It’s time to break out of bad habits and change the way you think about SEO. People aren’t using Google the same way they used to, and Google is changing as well.

Far too many dealers and marketers equate adding lots of pages to a website to SEO. One of the most common questions dealers ask me is “how many pages do we get a month with your SEO service?” – and that’s the wrong thing to ask.

Google doesn’t care how many pages you add to your site… Google cares about the quality of the content on your site. I’d much rather add one really awesome, in-depth page to a dealer’s site this month than add 10 janky location landing pages. You’re not going to show up in a nearby city simply because you added a hastily-written low quality page to your site that’s optimized around that city.

Google’s updates make the algorithm smarter, but it’s not just about how search results are calculated. Google is displaying more information on search results pages than ever before. Google My Business added tons of new features and information to the GMB profile in the last year.

Business owners and marketers are complaining that Google is now trying to keep users on Google, instead of expecting them to click through to websites. We’re not here to debate that today – we’re simply looking at the obvious fact that as Google continues to show more information on search results pages, users have less reason to click through to your website.

When potential customers have moved far enough down the funnel to be at the point where they’re choosing which dealership they want to buy from, they’re not browsing multiple sites anymore. Most of the time, they’re comparing dealers based on the info served up in search results pages.

I’ve mentioned it in several Wednesday Workshop videos (like this one here), and I’m going to say it again now: Your Google My Business profile is your new home page.

If someone needs your phone number, or wants to know when you’re open, or wants to check out testimonials, or wants to check out what the dealership looks like, they no longer have to click through to your site. As more info is displayed by Google, user behavior changes.

In the past, you’d hear that your website was your new showroom, and that your home page was the first impression you’d make on a potential customer. Now, that first impression comes from your Google My Business profile.

In the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors study, the recently released version of an annual study, there was a 32% increase in the importance of Google My Business signals. Nearly every Local SEO expert included in the study stated that they’d be investing significantly more time in Google My Business in 2019.

Change how you think about SEO and start paying more attention to your Google My Business profile. Don’t assume that potential customers will click through to your site – you have to put your best foot forward and wow people with your GMB profile.

Here’s a quick list of what you should be paying attention to:

• Make your dealership name is correct.
• Make sure your address is correct, and the map pin is placed in the right spot.
• Make sure you’ve got a local phone number listed (If you want to use a tracking number, list the tracking number in the primary slot and your local number in the second slot)
• Make sure your correct hours are listed.
• Make sure you choose the right categories. Don’t try to make other categories fit what you do, choose the fewest, most exact categories.
• Make sure you’ve got awesome photos and videos uploaded, and make sure you’re changing them out often.
• Make sure you’ve got an awesome review score - at least a 4.5
• Make sure you’ve got more reviews than your competitors have
• Make sure you’re responding to every review, both positive and negative
• Make sure you write an awesome business description
• Make sure you’re using Google Posts to share specials and promos (at least once a week)
• Make sure that you’re monitoring Questions and Answers. Answer new questions quickly, and make sure your answers are upvoted so they’re shown as the definitive answer to each question. Ask your own questions and answer them so that common questions are there for anyone to see.

Basically, you need to take your dealer hat off and look at your GMB profile like someone who knows nothing about your dealership. Are all your preliminary questions answered? Does the listing look attractive? Does it look like somewhere you’d want to buy from?

Adjust your SEO mindset for 2019 and concentrate on your Google My Business listing. You’ll show up better in local searches, and you’ll convert more potential customers.

It’s the 21st century where cars and technology constantly surround us. Consumers are car shopping anywhere, anytime and on any device. Mobile landing pages are the online connection between you and your range of users, don’t make the mistake of using a one-size fits all approach. Your mobile traffic isn’t equivalent to your desktop-traffic making it important to optimize for each accordingly. According to Google, 70% of searches for car MSRP and list prices are done on mobile. Attract specific consumers with an effective mobile landing page whether your goal is generating leads or increasing in-store visits. Learn how to give your mobile users optimal access to your dealership’s vital information.

Tips for Building Mobile Landing Pages

1. Don’t be too Wordy: As any mobile user knows, you’re on the go looking for simple and efficient ways to get things done. If they’re searching for cars, they want a platform that's clean and easy-to-use. Avoid long paragraphs and endless scrolling columns. A rule of thumb is to design your landing page to attract the shortest of attention spans. Break your chunks of information into brief-easy to read paragraphs or bullet points.
2. Erase Distracting Elements: We’ve all been there, one thing that causes mobile-users to bounce off your page is a slow-loading speed. Heavy imagery, video, large navigation bars and excessive external links all slow down your site's speed. If your pictures can’t explain what you’re selling better than your text can, ditch it all together. Avoid poor user experience by keeping minimal in all aspects.
3. Reduce Excess Loading Time: Not only is your mobile site speed important for the user experience, it’s also important for most search engines. Google’s mobile-friendly website update will give a boost to mobile-friendly pages in Google’s mobile search results. According to Google/SOASTA Research, adding just 2 seconds to your mobile website speed, from 1 second to 3, increases bounce rates by 32 percent. Don’t lose out on any of your visitors, test out your mobile website speed right here and make sure you’re not falling behind.
4. Choose Responsive Design: One mistake that many have made when creating mobile landing pages is sticking to a one-size fits all approach. The same landing page used for desktop will not appear the same on mobile, neither will it have the same goal. By choosing responsive web design over adaptive, it allows you to offer easy reading and navigation with minimum resizing, panning, and scrolling across all devices. Skip out on adaptive design because it doesn’t adjust across all screen sizes which causes poorly formatted landing pages.
5. Simple CTA Format: The goal of a mobile landing page is to drive phone calls, leads or in-store visits. When you’re using your CTA, you want to ensure it’s visible and mobile-friendly by placing it above the fold. However, making sure your CTA remains above the fold in responsive web design can be tricky. To optimize for mobile, try creating a smaller version of your CTA form and include it at the very top of the page. This will increase your leads by not allowing the user to endlessly scroll to find your CTA.
6. Form Fields: For most landing pages, many will include a form. We recommend keeping your CTA form fields to a minimum because nobody wants to fill in 10 text fields, etc. Make it simple for the user by ensuring the forms’ fields are large enough to be tapped easily with a finger. Don’t forget, the form fields might look fantastic on desktop but might shrink where they’re difficult to tap on a phone.
7. Test, Test, Test: You won’t know what works unless you test out your mobile landing pages and switch out different concepts, themes and wording. A/B testing allows you to test out two different formats of the same landing page and see which one performs better. This way you can eventually boost your conversions, leads and more. Try out different ideas constantly and if something that used to work for your dealership doesn't anymore, try something new.

To Sum Up...

As you can see, building the best mobile landing pages isn’t as clear cut as you might think. Cardinal rule number 1, never and we mean never, use a one-size fits all approach. You’re attracting a completely different audience on mobile versus desktop with different demographics, mindsets and purchasing decisions. Have a clear goal and Call-to-Action that appears above the fold. If you’re going to include a form, minimize the amount of fields in order to create the optimal user experience. Keep your landing page simple in all aspects by excluding slow-loading images, distracting elements and wordy text. This will in turn reduce your loading time which will benefit you by giving you a better ranking on search engines. Last but not least, test. Test until you find what works for you and your dealership.

Start building your dealership’s mobile-optimized landing pages and get those leads rolling in. 

Have you ever downloaded a giant spreadsheet with an overwhelming amount of data? How about a copy of your cell phone bill, calls & texts included? Ever made the mistake of saying “yes” to the receipt at CVS? There’s only so much data you can process at one time, and then you have to start breaking it up into chunks, and same is true for your Google Analytics traffic.

When it comes to Google Analytics, you’re receiving data from multiple channels about the activity on your dealership’s website. If you could group similar users based on specific criteria and parse out that data, it would make things much easier to decipher.

And you’re in luck because, of course, Google Segments does just that!

With Google Segments, you can view all Google Analytics’ standard & custom reports for users and visits that match specific criteria. Basically, Google Segments are specific subsets of your analytics data so you can break down the traffic coming from your website into more manageable datasets. One advantage that comes to mind is the ability to isolate specific subsets to analyze and respond to business trends.For example, out of your entire set of website visitors, you can segment users from a specific geographic region or users who purchased a specific product.

In other words, it’s targeting made more efficient. Imagine how much easier it would be to capture subprime shoppers if you could isolate them and serve up some compelling display or inventory-based ads?

Now, it doesn’t stop there, Google provides a variety of segment types. There are 22 built-in segments  from Google and an Analytics Customer Solutions Gallery, where you can choose from a wider variety of ready-made segments if you didn’t like any of the built-in ones.

Segments include one or more filter that isolate subsets of users, sessions, and hits. Here’s the breakdown:

Subsets users: Segmenting users who have previously purchased a product

Subsets of sessions: Segmenting all sessions where a purchase occurred

Subsets of hits: Any interaction including page views, events and transactions.

If you want to tailor a segment specifically to your dealership, then you can custom build them with the segment builder. Here are some examples of segments with individual filters adjusted:

Demographics: Segment users by demographic information including age, gender, language, affinity category, and location.

Technology: Segment users by their operating system, browser, screen resolution, device, and mobile.

Behavior: Segment by how often users visit and conduct transactions

Date of First Visit: Segment by when they first visited.

Traffic Sources: Segment by how they found you using campaign, medium, source, and keyword fields

You can also edit any custom segment that you have created (either from scratch, by copying an existing segment, by importing, or by receiving a shared segment). Google guides you how to manage, import, edit, share and delete your segments here.

You can also do single or multiple segmentation to compare segment subsets side by side. If you want to examine data in isolation like only mobile users; you would use only a mobile traffic segment. However, if you want to compare different subsets of data like comparing what kind of pages your converters view vs what pages your nonconverters view, you would use multiple segmentation. For example, you could compare subsets of data to the user flow or conversion path of the “average” user.Google guides you how to apply and remove single or multiple segments here.

 

While we’ve already outlined some of the benefits from segmenting your Google Analytics data, another MAJOR benefit is using them to create audiences. And obviously, those audiences can be used for Google Ad Campaigns.

For example, if you identify a subset of users who viewed the availability of a certain car, you can remarket to them by showing them ads of a price drop in that car (or one like it, if it sells).

In short, Google Segments gives you the ability to chop up your website traffic in a variety of ways: demographics, social channels, geography, device, and so much more.

The digital advantage this gives your dealership is undeniable. Not only can you start isolating potential customers with more precision, but you can start making business decisions with better data.