinent information on an image. 

So should dealers login into their website administrative panel and add their car specials in text?  This is where things get interesting.  Creating a good looking text page on most automotive website platforms is not easy.  Yes, most platforms claim that they have easy to use HTML editors but in common practice, they are not easy to use.

I have worked with a number of HTML editors on car dealer websites and they all are tricky at best.  The skills to create “tables” or aligned text requires skills that are beyond the average Internet sales manager. Copying preformatted text into these embedded editors can cause more trouble that it’s worth.

So, Sales Managers take the least path of resistance and drop in a graphic advertisement on their specials page so it’s not blank.   Just keep in mind that these graphical ads do ZERO for drawing new customer via search. Even worse, pages that only contain one image will most likely never even get indexed by Google.

If car dealers take the time to create car specials and incentives, they should also take the time to publicize them on the web.  In an ideal world, you would have a dedicated web page for each car you have on special that month.  This way the HTML Title, META Description and content can be optimized for the offer. In addition to their own websites, specials can be posted on free services like Craigslist, MerchantCircle and social networking sites.  The dealers, who make the effort to give Google what they expect, will be rewarded with better search visibility.

Recently our client, BMW of Peabody, decided to change their website platform from DataOne Software to Dealer.com. Their decision to change had nothing to do with our business relationship.  In fact, we worked very well with DataOne Software to achieve a perfect balance between dealer owned SEO web microsites and a main dealer website provided by DealerOne Software.

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.