Latest Articles

The Digital Dealer Conference taking place November 1-3rd will cover the latest strategies needed for auto dealership owners, General Managers and Sales Managers to compete and succeed in today’s increasingly competitive retail environment.  Included in a full roster of expert speakers are Dennis Colome and Doug Hadden, experts in the field of advanced selling and marketing strategies for automotive managers.

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.

Automotive SEO strategies must compensate for the different ways in which SERP’s are dispalayed on Google, Yahoo and Bing.  The chart below demonstrates a number of automotive search phrases and websites that we have created. 

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.

We have started the review of automotive website inventory modules and website platforms for the 2009 Automotive Search Marketing Architecture (ASMA) study.  We are very excited from what I have seen so far.

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.