According to the State of Automotive Attribution study, most dealers felt that accurate measurement of their marketing campaigns is important, with most relying on in-house reporting (68 percent) and/or vendor reporting (64 percent).

However, only 30 percent of dealers reported being satisfied with how they measure data.

When asked how knowledgeable they were about marketing attribution, 30 percent said they believe attribution and analytics are important, but don’t know where to begin.

20 percent said they didn’t know anything about marketing attribution.

According to the study, 68 percent of dealership aren’t effectively using (or, worse, failing to use) any type of marketing attribution to measure their advertising results.

Attribution, the ability to track marketing investments along the path to purchase, is an essential tool for automotive dealerships when it comes to understanding which elements within their marketing basket are the most effective at generating sales.

Analytics are also key when it comes to tracking and measuring data; after all, without them, what would you be tracking?

So what should your dealership be measuring?

Buyer Analytics

In the early 2010s, dealer analytics leaned heavily on vehicle pricing tools, letting dealers see the pricing information in their markets and price the vehicles on their lots accordingly.

While it’s still a valuable tool, it’s widespread and commonly used and thus, unfortunately, less likely to set you apart.

Understanding the “right buyer” for your dealership and aligning the right inventory for that right buyer can be critical to moving customers down the purchase funnel.

You shouldn’t just be tracking customers who’ve made purchases at your dealership; it’s important to also analyze the customers that considered buying a vehicle from you.

“These statistics can prove to be invaluable to dealerships as it causes them to consider questions regarding those consumers. Consumers that were touched by the media who entered the dealership’s showroom, or visited their car lot, but didn’t make a purchase can be vital for the dealerships. These figures can be tracked by implementing physical beacons or even through mobile listening.”

Predictive Analytics

To stay ahead, you need to understand in which direction the market is moving, not where it used to be.

Ask yourself: which vehicles should you be stocking based on target buyers?

Do you currently stock vehicles unlikely to drive demand, whether they don’t match your dealership profile or align to target customers?

Still, data is no replacement for experience; the two work together.

Dealers who combine their experience with the right data outputs can allow the best, most informed decisions to be made.

This is, after all, where predictive analytics’s strength lies: providing leading indicators based on things like market movements, competitive actions, and inventory shifts to help your dealership come out on top.

Sales end in the dealership showroom, but, more often than not, they begin online.

And as technology evolves and moves forward, so do attribution models.

Plus, consumers have access to (and are thus being influenced by) a number of sources like comparing sites and reviews of automakers, models, and dealerships when searching for the best deal.

It’s more important now than ever that dealers be on top of their marketing game in order to get as many customers as possible.

Knowing which sources lead customers to your business - and which are a waste of money - is an enormous help when it comes to making your marketing decisions.

As such, it’s vital for your dealership’s success that you measure analytics and attribution to make sure everything is running smoothly.

Great SEO (Search Engine Optimization) performance of a dealership’s website is a must-have to be competitive.

Google continues to be the king of search engines – and that’s not changing anytime soon.

It’s important dealerships and/or their SEO vendor stay current on Google’s algorithmic changes that might impact the effectiveness of their websites.

Search engines like Google are responsible for the majority of dealership website traffic.

SEO is critical to dealerships’ organic traffic because it allows search engines top find their website and recognize its relevancy to the searches that users perform.

When a user searches keywords on a search engine (e.g. Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.), dealerships’ websites are crawled for both the creative and technical components that algorithmically rank their website.

Remember, the search engine is crawling all dealerships’ websites nearby the user’s location, which likely includes competitors.

Dealerships should ensure their website is fully optimized to take advantage of all potential organic results from search engines to compete on brand awareness, new and used car leads, and parts and service new/returning business.

Depending on the current state of a website, the process of optimization for the desired keywords and terms can take months.

Additionally, once your dealership’s website rises to the top, it takes continuous work to stay there.

CHAPTER 1:
How To Choose The Best SEO Vendor For Your Dealership

Great SEO requires constant attention to an ever-changing digital marketing landscape that can be complicated.

Just like the inside and outside of a dealership’s showroom, their website needs continuous monitoring and upkeep.

Because SEO is so detrimental to a dealership’s success, many dealerships hire an SEO vendor.

Anytime a dealership partners with an outside vendor, appropriate vetting should take place.

Research time is often needed to find a vendor who can assist a store to achieve their digital marketing goals.

To begin, dealerships should document the challenges they are facing in detail along with their short-term and long-term SEO goals.

While reviewing their challenges and goals, pay close attention to the type of service and features you would like your SEO vendor to offer.

Luckily, there is a non-biased resource that has been collecting thousands of vendor ratings from dealership professionals for years that have been verified to help stores research the best vendors to achieve their goals.

DrivingSales Vendor Ratings is the best resource to research and view verified feedback from other dealership professionals who are current/pasts customers of various vendors in retail automotive.

DrivingSales Vendor Ratings allows dealerships to save valuable time deciding which vendors to consider.

When considering a SEO vendor for your dealership, find out what core services they offer.

Here are a handful of services to consider: On page optimization, off page optimization, needs analysis, keyword analysis and reporting methods.

Most vendors sell their services in different pricing “packages.”

Dealerships should weight their SEO goals along with their budget when considering any vendor product or service.

CHAPTER 2:
How To Optimize Your Website For Mobile Devices

There are several onsite and offsite differentiators that impact the SEO of a dealership’s website directly and indirectly.

Mobile searches have been increasing for years and as of 2015 more searches took place on a mobile devices than on computers in the U.S.

According to Hitwise, almost 60% of U.S. searches were from a mobile device.

edgeofthewebradio.com

Mobile usage is continuing to grow and plays a vital role in the SEO success for dealerships’ websites.

It’s important to ensure your content and web design look great on mobile devices while enabling search engines to decide what kinds of queries you should rank for as Google is moving towards a mobile-first index.

Part of a solid SEO strategy should entail analyzing mobile website visitors' behavior to look for opportunities.

CHAPTER 3:
How SEO Can Help You Connect With Local Customers

Local SEO is another essential part of a strong SEO strategy.

According to BrightLocal, “Local SEO helps businesses promote themselves online to local customers within a geographic area. The difference between local SEO and organic SEO is intent. Google can (pretty well, too) pick out search queries that have ‘local intent,’ meaning the searcher wants search engine results with local companies.”

bluecorona.com

Per GO-Globe, almost 50% of searches on Google are for local products and services.

Take advantage of Google Posts.

Dealers should make sure their dealership’s Google My Business profiles are up-to-date.

Be sure to optimize your URL tags and content.

Another aspect to consider is citations.

Dealerships should make sure their name, address and phone number are consistent across their websites, Google My Business, and trusted citation sites.

CHAPTER 4:
Video SEO Best Practices,
Including YouTube

It’s 2018, which means you can’t go too far into any digital marketing strategy without mentioning video and SEO is no exception.

There are several video ranking factors that can help dealerships with their SEO.

This is partially due to the fact 1/3 of all online activity is spent watching videos.

Not only that, but YouTube is the second largest search engine behind Google.

Dealerships should be considering how to produce high volume, quality videos for their websites along with YouTube and social media to increase their SEO performance.

To engage potential customers, ensure your videos have a nice hook to keep them engaged during the first 15-seconds.

Dealerships should consider creating longer parts and service educational videos for YouTube as the number one ranking factor is total watch time.

Use the exacted keyword once in the title of the video because Google and YouTube use it to understand what the video is all about.

Be sure to say your keyword in the video, otherwise YouTube will penalize your ranking.

Courtesy of: Quick Sprout

CHAPTER 5:
Website Optimization Checklist

On-page optimization

On page optimization focuses on optimizing the content and other aspects of a web page, which communicates to search engines each page is about. Dealership professionals shouldn’t be afraid to ask their potential SEO vendor how they approach optimizing on page content and let them explain their philosophy.

backlinko.com

Off-page optimization

Does the SEO vendor understand off-page elements and what they can do for your website? Off-page services often include social media, blogging and link building from relevant websites. It is also important for dealerships to find a SEO vendor that understands who they are and what their, “Why buy from me?” message is. Find a vendor who understands retail automotive and how new and used car online leads are generated. Dealerships should make sure their vendor can help with their parts and service web pages as well if it’s not being overseen in house.

moz.com

Needs analysis

The SEO vendor who wins a dealership’s business should understand their needs and what they hope to accomplish (short-term and long-term goals). During the needs analysis process, make sure the company understands retail automotive. They should be asking intelligent questions about where the dealership has been from a digital marketing perspective and ask about the history of the dealership’s website.

Keyword analysis

Without effective keywords, an effective SEO campaign cannot be achieved. Ask and understand how a prospective SEO vendor selects keywords or building links to your website. Make sure they know how to analyze a keyword’s volume appropriately.

Reporting methods

Ensure the SEO vendor being considered can provide reports, which easily show the progress of a dealership’s SEO campaign regularly. The reports should provide enough information to see each individual aspect of what a dealership is paying for and paint a clear picture as to where to go next from a strategy perspective.

Hello DrivingSales community, and welcome to another Whiteboard tutorial!

This week, we’re discussing SEO for your dealership’s website, and specifically what to work on when you’re partnering with an SEO vendor, or if you’re tackling SEO yourself, what outcomes to keep in mind as you’re breaking out your work into campaigns.

So, let’s start with the two main objectives for dealerships when looking at SEO as a marketing strategy, and then I’ll walk you through 3 different SEO campaigns you should be running on a monthly basis.

Generally speaking, when it comes to SEO for local businesses, we have two main objectives:

1. Direct customers who are researching cars to your dealership website, and present them with an easy to use and valuable shopping experience so much so that they schedule an appointment, call or visit your dealership to complete their purchase.

2. Maintain positive and controlled real estate on the first page of results for your brand. This means that when someone searches Google or Bing for your dealership, they see your website, your social profiles, reviews and even press mentions in the search results. They don’t see “_______ dealership sucks”.

From there, we take those outcomes, and work up SEO campaigns with those goals in mind.

SEO has always been sort of mystical, in that the average person doesn’t really know why Google displays certain websites on page one of the results, therefore there’s a lot of voodoo that goes along with SEO. Right? That’s the thought.

Well, even though we don’t have direct access to Google and don’t know exactly what their search algorithms are, we do know that they consider many different things when determining who ranks in the top ten results, and these ranking factors are generally best practices.

Following one particular best practice isn’t going to get your dealership ranking near the top, but if you follow these best practices, and you’re a legitimate business providing value to your customers, you can see some success with SEO.

So, who is this whiteboard video for?

If you’re working with an SEO vendor, this will help you understand what they’re working on, and help you both align on common goals.

If you’re tackling SEO yourself, this checklist will give you a framework from which to build your campaigns on.

So, knowing what our goals are with SEO, and whether you have a team you’re working with, or you’re creating these campaigns yourself, what are specific SEO tasks you can do each month to increase your dealership’s visibility in local searches?

I have 3 different campaigns, with 3 tasks for each that you can audit and complete on a monthly basis, which will all tie in to your core objectives and help you rank higher in the search engines.

Local SEO Checklist For Auto Dealerships

First, we want to audit the technical aspects of our website, that can help people navigate and find what they’re looking for, and also help the search engines crawl and index the pages.

So there are a number of things we can look at from a technical SEO standpoint, but I think here are the most important factors. First, we want our business name, address and phone number to be listed either in the footer or the header of the website, and also on the Contact Us page. Also, we want it to be complete and consistent across the site.

Next, we’ve got to make sure that the content on the website is unique. A lot of times, dealerships may just duplicate content across the pages, for vehicle descriptions for example.

Also, make sure the URLs of the website match the site’s hierarchy. My example here is lexusutah.com. If you’re searching through the new car inventory, it would be lexusutah.com/new/. If you’re looking at a particular model, say the LC500, that vehicle is under the new car folder.

The 2nd SEO campaign to focus on is the business citations. Now a citation is any mention of the dealership’s Name, Address and Phone Number on the web.

This can be in directories like Yellowpages.com or Yelp, or Facebook, blogs and local news sites.

First, we want to run an audit of our dealership’s citations, just to see what needs to be fixed. This can be done for free using a tool from Moz. You can check it out at moz.com/local/search.

What we want to do next is after we have a list of our business’ broken, missing and incomplete citations, is to create a plan to fix them.

This can be done through a number of tools or services, or can even be done manually.

The goal here is that the more citations your dealership has, and the more consistent and complete those citations are across all these sites, the more likely your dealership will rank higher for these local searches in Google.

Also, we want to make a plan to build new citations on sites and directories that don’t have your information.

There again are a few tools that can do this, like Moz Local or Loganix.

The third ongoing SEO campaign we want to look at is our dealership’s reputation. Google wants to give preference to local businesses who have a good online reputation in the form of reviews and ratings, in addition to good technical site structure and citations that we just discussed.

So let’s talk about some things you can do to stay proactive with your dealership’s online reputation.

First, is displaying reviews and testimonials across the website.

Not only is this unique content, but it’s also going to give credibility to those brand new visitors to your site that maybe don’t know much about your business.

Second, is asking customers for reviews. Now, Google will display a star rating next to your listing based on the number of Google Reviews your dealership has. So one thing we can do is email our customers who have Gmail addresses, and ask them to review the dealership on Google. That’s an easy thing to do, and it will go a long way in adding more Google Reviews to our business listing.

Third, there’s always a possibility that a dealership can get negative reviews, so we want to make sure we’re being proactive with those negative reviews and responding to them in a professional and transparent manner, and also thanking those who leave positive reviews.

Now, all these strategies should be ongoing each month, meaning you’re auditing where you’re at with technical structure of the site, how the citations are being fixed and built, and the dealership’s online reputation, but you’re also being proactive and building new campaigns around improvement of each of these metrics.

Alright, we covered a lot of information today, and I’m eager to hear your specific SEO plans and which one of these strategies you’re going to be tackling first, so please leave your comments.

Gary Vaynerchuk and Jared Hamilton sit down at the DrivingSales Executive Summit to talk about the future of the internet and how social media has changed the way business is conducted online.

DrivingSales Executive Summit 2011 Keynote Gary Vaynerchuk shares a story of how a signed Jay Cutler jersey resulted in a $1,000 purchase of wine.

As an Internet Marketing Manager, you know how important it is to drive quality leads to your dealership through SEO, social media and paid sources. Here are 12 videos from Moz you should plan on watching to help boost your efforts.

1. 10 Things that DO NOT (Directly) Affect Your Google Rankings

In the world of SEO, there are a lot of different paths you can take to achieve more search engine traffic and higher rankings, but these are ten metrics you shouldn't be worrying about.

Watch here.

2. 3 Tactics for Hyperlocal Keywords

Learn how to find those valuable, hyperlocal search terms that can connect your dealership with the right people.

Watch here.

3. Why Every Website (Not Just Local Sites) Should Invest in Local Links and Citations

Every dealership should be pursuing citations and local links, and here are the steps to discover those opportunities.

Watch here.

4. Why Listing Accuracy is Important

The accuracy of your dealership's citations (local listings) can either help you get business, or become a barrier to being discovered.

Watch here.

5. How to Research the Path to Customer Purchase

What's the journey your customers take between awareness and conversion? By understanding this path, you'll identify what content your dealership needs to create, how to position your store, and how to convert your visitors into buyers.

Watch here.

6. Why You Need to Find All Your NAP Variations Before Building Local Citations

One of the most important ranking factors for local businesses is the accuracy and consistency of their citations, and here's how to discover all your dealership's variations.

Watch here.

7. Remarketing to People That Have Already Visited Your Website

People are visiting your dealership's website, but are they falling through the cracks? This video explains how to get back in front of them.

Watch here.

8. Customer Journey Maps

Mapping out your customer's journey includes identifying all the highs and lows in between their first interaction and the last.

Watch here.

9. Barnacle SEO: Leveraging Other Sites' Rankings

Are there bigger websites in your local market that are outranking you for certain terms? Here's how your dealership can be like a barnacle on a big ship.

Watch here.

10. Taking Advantage of Google's Bias Toward Hyper-Fresh Content

Learn how to produce fresh content on your dealership's website without risking penalties.

Watch here.

11. How Business Listings Are Made

What if your dealership has incorrect information in Google's search results? Here's how you can fix your dealership's local information.

Watch here.

12. Evolution of the Local Algorithm

What factors specifically affect the rankings of local businesses in Google? Here's what you need to know, and how Google's local search has evolved over the years.

Watch here.

You finally did it!

You spent a good chunk of your afternoon writing the ultimate post for your DrivingSales Community blog.

You've got stats, research and quotes.

Even a couple of charts for extra context and value.

You hit "Publish" and wait...

"I bet I'll get 1,000 views by Monday."

When you check the stats on Sunday afternoon, you see a fraction of those views.

What gives?

If you're reading this, you're probably wondering how you can get more visits to your DrivingSales blog.

We held a webinar on this very subject in March, and had some great discussions around best practices when it comes to driving traffic and engagement on blog posts.

Here are the videos from that webinar, and we'd love for you to weigh in with your own best practices in the comments below.

What Is A DrivingSales Blog?

How To Post A Blog On DrivingSales

How To Plan The Best Topic For Your Blog Post

How To Write An Interesting And Click-Worthy Title

8 Best Practices To Follow When Writing A DrivingSales Blog Post

How To Promote Your Blog Post To Drive Traffic And Engagement

What are some traffic-boosting tactics that have worked for you? Share your best practices in the comments!

"Local SEO" means improving the online visibility of your dealership to local customers.

Your store’s accessibility and visibility during the holiday season is especially important, since many of your customers are already looking for deals and offers.

Dealerships should pay particular attention to their local SEO, to ensure their stores are visible in the search results and Google Maps.

Here are 5 ways to improve your local ranking:

1. Verify your business location

Claiming and managing your business in Google helps you control the information about your company that customers can see. You can do this through your Google My Business account (https://business.google.com).

2. Make sure your business info is complete and accurate

Log in to Google My Business and ensure the information about your business is up-to-date and complete. This includes your business' name, address and phone number, as well as contact information and photos of the interior and exterior. If you have special holiday hours, make sure these are updated in your business profile as well.

3. Include photos

Speaking of photos, there should be high quality photos of your dealership, including the exterior, inventory, your logo, and interior shots.

4. Review and respond to customer feedback

Reviews are a big factor to your company's local search visibility, so take the time to respond to customer reviews (good and bad) and give them an easy way to leave their feedback.

5. Sync your business info

Make sure the name, address and phone number of your business are exactly the same on both your website and your Google My Business profile. This includes variations of your physical address, as well as abbreviations in the business name. This great tutorial from Whitespark explains how to audit your dealership's citations.

Sunday, Oct. 22 @ 4 p.m.
Keith McKinzie - Sonju Two Harbors
Sean Stapleton - Dealer Teamwork

A majority of car buyers will begin their search for their next vehicle online, and that means dealerships need to have relevant and optimized ads running for their inventory.

At the first breakout session of the DrivingSales Executive Summit 2017, Keith McKinzie of Sonju Two Harbors and Sean Stapleton of Dealer Teamwork laid out a basic framework that dealerships can follow when setting up their paid ad campaigns.

1. Assess Your Dealership's Website

First, assess your dealership’s website to prepare for conversions. To do this, ensure it’s optimized for mobile traffic since a majority of your visitors will be using a mobile device. Include transactional data, including pricing, colors and inventory counts. Include highly relevant content on each landing page you run ads to, since the more relevant the ad is, the cheaper it will be to run. Also be sure to optimize for search engines. Think like Google and Bing, and how they’d want to serve their customers (those who are using the search engines).

Next, build a good foundation for your paid search ads. This means sending SEM traffic to your own website, and not microsites. Next, you’ll want to include proper hierarchical structure in your website navigation, to ensure visitors are able to get to where they want to go. Be sure not to rely on too many images to communicate the offer you’re advertising, since search engines can’t read or rank these. Finally, use dynamic, mobile-responsive and model-specific landing pages. Remember the ad copy should match the landing page copy. This will help to increase the quality score of your ad, and drive down the costs.

2. Audit Your SEM

Secondly, Keith and Sean discussed best practices when running Adwords.

This is a great opportunity to highlight what makes your dealership unique. Keep in mind that your store’s inventory is not what makes you unique, since you don’t actually produce the cars. This is a chance to highlight prices, promotions and exclusives that set your dealership apart from others.

Include at least one of your keywords in the ad. What are people searching when they’re in a transactional mindset?

Here are some best practices when it comes to setting up your paid search ads:
Use a linking strategy with your landing pages. This means ensuring the website visitor ends up in the right place once they click from the ad to the landing page, and finally to either schedule a test drive or connect with a sales person.

Don’t land your paid search ads on VDPs or your home page, since these landing pages won’t be relevant to the search. Ensure you’re matching paid search ads with real-time, relevant transactional data on the landing page. Utilize the latest ad formats in Google, including “call-only” ads that are highly relevant and actionable for local searchers.

“I believe the GM of the future is the Internet Manager of today…” That means there’s an incredible responsibility on the Internet Manager’s shoulders, but with that responsibility comes with upside to driving revenue for the dealership.

Where do people become informed and educated? Before the internet, people would use encyclopedias and libraries to search for solutions to their problems. Now, information is at their fingertips with search engines, and if people can’t find your dealership, how can they buy from you?

Here's a checklist of action items:

• Does your site contain responsive, model-specific landing pages?
• Do these landing pages contain offers with meaningful, transactional data (more than MSRP?)
• Do you have offers at every trim level for new and used vehicles? Do you have multiple service offers?
• Do your paid search ads link to model-specific landing pages or relevant SRPs?
• Do your paid search ads contain relevant transactional data that matches the landing page's transactional data?
• Are your paid search ads in the Expanded Text Ad format and do they utilize Ad Extensions?