Car Dealer Internet Marketing

As with many of my posts lately, I’m going to ride the fence.  There are advantages and disadvantages to having your website inventory indexed.  This issue has popped up more and more lately as a lot of gurus are pointing towards indexed inventory as a strong SEO tool.

To me, it’s a gray issue.

Advantages of Indexed Inventory:

• More pages
  
• More opportunities to rank for long-tail keywords
  
• Searchers land on specific vehicles versus navigation
  
• Internal link potential (if done properly) to help other pages rank well

Disadvantages:

• Temporary listings that can become 404 errors or redirects when the search engines crawl the page next time
  
• Duplicate content
  
• Lack of focus on primary linked pages

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Technorati Tags: indexing car inventory

There is a debate going on, though few are involved and even fewer understand it.  First, the definitions:

Long: Searches that are specific, normally 3, 4, or more words, that are highly targeted by minimal for traffic.  They are normally an extension of a primary keyword.  Example: "New Honda Accord Shreveport"

Medium: Less specific than long keywords, usually 2 or 3 words, with higher volume and lower conversion.  Example:  "Shreveport Honda"

Short: Very general terms.  High volume, low, low conversion.  Example: "Honda"

These definitions are loose simply because the automotive industry is so locally targeted, the traditional definitions of "long-tail" vs "short-tail" don’t do it justice.  Technically, all relevant automotive keywords for a dealership are long-tail, so it is important to add the middle definition.

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Technorati Tags: automotive seo, car dealer seo

Don’t you hate it when you lose a sale?  It could be a poor inventory, not clicking with a customer, or a conflict in trade difference that causes a lost sale.  Luckily, all of these are easily fixed - we all know how to handle those.

Sometimes, a lost sale starts from your website where the chance is missed to convert a visitor into a lead.  This, too, is easily fixed with a better website.

We can look at our salespeople or check the statistics on our websites and identify problems with these forms of lost sales, but there is another lost sale that affects many dealers and most don’t even know they are losing them

Search for your dealership by name.  You should (we hope) see your dealer website at the top.  Now scan down on the page.  Anything out of place?  There should be the vendors who are vying for your business - nothing you can do about those.  No, what you’re looking for is something bad.

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Technorati Tags: online marketing, online reputation management, reputation

Gas mileage is a hot topic to automotive consumers. Search engine optimization (SEO) is a hot topic to automotive dealers. With today’s economic conditions, getting the most mileage out of a vehicle has many parallels with getting the most out of your SEO.

In both cases, we want more for less. Search engine marketing is becoming more expensive, so smart dealers must position themselves on the organic section of the search engines to get the most bang for their buck. Here are some tips to help achieve the most possible clicks for the least amount of money.

Buy a Hybrid
Just as hybrid vehicles are rolling off showroom floors at record rates, hybrid SEO campaigns are becoming more popular for car dealer Web sites. A hybrid SEO campaign is one that properly utilizes both onsite and offsite optimization techniques.

In the past, having proper SEO on a Web site itself was enough. Today, the search engines like to see more in the way of relevant, high-quality inbound links from other Web sites to your own. These links act as “votes” for a site, and search engines are counting these heavily.

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Technorati Tags: automotive seo, car dealer seo, search engine optimization

One of three things happens whenever a car dealer is talking to their marketing company and asks the question, “Should I focus on search engine optimization or pay per click marketing?”

1. SEO is touted as the end-all, be-all form of search engine marketing and pay-per-click is trashed as a waste of money, or…
2. PPC is touted as a must-have marketing investment because it is instant and controllable, or…
3. The dealer is told that they shouldn’t do either because it’s all just a waste of money.

How the question is answered is almost always determined by what the marketing company or website provider does well and where they can make the most money.  The truth of the matter is that marketing companies and website providers should not be the determining factor when dealers consider how to spend their online marketing budgets.  The only thing that matters to a dealer should be, “What is best for me in my dealership’s current situation?”

The key point there is “…my dealership’s current situation…”
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Technorati Tags: Automotive Internet Marketing, seo vs ppc