On the other hand, if a customer is already to the point where they are searching for “Joe Dealer”, unless they find a review that says something extremely negative about Joe, what are the chances that that customer will not convert for “Joe Dealer” even if their site doesn’t come up organically…Seems like they will find “Joe Dealer” one way or another.

Now if they are searching on “Honda Dealer Waco Texas” that’s a different story because of other dealers obviously competing for the same term…

Case 1: “Joe Dealer” is searched for, and the customer has a high propensity to fill out a form or “convert”

Case 2: “Honda Dealer Waco Texas” is searched, and the customer ends up on Joe Dealers website since they came up #1, 2, and 3 in organic listings. Again, a high chance it will convert to a lead and a low bounce rate. This is the Google organic at work as well

Case 3: A paid adwords Google ad: These have a lower conversion rate (turning in a real lead) but the new visitor ratio or ‘conquest’ ratio is higher. There are fewer leads.

Hope that helps explain

We look at Analytics constantly, every day, and help clients determine which investment not only generate the most traffic, but which bring the BEST TRAFFIC. Giving dealers a “tool’ and telling them to go buy their own is indeed and very often a recipe for $8 dollar clicks, wasted budget, wrong keywords, along with dozens of other issues that a trained SEM would immediately skirt right around because they know where things can quickly fail and they successfully can navigate the water quickly and steer away from the rocks. Making a dealer “captain” of an oil tanker with a brisk training ends up with the equivalent of crashes of Titanic proportions. We have taken over such campaigns from other “major SEM companies” so we speak from experience. There are more ways to waste money than make money with SEM when put in an uneducated persons hands. With the turnover that many dealers have, it’s almost a guarantee that someone new will be taking the wheel in a matter of time. Here is an article we wrote that demonstrates a quick top ten list of how to waste your search marketing budget. Click to read article

I will agree with Paul that you can indeed rank quickly with SEO since we have placed press releases for clients and won phrases within 2-3 hours. Some of these releases have run for 7 months at #1 position for top nationwide phrases and brought in thousands of visitors with low bounce rates and high conversion rates.

As for which converts better, look at your analytics. The dealer’s own organic listings ALWAYS convert better. Google Organic is typically second, and PPC and other sources are usually mixed in there as well. Autotrader and cars.com website referrals are practically nil so it’s not even worth mentioning.

The smart dealers, as stated above, are buying direct without a middleman. Dumbing down a tool for buying SEM or PPC can give a false impression of success, when combined with confusing Analytics that draw confusing conclusions. Some would view this as a quick and easy recurring money grab by taking advantage of dealer’s knowledge of search marketing. There is sizzle and then there is steak. You can’t eat the sizzle but we all know that sometimes that is what a dealer wants to buy. It doesn’t mean that is the only option but of course it’s expected to be on the menu.

We cannot post all of our clients top SEO keywords because that is just bad practice but we deeply track any and all clicks and calls from a dealer’s marketing so we can help them manage their waste. I’d be curious what methods and processes are in place to ensure dealers do not commit SEM “worst practices”. What protects them from buying PPC nationwide by accident, or buying broad match for phrases like “Toyota” and paying $20 bucks per click? Or is this just giving someone a loaded gun without a safety class?

Again the objective is to maximize the balance between lowest cost per sale, and volume… in the end resulting in the greatest ROI.

SEM is labor intensive if implemented PROPERLY and is not auotmated if the dealer is wanting to achieve the most bang for their buck.

Automated software is not the solution. Ad management software can help if the person at the helm knows what they are doing and not relying a bucketed group of keywords one size fits all.

That is a recipe for disaster.

There is obviously a case for both SEO and SEM, everyone agrees. As you know numerous studies have shown that the combination of the two together make for the most impressive results (as Mike mentioned in his conversation with Google.)

One thing to be brought up is the availability for a dealer to have the SEO support that they need to achieve the SEO results you are talking of. Many stores don’t even organically rank for their own name, let alone have the capability to create an on the fly organic campaign to pinpoint terms, especially in volume. If they do have the capability, clearly some words can organically rank immediately (or very fast) others no so… The time and cost to drive traffic from each source varies from each source and by store to store. I dont think its fair to claim any absolute, whats important is how do I, at MY STORE, in MY MARKET, given MY RESOURCES best allocate budget. For some SEO is the way to go, others it SEM, the importantce is the analysis to get the answer for each store.

With search marketing so new to our industry few ISMs are capable of that type of SEO work, and if they are most have pay plans that focus them on sales, not marketing and thus they are taken from their core dealership responsibility. Today, at the majority of stores, outside SEO help is the most viable option, from a site vendor or consultant.

What Im saying is there are other core issues stopping dealers from an aggressive SEO presence as you have mentioned, particularly because the process is human intensive where SEM can be very automated. (meaning dealers can login to advanced tools to create and deploy SEM campaigns in minutes, but that isnt possible at this time with SEO) As dealers do make the switch to bring on full time Search Marketers or consulting firms, the equation for value must include those costs and time constraints. When all considered, right now PPC is often the first choice for dealers because the costs and barriers to entry are lower while they transition their store. Thats not knocking SEO, its just the current realities of many dealers situations.

Id be happy if dealers would just start ranking ALL their ad sources on cost per sale basis, maximize the value of the cheapest source, then move to the next cheapest source. Most dealers still spend all they can on traditional sources then let the internet, despite its ROI, pick up the budget scraps! Thats what is crazy in my humble opinion.

I must ask that you quantify this though:

“If you’re having a special sale, or you’re offering a lower price than your competitor, adding it to your SEO will take ages to show up”

What do you mean by ages and what type of keywords would you target in that instance?

Most money terms can be won quite easily and have almost instant SEO. Broad terms would be more difficult but then again broad match does not help identify customers further into the buying cycle and you better be using negative keywords or watch your quality score tank.

I agree that a blend is needed but having multiple well optimized properties can crush your competition in the search results. Heat map studies have shown that having the #1 sponsored listing is equivalent of being below the fold in the natural results. 80% by being in all positions, paid,natural and local but #1 natural is going to get 70-75% on its own. How much is that additional margin of traffic really worth?

With pay per click cost being dynamic to market area and terms purchased, using national averages can be misleading. Enough to make people drool in highly competitive markets and is not taking into account the cost of creatives, landing page design, site development and the necessary technologies to handle the lead. Those are all part of “lead cost”.

At the same time if you are having a tent event over a weekend it would make sense to run PPC in all competitive markets to try to siphon traffic for people searching for what you sell in those areas if you have the supporting assets in place.

However if planned properly you can still get in those markets using SEO and probably get more traffic naturally for people further into the decision process.

A great case study would be to find which which types of leads, natural vs seo, have a higher closing percentage. It may already be out there and I have not seen it yet. I know that longtail traffic when generating leads to sell is golden and converts well even if they have to be referred to another site for the conversion.