Automotive SEO

This month Yahoo has started to use Microsoft's Bing search engine technology to power their search results.  With this change in place, it is a good reminder to all car dealers that Automotive SEO strategies for Google is different than Yahoo.  Yes, core fundamentals like good content and linking apply to both engines but there are also significant differences in what appears in a SERP.

Have you compared your existing search dealership results in Google to the "new" Yahoo? Try some simple search patterns on Yahoo today for your car dealership. For example, if you are a Hyundai dealer in Jacksonville Florida test out a few basic phrases:

• Florida Hyundai Dealer
• Jacksonville Hyundai Dealer
• Hyundai Genesis Jacksonville
• Hyundai Service Jacksonville

I would like to encourage readers to take a moment to take 10 popular search phrases that are part of your current Automotive SEO strategy and check your rankings in Yahoo. Print out the page one results and put a star beside each listing to see which your business controls. Work to raise those positions over the next few months with some managed SEO strategies. 

Automotive SEO Search Phrases

PCG Digital Marketing is please that the new Yahoo is actually recognizing our leadership in content publishing. We practice what we preach in that our primary route for advertising our services in SEO.

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 our SEO targeted keywords 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 the screen shots below, 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

As PCG Digital Marketing and DrivingSales.com  get ready to kick-off the Automotive SEO Study, I wanted to acknowledge that some members of the automotive marketing community do not think Automotive SEO has a good return on investment for car dealers.

Some have even said that dealers can't effectively compete with SEO because they don't have the network, tools and training to compete with large marketing companies.

There is some truth to this belief since dealers have not been able to accurately assess the work of an Automotive SEO guru. Dealers do not have the expertise or tools to measure the true results of a long term SEO campaign. The good news is that upcoming digital marketing platforms will deliver organic reporting that can measure the impact of SEO campaigns.

Since car dealers create short windows to measure sales success, many SEO project have been shut down before they even had a chance to develop search authority. In reality, dealers need to measure the success of an SEO campaign over a 12 month window. My clients who have actively managed micro-sites over a year old see much greater results than those that are six months old.

Members will see for themselves how long it takes to get their blogs indexed and achieve PageRank scores of 3,4 or 5. The beauty of this study is that Automotive SEO Study members will be able to use established blogs that have search authority to publish their work. The immediate results will give them a taste of the future for their own blogs.

The possibilities are endless for the 100 dealers that registered for the study.

Does Automotive SEO Eliminate The Need For PPC?

Secondly, it is important to understand that SEO consultants often put down Pay-Per-Click (PPC) spending and claim that dealers only need Automotive SEO strategies. To set this clear from the start let me emphatically say that car dealers need to invest in pay-per-click advertising.

The most successful dealers include SEO, PPC, Social Media and traditional media in their marketing budgets. Since consumers often type short search phrases like "used cars", "toyota dealer", and "used camry", car dealers need PPC to get their name at the top of the search listing for these broad, national search phrases.

Please don't fire your PPC vendor because you joined this study! And if your PPC vendor tells you SEO is worthless, ask him to call me. I'll listen to his case with an open mind.

Then I'll spend the next few weeks surrounding his website with articles guiding car dealers to his top competitor. We'll see how PPC defends against that organic attack on his brand name. This is the same attack that car dealers are facing and why dealers need to learn about Google Page One Management.

Hints Of Upcoming Automotive SEO Strategies

Today, I created three blog posts on one of the study community sites www.CashForClunkersFacts.com and within two hours these posts were on Google Page One for the optimized search phrases. I picked three member dealers at random, and picked reasonable search phrases to target.

You may not agree with the search phrases chosen, the point is that it works for the phrases YOU want to target. These same posts come up for other variations as well; this is not a one trick pony.

This was just to demonstrate the impact members of this study can have on search results if they are Paschonate to stay for 16 weeks.

Members of this study will learn by week two how to create powerful content posts and achieve similar results to protect their brand name and the cars that they sell in your local market. There is no smoke and mirrors, just results.

You can watch a related video on how the 2011 Toyota Sienna blog posted was created from scratch. Watch Video

Here are the screen shots on 8/28/2010:

I gave a presentation this week to an automotive group with five OEM brand stores and demonstrated how microsites, content publishing, social media and link building can create an annuity of direct leads.  I am an advocate that Automotive SEO should be included in every car dealers advertising budget.

If your dealership has the passion and commitment to invest in a long term project that creates websites that are optimized for your state and the cities around your store, you will be greatly rewarded.  Patience is the key to success with any SEO engagement.

Internet Billboards

If you could have billboards at a very low cost on every major road and intersection in a 75 miles radius around your dealership would you do it? The Internet is still in its infancy and I demonstrated to this dealership group how they could increase their used car sales using microsites.

Dealers who invest in their own Internet marketing futures will be rewarded. With website technology and inventory advertising plug-ins at all-time low costs, it is feasible for a dealership to build a network of websites that create strong benefits.

Automotive SEO is just part of a comprehensive digital marketing strategy.  I don't want to give the impression that dealers only need SEO.  All dealers should test, measure the effectiveness of:

·        Pay Per Click Advertising

·        Social Media Management

·        Reputation Management

·        Inventory Advertising (Cars.com, Autotrader.com, Automotive Advertising Network)

·        Fixed operations marketing

·        Third party lead purchasing

These needed strategies are outside the scope of this article.

Microsites Increase Your Brand Awareness

I'm more convinced than ever that dealers need to have a plan that includes creating, maintaining and owning multiple websites that have targeted purposes.  These become Internet billboards on the most popular search phrases; your brand always pops up on page one.

A number of PCG clients have already seen how microsites can position their business in front of consumers searching with popular phrases like:

·        Miami Used Cars - look on page one for www.miamiusedcars.org

·        Buffalo Cars - look on page one for www.buffalocars.net

·        Phoenix dealers - look on page one for www.phoenixdealers.org

·        Used Nissan Cars - look on page one for www.usednissancars.net

Any dealer in these markets would love to be on Page One because the other people that show up on these pages are national leads collectors and inventory advertising websites and only a few dealers show on Page One, if they are lucky.

I bring this up because everyone who wants to start an Automotive SEO campaign needs to be committed to success and excellence over a long period of time.   Success cannot be measured in 30, 60 or 90 days.  If you can invest and be patient for a year you will not be disappointed.

Questions?  Give me a call at 732.450.8200 or visit http://www.pcgdigitalmarketing.com

One of the new business directory websites to hit the mainstream is BrownBook which offers free listing and content rich business profile pages.  BrownBook is more like MerchantCircle in its rich feature set and its ability to provide live links back to your website for free. This site should be include in your offsite Automotive SEO playbook.

I have started to play with BrownBook and the user interface is easy and it encourages business owners to get reviews and recommendations to complete their business profile.  In order to get the 100% score you will need five reviews and five recommendations.  That will not be easy for many businesses to accomplish any time soon.

The profile page has photos, video, and text modules.  It was easy to drop in a YouTube video to make the listing more interactive.  If you would like to create a listing for your business, first you need to become a member of BrownBook.  Once you have created your account and profile, then you can create a business listing which is called a "contribution".

After you contribute a listing, you will need to claim it if it is your business.  The structure of the site is such that a user account can add local businesses that are missing, even though they are not the owner.  That is why it is important to claim your business listing.  Once claimed, then you can use all the editing tools to make the profile content rich.

From the screenshot shown, you can see the text module, image module and part of the video module on the profile page for Circle BMW in Eatontown New Jersey.  The text module allows you to add hyperlinked text which is important for Automotive SEO strategies and to increase inbound links. 

When I created my user profile, I received a Google Alert set for my name in under 5 minutes.  When I created a business profile, the same speed to market was witnessed.  This is an indication that this site is well respected from Google.

Business directories that offer high quality content pages and live links (that are free), often come with some downside.  In this case is Adwords running on your page.  Most directories have an upgrade path so that if you want to remove these ads you pay a monthly fee. 

Google Maps can be very frustrating for car dealers. This free advertising product gets even more frustrating in competitive markets, like Phoenix Arizona. 

If you search Google for "Arizona Honda Dealers" and click on the Maps tab, you get a list of dealers. If you own a Honda dealership in Arizona and you are not showing up in the first few listings, you can get frustrated. 

How does Tempe Honda (B) get top organic billing of all authorized Honda dealers in Arizona?  The answer may never be known, because Google keeps that information secretive. But there is a growing body of evidence that supports theories why some  business listings are shown more often than others.

Many car dealers have asked how they can increase the display frequency of their Google Maps listing.  Keep in mind that the "physical address" of your business is a dominant factor by which consumer search results  are matched with your listings.

Ill advised businesses have attempted to influence Google Maps listings by creating listings with fake addresses. Google is cracking down on this practice but not soon enough for Honda dealers in Arizona.

In the example on the right, you can see a false listing (Listing A) that created a listing called "Honda Dealers" with a bogus address as "Metro Area."  Google has not yet removed this listing which is pushing real Honda dealers off the top positions. 

Google Maps scams are on the rise. Report to Google any false listings that do not represent a physical address. Also keep an eye out for duplicate listings that may be clerical errors or old listings from dealerships that have closed .

Establishing Your Map Credibility

From my testing with Google Maps, I have concluded that having a consistent name, address and phone numbers across all business directory websites can assist your Google Maps listing to be shown above those that have no external references.  As a result, you should only use one tracking phone number for all public business directories, yellow pages, review websites, professional associations, and OEM registrations.

When a new Google Maps listing is created, Google most likely will confirm if the submitted "business name and address" can be found on other paid or free website directories. If the submitted address is not listed in trusted business directories, your maps listing may not be considered valid.

Automotive professionals should recognize that Google Maps is most likely one of car dealers’ top five sources for calls and direct traffic from sites that are free. With that in mind, it would be appropriate for a dealership to prioritize the synchronization and cleanup of all their public business listings.

Recommended Directories

To get started with creating external directory listings for your business, I have listed the most valuable sites for your consideration. Start with the first suggestion and work your way down the list:

Major Search Directories

·         Yahoo Local

·         Bing Local Listing Center

·         www.DMOZ.org

Popular Review Sites

·         www.Yelp.com

·         www.DealerRater.com

·         www.cardealercheck.com 

·         www.Judysbook.com

·         www.InsiderPages.com 

Popular 3rd Party Directories

·         www.MerchantCircle.com

·         www.SuperPages.com

·         www.BrownBook.net

·         www.Switchboard.com

·         www.InfoUsa.com

·         www.BOTW.com

The investment in time to synchronize your business listings will be rewarded, so do not delay in prioritizing this task.  If you know it will not get done by your staff, take action to hire a consultant or a service that will do this work for you.   

There are many websites in which you can register your business name, address, phone number and domain name.  If your primary contact information can be validated on dozens of authoritative websites, your Google Maps listing will have a higher likelihood of being presented more frequently.

Internet sales and marketing professionals who are currently working at car dealerships and want to master powerful SEO tools and strategies to improve the search visibility of their website are invited to participate in a unique Automotive SEO Study which will be presented at the 2011 NADA Convention in San Francisco.

The study is co-sponsored by PCG Digital Marketing and DrivingSales.com.

The Automotive SEO Study will be limited to 100 automotive dealers*. Registration ends on August 30, 2010.

There is no cost to participate however members should budget approximately $100 for domain purchases, blog hosting and/or fees paid to third part marketing sites, directories and related sites as needed.

Study members will be trained and coached how to use content publishing, link building, social media, video, PDF brochures, and automotive networks to improve their Google Page One results for popular consumer search phrases. Members in the study will be required to dedicate 3-4 hours a week to complete the tasks required to deliver measurable results for their dealership.

The 100 dealers will have access winning digital marketing strategies, training videos, marketing outlines, tutorials, and websites managed by PCG Digital Marketing and DrivingSales that will enhance the results of their work. In return, members in the study will share the results of their work and be included in a whitepaper being prepared by PCG Digital Marketing and DrivingSales.com.

"The Automotive SEO Study will be the first of its kind", according to Brian Pasch, CEO of PCG Digital Marketing. "The partnership with DrivingSales.com, the leading automotive social media community, is consistent with founder Jared Hamilton's goal to provide digital marketing curriculums and best practices to assist automotive retailers with online advertising and communications."

Length Of Automotive SEO Study

The study will run from September 1, 2010 to January 1, 2011. In those four months, members in the study will document their work and record data on a number of search marketing factors which will include website link counts, Google ranking for specific keywords, unique visitor traffic, lead submissions, and changes in their Google Page One Management (GPOM) results.

The results will be published and presented at the 2011 NADA Convention in San Francisco. Monthly updates during the four month study, as well as the final results, will be shared with members of www.DrivingSales.com . Car dealers interested in the results of this study should create a free account on Drivingsales.com and follow the progress of their peers through the interactive blogs and dealership forums.

Automotive SEO Study Requirements

The requirements to participate in the study are:

1. Participants must be an employee of a car dealership, proof will be required.
2. Participants must have written permission to write about the dealership online; blogs, press releases, social media, etc.
3. Participants must have an email address from an active dealership domain.
4. Members in the study will be required to dedicate 4 hours a week to complete the tasks required for success.
5. Participants must be willing to share the results of their work via Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics data and allow the data to be summarized* in the final study whitepaper.

No confidential data or specific dealership website results will be published in the whitepaper or made public without written permission from participant.

Register For Study

Dealers interested in participating should register online at www.automotiveseostudy.com. Inquiries can be sent to: info@automotiveseostudy.com. * PCG Digital Marketing retains the right to decline dealer participation in the Automotive SEO Study based on conflicts of interest with current clients.

Car dealers are turning to a second career to jumpstart their online sales: movie director.

 Consumer engagement in social media coupled with the popularity of online review sites has forced car dealers to rethink their automotive advertising strategies.

Video production which was once was cost prohibitive for dealers to do themselves has now become an affordable tool for creative automotive professionals.

In growing numbers, car dealers are turning to FlipCam video cameras to create video testimonials for their customers, walk around car videos and now a move to create social media viral videos. These videos are being integrated into their websites, Google Maps, and loaded on popular video websites like YouTube to extend the reach of their brand.

Customer testimonial videos are becoming standard operating procedure as studies show that consumers trust their peers five times more than a statement from their automotive dealer.

Consultants who help car dealers implement customer testimonial and reviews online and integrated into social media website call this line of work Automotive Internet Reputation Management or for short Automotive IRM.

 Toyota

Dealer Shines for FlipCam

One innovative car dealers has been nationally recognized for their innovative videos using a FlipCam is Acton Toyota. The Boston Toyota dealership was recently featured in the national magazine "Toyota Today" for their spoof videos that were inspired by the popular Mac vs PC TV commercials.

Acton Toyota had no previous film or editing experience yet their videos have attracted thousands of visitors to their websites. The recent article in Toyota Today highlights that car dealers are just beginning to embrace social media communications that include these creative viral videos.

With the ease of which the FlipCam can create videos, more car dealers should investigate how they can bring their static websites alive with tutorials, testimonials, better display of the cars they sell and warm introductions for the services they offer.

It's been a while since I published some "how to" articles on link building and Automotive SEO strategies.  Many people have said that that "Content is King" and I would like to append to that adage "and links are the Queen".  Car dealers who would like to increase the number incoming links to their primary domains can read further to see if any of my suggestions are new ideas.  If so, add them to your digital marketing strategy to increase the search authority of your digital assets.

The sites I have listed below perform two basic functions: content publishing to get additional listings on Google Page One and secondly, to build links back to your website(s).  The more organic listings that you have on Page One for popular search phrases, the higher your chances that you will get a call, a lead or a walk-in.

Before we address those strategies, do you know how many links point to your website?  Let me make sure that everyone knows how to get their inbound link counts before we go any further.  One of the best ways is to go to your Google Webmaster Tools control panel and see the links to your website but since few people have access to that data, Yahoo is second best.  If you visit Yahoo.com and do a search using the "link:" command, you can see how many links point to your website.

How To Get Your  Inbound Link Counts

Type in the Yahoo search box the words: link:http://www.yourdomain.com with "yourdomain.com" replaced with your website.  When you click on the search box, the Yahoo Site Explorer will come up and show and initial screen.  The link counts that are displayed on the initial screen are misleading because they include internal links.  Internet links are pages on your website pointing to other pages on your website.

The screenshot above shows 2,344 inbound links in box B.  However, we want to find just the inbound links from other websites.  To do that we need to click on the dropdown box in box C and select "Except from this domain".  Bring up your own domain name now and follow along.

When you select this in box C, the true number of inbound links will show, which in the case for Brickell Honda in Miami, 1,180 links.  This is the number you want to write down and check each month as you start a link building campaign.

Linking Building Ideas

Since I have written about using press releases and WordPress blogs as sources for content publishing and link building, we will assume that everyone is using these powerful link building strategies by now.  Here are a few other ideas that may add some value to your Automotive SEO campaigns by helping you with Google Page One Management, traffic building and of course link building:

1. Create a free listing in www.aboutus.org.  Take the time to fill out all the information that you are asked.  To create a new listing just search for your domain name (www.yourdomain.com) in the search box in the upper right hand corner. If they don't have your website in their directory, they will create a page on the fly.  Your content descriptions can also have links back to your website and you can also add related links to your microsites.

2. Create a Wiki page for your dealership website or microsite.  There are a number of Wiki sites that provide links that are picked up by the search engines.  Take a peek at www.openwiki.com and create Wiki's for your dealership name and primary search keywords like "Miami Honda Dealers" or "Dallas Ford Dealers".

3. Create a www.merchantcircle.com  free business account and use their publishing tools for blogs, images and videos.  A blog post on Merchant Circle will get indexed very quickly and you can include a number of links in your posts.  If you publish content on a regular basis you will be pleased to see the inbound links the site produces.  You don't have to pay to get the benefits of Merchant Circle for SEO.  An example is: http://www.merchantcircle.com/business/PCG.Digital.Marketing.732-450-8200 and you can click on the Blog tab to see example posts.

4. Create accounts on free micro-blogging sites like www.multiply.com, www.posterous.com, www.gather.com or www.biznik.com which will get picked up in search results and can help you with Google Page One Management.  Post articles on a regular basis and you will be rewarded. Here are some examples: http://brianpasch.multiply.com and http://biznik.com/members/brian-pasch . 

5. Create a www.Squidoo.com  lens for the top 10 keyword phrases that you want to target.  Make the lens with good content and use a few different modules like RSS feed, Video Module, and of course a few content modules.  The content modules can have links back to your website(s).  An example of a Squidoo Lens is http://www.squidoo.com/fort-worth-chevrolet-dealers.

6. Create a www.pligg.com site for your specific industry, market or brand.  The Pligg site is your own targeted "Digg" site that you can use to re-post links to your blogs, press releases, news releases, and content pages on your website.  Think of it as your personal news consolidation website and if you pick a good domain and setup the publishing correctly, you will be surprised at the benefits.  An example of an automotive Pligg site is www.carsalenews.com .

7. Create a www.ning.com social networking website.  Depending on the size of your dealership and how many cooperative employees you have, a NING site can reach search authority rather quickly with good content and frequent postings.  Examples of NING sites include www.internetsalesmanager.org, www.automotivedigitalmarketing.com and www.automotive-advertisingagencies.com.  The NING platform allow you to create a blogroll sidebar link tool that appears on all pages which has the potential to create hundreds of links to your website as the site grows.

8. Consider purchasing paid links in www.yahoo.com and www.business.com business directory.  There are some benefits of being associated with these two paid directories that I believe are worth the investment.  Yahoo charges $299 a year and Business.com has the same charge but readers can email me to get a $50 discount code, which changes each month.

9. Place your website in www.dmoz.org which is the most authoritative website directory in the world.  Getting your site listed in the directory takes some careful investigation.  One word of advice is to look where your competitors are listed and choose that page to submit your site.  This is because the editor of that page has already "approved" car dealer websites and thus your chances of being added are greater.

10. Have your service manager or brand enthusiasts participate in automotive forums like www.vwvortex.com , www.bimmerfest, www.nicoclub.com  and others that represent your OEM brand.  After active participation get your staff established in the community, their responses can often link back to your dealer website as long as the links are going to pages that provide answers to questions. 

Forums have a high PageRank and if your website has color brochures, specification sheets, warranty manuals, etc you can often link to these assets to help forum members.    As long as the links provide value you will be golden.

I hope that of the 10 strategies suggested, some of them were new. When implemented, these tasks will enhance your automotive digital marketing campaigns.  If you have any questions, just ask or you can email me at brian@pcgdigitalmarketing.com