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As I was putting the finishing touches our study of 34 website platforms as part of the 2009 ASMA study for car dealers, a question came to mind. By the way, the study will be released at the 7th Digital Dealer Conference in Nashville on November 1st.
Question: Should website companies provide in their base website package a site that includes unique Page Titles and META descriptions, which would be Google SEO Compliant?
Google’s SEO Starter Guide as well as Google Webmaster Tools specifically calls out the need to have unique Page titles and descriptions. You can see from the screenshot from the Webmaster Tools that Google alerts developers when it finds duplicates. If this is in the console, its important.
Sloppy Or Ignorant?
However, I find that a number of car dealer platforms deliver duplicate Page Title and META description tags for brand new websites. If a site is allowed to be indexed for weeks with duplicate tags it would seem that some companies don’t have a SEO compliance check in place. I feel that this has to be in place for all platform providers that want to compete in this industry.
I’m raising the bar and stating that all car dealer websites be delivered with basic unique tags so that a new site is not penalized in organic search results. This can be accomplished with a simple search and replace script on default tags for starters. Then an SEO specialist can tweak the pages further.
This problem is not just for new sites. A number of mature websites fail basic the Google SEO compliance tests.
Duplicate Descriptions
Just this week I advised a new dealership that I’m working with, who has had their site up for over a month, that their META description tags were duplicated and that some Page Titles were also duplicated. See the screen shot below of the “site:” command which lists pages in Google’s index:
From every test that I have done for organic search, these two factors play an important role in search results along with other factors like page content, PageRank, etc. To leave the Page Titles and META description in this condition does not make any sense, especially when everyone is talking about the importance SEO and search optimization.
So, what do you think? Should dealership platforms be held to a standard that they deliver a basic Google SEO compliant website day one?
Even the most rudimentary platform should have that ability out of the box. It is not the responsibility of the provider to make the proper changes however it should be included in the deliver on how to do it.
Now if the provider does not give the client the ability to do it, which your client’s provider does not, then they should deliver at a minimum proper tags even if they just define content silos. I know with their particular platform, which I have a great amount of experience with, getting changes expedited at times is like pulling teeth.
I have yet to see a provider deliver anything close to a compliant website in as far as features such as google compliant sitemaps, proper 404 handling, the ability to initiate 301’s from the client side et al,,,,
The industry platforms are nothing but a framework that holds widgets and presents them to the website visitor in such a way to entice conversion. Some are built in others are remote hosted, a quilt of sorts.
But to answer your question it is buyer beware, I can see that if they are not doing it it would be easy to terminate a contract based on marketing materials and actual delivery.
Dealer websites are really the combination of at least these 4 things
1. Artistic and creative design
2. Software platform and architecture (CMS, inventory, etc)
3. Search engine optimization
4. Marketing and lead conversion
It takes all of these things to create a good website. The challenge for website providers is being very good at all of them. They all take unique talents.
I agree that a website vendor should have at least default unique page titles at a minimum.
Matt Watson
VinSolutions
http://www.vinsolutions.com/dealersites.aspx
Matt, you bring up a good point. A good website takes and investment in multiple disciplines. As an SEO consultant, the SEO basics to me are important but equally important are a design that encourages engagement and calls to action that result in leads.
The report that I’m working on is one piece of the pie. Maybe next year I can expand the report to speak on design and lead conversion.
Lead conversion is the most important thing. Doesn’t matter how well you optimize the site or how pretty it is if it converts very poorly!
In regards to this same topic but for CRM, we always tell dealers we can’t promise our CRM will help you sell more cars. Our CRM can do tons of amazing things and help drive traffic to your showroom. But if your salespeople don’t know how to handle an up or your desk manager doesn’t know how to bid a trade, you still won’t be as successful as you could be.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by DrivingSales - Jared, Brian Pasch. Brian Pasch said: Should all car dealer website platforms be held to a higher standard for SEO? http://bit.ly/dO6Uc [...]
Uh- I’m a firm believer in give me what I’m supposed to be paying for! $1692 a month and I’m lucky to get position #19 on GOOGLE??!!! The website company should be ASHAMED to bill me! The annoyance is hearing, “Well we are targeting what you tell us”…well, who’s had the training and is getting paid to SEO my website? I can learn enough to be “dangerous” to both my site’s ranking and the company I’m paying pocketbook, yet…anyways, if more companies would follow what’s been laid out here as just the basic and then compound on it, I believe the complaints at dealership level would be minimal. It’s easy for a dealer principle to say “the Internet doesn’t work” when they can’t find their own site online…
Susan
That is my point and I’m glad that you added your person experience. If a dealer is paying $18,000 a year for a website, what part of delivering a basic Google Compliant website is hard?
In the 2009 ASMA Report I will be including tables from basic search tests. Would you believe that some web platforms don’t appear on Google page one for a search on major brand and popular model in the town that the dealership is located.
Ficticious Example to demonstrate: You sell Ford cars in Sweet Fizzle Kansas and you type into Google “Ford F150 Sweet Fizzle”.
Shouldn’t the dealer’s website appear somewhere on Google Page One? Some platforms in my study did not.
These BASICS are easy, meaning on-site SEO compliance should be a part of the basic deliver.