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So you have created an Automotive Microsite. What are your next steps? 

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.

I have been helping car dealers fine tune their Internet marketing strategy through my blogs and lately I have been getting a number of emails on Microsites.  The focus of these inquiries: How can I use microsites for lead generation? Eventually the conversation always includes one important question: “What domain name should I use?”

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

This website is a skinned WordPress microsite.  As many readers know, I have been an advocate for using WordPress to create microsites to complement existing full service dealer platforms.  The popularity of the WordPress platform is growing and we have been having fun skinning sites for car dealers to be consistent with their brand image.

Over the past year we have tested a number of WordPress hosting companies and I wanted to share our current thinking.  WordPress hosting packages will cost under $100 a year and are offered by many providers as part of their base install.  Some of the big names like GoDaddy, Network Solutions and 1 &1 offer inexpensive hosting and WordPress support.

Keep in mind that in addition to base hosting costs, WordPress gets a number of patches and updates every month so if you are not comfortable with upgrading WordPress, figure 2 hours a year for your IT consultant to make sure all your plugins are up to date.  The upgrade process is simple, most of the time.  Occasionally an upgrade has issues so it is always good to have a backup of your WordPress website in advance of any major updates.

WordPress Hosting by HostGator

We are currently hosting most of our WordPress sites on www.HostGater.com.  We started off with GoDaddy and the perform was painfully slow when using the back end administration panel.  It was wasting too much of our time to put of with GoDaddy’s performance.  So then we transferred a number of accounts to Network Solutions and at first the performance was much better than GoDaddy.  Then, for whatever reasons, performance started to degrade over dozens of WordPress websites.

So, we have transitioned most websites to HostGator and we have been very pleased with the performance and costs.  If you plan to host multiple WordPress websites you can purchase their reseller package and save by economies of scale.  For the average business owners, the performance with HostGator.com will be fast and smooth.

WordPress Alternatives

If you have any other companies that you recommend for WordPress hosting, send me a note:  brian@paschconsulting.com.  I would like to spread out my WordPress websites to multiple vendors so as not to have all my eggs in one basket.