Today is November 1st and for car dealers this means that the monthly clock has been reset and new sales goals will be made for the next 30 days.

For readers that are responsible for car sales, it's time to make a November 1st resolution to apply what you may have learned at recent conferences or what has been shared on automotive communities.

Stu Mittleman Inspired Me

I had the opportunity to spend the weekend with World Record Holding Ultra Marathoner Stu Mittleman who has World and National records in ultra marathon races (6 days) and won a very special 1,000 mile race as part of his hall of fame accomplishments.

We ran 10 miles together, which was the longest I ran since re-starting running back in April. Stu told me a story about how he was hired to train 27 employees of a New York hotel for the New York City Marathon in 9 weeks. The farthest distance 26 of these 27 people ever ran by 3.1 miles, which is a 5K race.

Some would have thought this would be impossible but all 26 "newbies" completed the race. The one experienced runner did not make it. He succeeded by training the runners to look at the race as a New York City street fair with 26 stands, which corresponds to the 26 aide stations that are along the course for water. By looking at the race as 26 one-mile runs, he was able to achieve the goal of getting these runners to finish the race.

The details of this story and Stu's philosophy on running can be found in his book "Slow Burn" a recommended read for anyone who loves to run or anyone who wants to understand how to best utilize the power of your body.

Many car dealers came back from Vegas conference trying to figure out how they are going to implement the 26+ things that they learned and if they do that, they will fail. So, let's look at all the digital marketing opportunities for your dealership and execute them one at a time so we can move forward and not stay fixated at the starting line.

The transformation of traditional automotive advertising to digital marketing is not a sprint but a marathon as new learning, technology, and best practices need time to implement. My suggestion is that you start your Digital Marketing Marathon today by making THREE RESOLUTIONS:

Digital Marketing Resolution #1

Many people have written about the changes in Google Search results with Google Places taking a much larger portion of Page One Results. (Read my latest post) If you haven't seen this for yourself, search for "Baltimore Honda Dealers" and see how different Page One looks.

Heritage Honda has 152 reviews, Norris Honda has 41 reviews, and Brown's Honda City has 14 reviews and the reviews are rating the dealership less than 2 stars. Google Places and car dealer reviews are now front and center in Google search. When presented with this page of results, whose dealership will most likely get an increase of clicks?

It is TIME to start your Reputation Management Process in November - Make That Commitment. You need to have a process by which customers can post their reviews on the 5-6 primary websites that are consolidated in Google Places. Those sites vary from market to market, but a process is needed. If you don't have a high star count on Page One, your traditional advertising dollars will be assisting your competitors attract more in market shoppers.

Digital Marketing Resolution #2

Invest in tracking phone numbers for your off site content publishing, blogs, and social media engagement. It's time to stop making excuses that tracking numbers are expensive. Actually the data that these numbers provide can shed light on where you are wasting money.

Tracking numbers can also prevent you from terminating services that are working very well. At DrivingSales Executive Summit Matt Murray from Dealer.com showed that for every LEAD that was submitted on a dealer's website from a Google Adwords campaign, the dealer received FIVE phone calls.

The point is that IF you are measuring the success of Google Adwords on lead form submissions alone, you would be missing the majority of consumer response generated by PPC. This applies to so many other digital marketing strategies as well however I don't have the calls to lead ratio.

By placing tracking numbers on microsites, PDF brochures, and social media profiles you can start to see what marketing channels are attracting consumer calls. If Matt Murray's data does not inspire you to start tracking your calls, you have bigger issues at hand.

Digital Marketing Resolution #3

Many dealers are using Google Adwords (PPC) to generate traffic to their website and this is a good strategy as long as you are inspecting where these clicks are going and measuring what is happening when they land on those pages. Secondly, we all can agree that designing the perfect landing page design is not a one time design task.

You'll never know if you have a good design until you setup A/B testing.

So I would like to encourage all dealers to make a resolution to inspect their PPC landing pages and to start an A/B testing program to track and measure results based on different designs.

For example, dealers know that the model car a consumer calls about or discusses when they first walk into a dealership is not always the car they purchase. In the same way, give your landing pages a design that provide alternatives to consumers. If you design a 2010 Nissan Altima lease special page, you may want to provide button that also shows your current Nissan Sentra lease specials or a button that shows used Nissan Altima's.

The key is to recognize that you have no idea what is working until you test variations. Many dealers are spending 3K, 5K, 10K, and even 25K a month on Google Adwords yet they have never tested whether their landing pages are achieving the optimal results.

The testing processes takes time, but it is time well spent. The knowledge that you will gain from the experiment will revolutionize your PPC strategies.

Start Your Digital Marketing Marathon

So will you start your Digital Marketing Marathon this month? Digital marketing is not a sprint. Take it slow and get comfortable but you have to make the commitment to start the race. 

If Stu Mittleman can run 70 miles at a pace of 7 minutes a mile or run 1,000 miles averaging 52 miles a day, transforming your dealership to achieve outstanding digital marketing results is surely achievable.

If you need help with any of these three resolutions, ask in this forum or give me a call. 

Brian Pasch, CEO
PCG Digital Marketing
http://www.pcgdigitalmarketing.com
http://twitter.com/automotiveseo

Today is November 1st and for car dealers this means that the monthly clock has been reset and new sales goals will be made for the next 30 days.

For readers that are responsible for car sales, it's time to make a November 1st resolution to apply what you may have learned at recent conferences or what has been shared on automotive communities.

Stu Mittleman Inspired Me

I had the opportunity to spend the weekend with World Record Holding Ultra Marathoner Stu Mittleman who has World and National records in ultra marathon races (6 days) and won a very special 1,000 mile race as part of his hall of fame accomplishments.

We ran 10 miles together, which was the longest I ran since re-starting running back in April. Stu told me a story about how he was hired to train 27 employees of a New York hotel for the New York City Marathon in 9 weeks. The farthest distance 26 of these 27 people ever ran by 3.1 miles, which is a 5K race.

Some would have thought this would be impossible but all 26 "newbies" completed the race. The one experienced runner did not make it. He succeeded by training the runners to look at the race as a New York City street fair with 26 stands, which corresponds to the 26 aide stations that are along the course for water. By looking at the race as 26 one-mile runs, he was able to achieve the goal of getting these runners to finish the race.

The details of this story and Stu's philosophy on running can be found in his book "Slow Burn" a recommended read for anyone who loves to run or anyone who wants to understand how to best utilize the power of your body.

Many car dealers came back from Vegas conference trying to figure out how they are going to implement the 26+ things that they learned and if they do that, they will fail. So, let's look at all the digital marketing opportunities for your dealership and execute them one at a time so we can move forward and not stay fixated at the starting line.

The transformation of traditional automotive advertising to digital marketing is not a sprint but a marathon as new learning, technology, and best practices need time to implement. My suggestion is that you start your Digital Marketing Marathon today by making THREE RESOLUTIONS:

Digital Marketing Resolution #1

Many people have written about the changes in Google Search results with Google Places taking a much larger portion of Page One Results. (Read my latest post) If you haven't seen this for yourself, search for "Baltimore Honda Dealers" and see how different Page One looks.

Heritage Honda has 152 reviews, Norris Honda has 41 reviews, and Brown's Honda City has 14 reviews and the reviews are rating the dealership less than 2 stars. Google Places and car dealer reviews are now front and center in Google search. When presented with this page of results, whose dealership will most likely get an increase of clicks?

It is TIME to start your Reputation Management Process in November - Make That Commitment. You need to have a process by which customers can post their reviews on the 5-6 primary websites that are consolidated in Google Places. Those sites vary from market to market, but a process is needed. If you don't have a high star count on Page One, your traditional advertising dollars will be assisting your competitors attract more in market shoppers.

Digital Marketing Resolution #2

Invest in tracking phone numbers for your off site content publishing, blogs, and social media engagement. It's time to stop making excuses that tracking numbers are expensive. Actually the data that these numbers provide can shed light on where you are wasting money.

Tracking numbers can also prevent you from terminating services that are working very well. At DrivingSales Executive Summit Matt Murray from Dealer.com showed that for every LEAD that was submitted on a dealer's website from a Google Adwords campaign, the dealer received FIVE phone calls.

The point is that IF you are measuring the success of Google Adwords on lead form submissions alone, you would be missing the majority of consumer response generated by PPC. This applies to so many other digital marketing strategies as well however I don't have the calls to lead ratio.

By placing tracking numbers on microsites, PDF brochures, and social media profiles you can start to see what marketing channels are attracting consumer calls. If Matt Murray's data does not inspire you to start tracking your calls, you have bigger issues at hand.

Digital Marketing Resolution #3

Many dealers are using Google Adwords (PPC) to generate traffic to their website and this is a good strategy as long as you are inspecting where these clicks are going and measuring what is happening when they land on those pages. Secondly, we all can agree that designing the perfect landing page design is not a one time design task.

You'll never know if you have a good design until you setup A/B testing.

So I would like to encourage all dealers to make a resolution to inspect their PPC landing pages and to start an A/B testing program to track and measure results based on different designs.

For example, dealers know that the model car a consumer calls about or discusses when they first walk into a dealership is not always the car they purchase. In the same way, give your landing pages a design that provide alternatives to consumers. If you design a 2010 Nissan Altima lease special page, you may want to provide button that also shows your current Nissan Sentra lease specials or a button that shows used Nissan Altima's.

The key is to recognize that you have no idea what is working until you test variations. Many dealers are spending 3K, 5K, 10K, and even 25K a month on Google Adwords yet they have never tested whether their landing pages are achieving the optimal results.

The testing processes takes time, but it is time well spent. The knowledge that you will gain from the experiment will revolutionize your PPC strategies.

Start Your Digital Marketing Marathon

So will you start your Digital Marketing Marathon this month? Digital marketing is not a sprint. Take it slow and get comfortable but you have to make the commitment to start the race. 

If Stu Mittleman can run 70 miles at a pace of 7 minutes a mile or run 1,000 miles averaging 52 miles a day, transforming your dealership to achieve outstanding digital marketing results is surely achievable.

If you need help with any of these three resolutions, ask in this forum or give me a call. 

Brian Pasch, CEO
PCG Digital Marketing
http://www.pcgdigitalmarketing.com
http://twitter.com/automotiveseo

Have you seen that Google is experimenting with a new Page One SERP design? I saw this today as I searched for Chicago Dealers and I was blown away how much Page One real estate was used for Google Maps listings.

I color coded the SERP in sections to show that:

- Google Adwords was split on top and right shown in pink.

- Two organic listings were displayed above the new maps region, shown in green.

- That seven spots were taken up with exploded Google Maps listings, shown in red.

- The remainder of the organics were shown under maps which were cut off on the screen capture.

Google Maps Changes Digital Marketing Strategies

I don't see this type of display for all searches and maybe this is a new design for broad commercial searches but this is a game changer. What do you think?

What I can see is that Google review stars are SIGNIFICANTLY MORE VISIBLE which means that automotive reputation management processes must really be locked down.

What I also see is that if you are not in the top spots for organic search, you will get crushed by this new design and experience significantly less clicks.

What I also would expect is that the Google Ads on the right side will receive less clicks. There is too much activity front and center that brings the consumers eye to the maps region. So this will also be a game changer for Adwords bidding.

Your Homework

Get your Google Maps listings updated with photos, videos, coupons, and make sure you have the geo-targeting set correctly. If this is a look at the future, the more complete and compelling your Google Maps listing is, the more calls and clicks you will receive.

If you need help, ask below or call: 732.450.8200.

Have you seen that Google is experimenting with a new Page One SERP design? I saw this today as I searched for Chicago Dealers and I was blown away how much Page One real estate was used for Google Maps listings.

I color coded the SERP in sections to show that:

- Google Adwords was split on top and right shown in pink.

- Two organic listings were displayed above the new maps region, shown in green.

- That seven spots were taken up with exploded Google Maps listings, shown in red.

- The remainder of the organics were shown under maps which were cut off on the screen capture.

Google Maps Changes Digital Marketing Strategies

I don't see this type of display for all searches and maybe this is a new design for broad commercial searches but this is a game changer. What do you think?

What I can see is that Google review stars are SIGNIFICANTLY MORE VISIBLE which means that automotive reputation management processes must really be locked down.

What I also see is that if you are not in the top spots for organic search, you will get crushed by this new design and experience significantly less clicks.

What I also would expect is that the Google Ads on the right side will receive less clicks. There is too much activity front and center that brings the consumers eye to the maps region. So this will also be a game changer for Adwords bidding.

Your Homework

Get your Google Maps listings updated with photos, videos, coupons, and make sure you have the geo-targeting set correctly. If this is a look at the future, the more complete and compelling your Google Maps listing is, the more calls and clicks you will receive.

If you need help, ask below or call: 732.450.8200.

The wait is over. DealerRater.com customers can now rejoice as Google Maps will now include the "star" counts on DealerRater on Google Maps.

As you can see from the screen shot below, dealers like Marlboro Nissan with over 300 positive reviews, will benefit from this new change. Prior to this change, Marlboro Nissan had less than 10 review stars showing.

When Google Maps displays listings of car dealers, as shown below, it has been proven that high star counts increase click-through rates. With over 330 reviews displayed for Marlboro Nissan, their Google Maps traffic will surely increase. Their Internet Reputation Management program will really pay off now.

And when you click on the details for each dealer, you can see how well DealerRater.com reviews dominate the page:

Automotive Reputation Management Services

Congratulations to Chip, Matt, and the entire DealerRater.com team for getting this integration completed. Dealers looking for assistance and training to setup strong reputation management processes can contact PCG Digital Marketing for an IRM proposal.

Reputation Management is so important so do not neglect it!  http://www.pcgdigitalmarketing.com

The wait is over. DealerRater.com customers can now rejoice as Google Maps will now include the "star" counts on DealerRater on Google Maps.

As you can see from the screen shot below, dealers like Marlboro Nissan with over 300 positive reviews, will benefit from this new change. Prior to this change, Marlboro Nissan had less than 10 review stars showing.

When Google Maps displays listings of car dealers, as shown below, it has been proven that high star counts increase click-through rates. With over 330 reviews displayed for Marlboro Nissan, their Google Maps traffic will surely increase. Their Internet Reputation Management program will really pay off now.

And when you click on the details for each dealer, you can see how well DealerRater.com reviews dominate the page:

Automotive Reputation Management Services

Congratulations to Chip, Matt, and the entire DealerRater.com team for getting this integration completed. Dealers looking for assistance and training to setup strong reputation management processes can contact PCG Digital Marketing for an IRM proposal.

Reputation Management is so important so do not neglect it!  http://www.pcgdigitalmarketing.com

Once the industry darling of automotive websites, back when car dealers raced to purchase Flash based websites, Dealerskins has had a challenge recently re-energizing their brand. In fact you might say that the company has been laying low for the past year and I think I understand why.

Over the past two years I have witnessed the industry move away from 100% Flash websites and this has impacted Dealerskins’ cutting edge moniker.

In the early days of Flash based websites, the Adobe technology was a hindrance for obtaining strong organic search visibility. In effect, the original Dealerskins Flash websites were not easily optimized using proven Automotive SEO strategies.

In the past, my reviews of the Dealerskins platform from an SEO perspective have not been flattering to say the least.

I will be the first to raise a toast to the website “Phoenix” that has risen with renewed focus that will surprise its former critics. This bird is hungry and hunting!

Existing Dealerskins clients are in for a nice surprise and according to company executives; Dealerskins has a great new story to tell! This is not a full review of the Dealerskins SEO architecture and search marketing strengths of the new platform but a peak at what is coming.

The latest technology from Dealerskins will be included in the 2010 Automotive Website Awards, which will be presented on Tuesday, October 12, 2010 at 8:00 am at the Mirage Hotel.

Moving Towards A Primary HTML Platform

The first point to acknowledge is Dealerskins’ willingness to rebuild their CMS platform and technology while keeping their existing customers in business and thriving. That is not an easy task! The platform that we reviewed in August is a bridge to their full Content Management System (CMS) release that will be announced in the coming months.

The development team at Dealerskins should be congratulated. Their current hybrid Flash and HTML platform actually performed better in our search marketing architecture analysis this year than many of their peers. In short, this is NOT your parent’s Oldsmobile.

Automotive Inventory Optimization

The current Dealerskins website technology fixed the biggest complaint that I had in the past; their inventory module was practically invisible to the search engines and not in conformance with my SEO best practices. The new Dealerskins platform has optimized website pages for every car in inventory with unique page titles and META descriptions for each car. I also liked their breadcrumb menu on each inventory page shown below:

You can see an example of their new inventory page by visiting this link for a 2009 Volkswagen Routan. The final version of their optimized inventory technology will be unveiled in their next CMS release but the current version is performing very well in our testing. I would like to see more car details integrated into the inventory URL string.

In an interesting balancing act, the Dealerskins design team kept the Flash navigation menus to add some sizzle while adding HTML navigation links and editable text areas on key website pages. In the near future, the Dealerskins homepage will be 100% Flash free which will resolve any complaints of operating systems that are not Flash friendly.

The addition of HTML content pages will also increase the search visibility for existing Dealerskins customers. According to the company, approximately 50% of their existing customers have been converted to the new platform.

Website Administrative Tools Lagging For Content

The administrative tools for car dealers do not currently allow dealers to add their own content pages on the fly. A call to customer support will create as many blank pages that a dealer needs and then a dealer can add or edit content. In the final version of the platform, more robust content editing tools and a blog are scheduled to be included. As car dealer focus more on content writing in 2011, a robust content publishing platform will be a requirement for success.

The Dealerskins platform includes their own analytics technology that provides an independent audit for car dealers who have hired third party companies to run their Adwords or SEO campaigns. Their development team addressed a common concern of dealers who are paying thousands of dollars a month only to trust their vendors are being truthful about traffic, clicks and lead reports they send.

SEO Ranking Tools and More

The Dealerskins team also demonstrated some of their impressive digital marketing tools which included built-in SEO ranking reports and something that dealers should look at called the “Psychic Sales Tool” (PST). The tool shows dealers all the pages and cars that the consumer visited on the Dealerskins website prior to submitting a lead. PST gives the dealer more information about any shopper before they contact them.

Attractive Car Dealer Mobile Sites

Dealerskins has also created attractive mobile websites that are based on the new HTML 5 standard. You can see their slick mobile technology by visiting www.gentiliniford.com from your iPhone. The mobile interface is one of the best that I have seen and very fast.

The Silence Is Broken

The previous silence from Dealerskins?

They were hard at work surveying their customers and getting their new release out the door to customers. Car dealers using the old Dealerskins platform are encouraged to give their account manager a call and see about the upgrade path to this more powerful website technology.

Hats off to Dealerskins for moving to address the most immediate needs of their user base. According to the Dealerskins team more features and enhancements are coming, so listen up when your Dealerskins representative calls.

SEO pundits will not have the DS dog to kick anymore!

Once the industry darling of automotive websites, back when car dealers raced to purchase Flash based websites, Dealerskins has had a challenge recently re-energizing their brand. In fact you might say that the company has been laying low for the past year and I think I understand why.

Over the past two years I have witnessed the industry move away from 100% Flash websites and this has impacted Dealerskins’ cutting edge moniker.

In the early days of Flash based websites, the Adobe technology was a hindrance for obtaining strong organic search visibility. In effect, the original Dealerskins Flash websites were not easily optimized using proven Automotive SEO strategies.

In the past, my reviews of the Dealerskins platform from an SEO perspective have not been flattering to say the least.

I will be the first to raise a toast to the website “Phoenix” that has risen with renewed focus that will surprise its former critics. This bird is hungry and hunting!

Existing Dealerskins clients are in for a nice surprise and according to company executives; Dealerskins has a great new story to tell! This is not a full review of the Dealerskins SEO architecture and search marketing strengths of the new platform but a peak at what is coming.

The latest technology from Dealerskins will be included in the 2010 Automotive Website Awards, which will be presented on Tuesday, October 12, 2010 at 8:00 am at the Mirage Hotel.

Moving Towards A Primary HTML Platform

The first point to acknowledge is Dealerskins’ willingness to rebuild their CMS platform and technology while keeping their existing customers in business and thriving. That is not an easy task! The platform that we reviewed in August is a bridge to their full Content Management System (CMS) release that will be announced in the coming months.

The development team at Dealerskins should be congratulated. Their current hybrid Flash and HTML platform actually performed better in our search marketing architecture analysis this year than many of their peers. In short, this is NOT your parent’s Oldsmobile.

Automotive Inventory Optimization

The current Dealerskins website technology fixed the biggest complaint that I had in the past; their inventory module was practically invisible to the search engines and not in conformance with my SEO best practices. The new Dealerskins platform has optimized website pages for every car in inventory with unique page titles and META descriptions for each car. I also liked their breadcrumb menu on each inventory page shown below:

You can see an example of their new inventory page by visiting this link for a 2009 Volkswagen Routan. The final version of their optimized inventory technology will be unveiled in their next CMS release but the current version is performing very well in our testing. I would like to see more car details integrated into the inventory URL string.

In an interesting balancing act, the Dealerskins design team kept the Flash navigation menus to add some sizzle while adding HTML navigation links and editable text areas on key website pages. In the near future, the Dealerskins homepage will be 100% Flash free which will resolve any complaints of operating systems that are not Flash friendly.

The addition of HTML content pages will also increase the search visibility for existing Dealerskins customers. According to the company, approximately 50% of their existing customers have been converted to the new platform.

Website Administrative Tools Lagging For Content

The administrative tools for car dealers do not currently allow dealers to add their own content pages on the fly. A call to customer support will create as many blank pages that a dealer needs and then a dealer can add or edit content. In the final version of the platform, more robust content editing tools and a blog are scheduled to be included. As car dealer focus more on content writing in 2011, a robust content publishing platform will be a requirement for success.

The Dealerskins platform includes their own analytics technology that provides an independent audit for car dealers who have hired third party companies to run their Adwords or SEO campaigns. Their development team addressed a common concern of dealers who are paying thousands of dollars a month only to trust their vendors are being truthful about traffic, clicks and lead reports they send.

SEO Ranking Tools and More

The Dealerskins team also demonstrated some of their impressive digital marketing tools which included built-in SEO ranking reports and something that dealers should look at called the “Psychic Sales Tool” (PST). The tool shows dealers all the pages and cars that the consumer visited on the Dealerskins website prior to submitting a lead. PST gives the dealer more information about any shopper before they contact them.

Attractive Car Dealer Mobile Sites

Dealerskins has also created attractive mobile websites that are based on the new HTML 5 standard. You can see their slick mobile technology by visiting www.gentiliniford.com from your iPhone. The mobile interface is one of the best that I have seen and very fast.

The Silence Is Broken

The previous silence from Dealerskins?

They were hard at work surveying their customers and getting their new release out the door to customers. Car dealers using the old Dealerskins platform are encouraged to give their account manager a call and see about the upgrade path to this more powerful website technology.

Hats off to Dealerskins for moving to address the most immediate needs of their user base. According to the Dealerskins team more features and enhancements are coming, so listen up when your Dealerskins representative calls.

SEO pundits will not have the DS dog to kick anymore!

I am introducing to DrivingSales.com members a new acronym in the field of Automotive SEO: POD Score.

POD stands for Page One Defense and the score can range from Zero to 100. A car dealer's POD Score is a direct reflection of their awareness and diligence to protect their brand from parasites and poachers.

The sad news is that over 95% of car dealers in the United States fail to have a POD score above 50%.

The most frequent search phrase that brings a consumer to a car dealer website is a search on their dealership name. If a dealer is also buying their name in Google Adwords, it will also be the number one search phrase that drives paid clicks to a dealers website.

Summary:  Your dealership NAME is the #1 way that consumers find your website on the Internet.

With this in mind, I am raising awareness of what is happening on the search engines when a consumer searches a car dealership name. Creating the POD Scoring system will raise the awareness of car dealers that their brand name is under attack.

The #1 Search Phrase That Drives Traffic

Since the dealer's EXACT NAME is the #1 organic search phrase to drive traffic to their website, lead collectors as a group have targeted search optimization strategies on their name to drive traffic to their websites.

If you haven't noticed, Edmunds.com for example, has an optimized website page for every car dealer in the US. On that page is a form to get price quotes from your competitors.

I bet that as a group, the #1 free traffic that many lead collection website receive is traffic on dealership names.

Dealers spend thousands of dollars a month on radio, TV, print, billboards and local advertising. As a result of that brand awareness, consumers type in a dealer's name for directions, phone numbers, service, or to shop for a car.

What dealer's are not fully aware of is that people are lying in wait for these consumers to type in the dealer's name and redirect them to their own websites and marketing goals.

So what is your dealerships POD Score?

It is our opinion that the ideal score is a perfect 100 but many car dealers in the United States have a POD Scores of 40 or below. Here are some examples of dealers that have a POD Score of 20 and one that has a POD score of 80:

How Is The POD Score Calculated?

POD Scores give dealers 10 points for each organic listing that they control on Page One for an exact search on their dealership name. If a dealer controls all 10 of the organic listings on Page One, they receive a 100 point score.

The definition of "control" is simple; do you have the ability to control the content on the listing that shows on Page One for your dealership name. Some of the dealers can control that appear on Page One include:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Blogs
• Microsites
• Press Releases
• Videos

Some of the things that dealers cannot control on Page One include:

• Lead collectors
• Review websites
• Business Directories
• Complaint websites
• Better Business Bureau
• National Automotive Websites

Why is a POD Score of 100 Important

A POD Score of 100 means that third party lead collectors are not diverting your customers into their data capturing devices. It means that disgruntled employees, customers and competitors will have a harder time abusing review websites to hurt your brand. It means that customers who are driven to the web by your radio, TV and print advertising investments are not diverted from your website.

A POD Score of 100 will yield MORE direct leads. There will be more discussion and a few videos created on how dealers can achieve a score of 80, 90, or 100 points. Anything less than a score of 70 means that your brand is being drained of its equity and you have made it easy for this to occur.

I am introducing to DrivingSales.com members a new acronym in the field of Automotive SEO: POD Score.

POD stands for Page One Defense and the score can range from Zero to 100. A car dealer's POD Score is a direct reflection of their awareness and diligence to protect their brand from parasites and poachers.

The sad news is that over 95% of car dealers in the United States fail to have a POD score above 50%.

The most frequent search phrase that brings a consumer to a car dealer website is a search on their dealership name. If a dealer is also buying their name in Google Adwords, it will also be the number one search phrase that drives paid clicks to a dealers website.

Summary:  Your dealership NAME is the #1 way that consumers find your website on the Internet.

With this in mind, I am raising awareness of what is happening on the search engines when a consumer searches a car dealership name. Creating the POD Scoring system will raise the awareness of car dealers that their brand name is under attack.

The #1 Search Phrase That Drives Traffic

Since the dealer's EXACT NAME is the #1 organic search phrase to drive traffic to their website, lead collectors as a group have targeted search optimization strategies on their name to drive traffic to their websites.

If you haven't noticed, Edmunds.com for example, has an optimized website page for every car dealer in the US. On that page is a form to get price quotes from your competitors.

I bet that as a group, the #1 free traffic that many lead collection website receive is traffic on dealership names.

Dealers spend thousands of dollars a month on radio, TV, print, billboards and local advertising. As a result of that brand awareness, consumers type in a dealer's name for directions, phone numbers, service, or to shop for a car.

What dealer's are not fully aware of is that people are lying in wait for these consumers to type in the dealer's name and redirect them to their own websites and marketing goals.

So what is your dealerships POD Score?

It is our opinion that the ideal score is a perfect 100 but many car dealers in the United States have a POD Scores of 40 or below. Here are some examples of dealers that have a POD Score of 20 and one that has a POD score of 80:

How Is The POD Score Calculated?

POD Scores give dealers 10 points for each organic listing that they control on Page One for an exact search on their dealership name. If a dealer controls all 10 of the organic listings on Page One, they receive a 100 point score.

The definition of "control" is simple; do you have the ability to control the content on the listing that shows on Page One for your dealership name. Some of the dealers can control that appear on Page One include:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Blogs
• Microsites
• Press Releases
• Videos

Some of the things that dealers cannot control on Page One include:

• Lead collectors
• Review websites
• Business Directories
• Complaint websites
• Better Business Bureau
• National Automotive Websites

Why is a POD Score of 100 Important

A POD Score of 100 means that third party lead collectors are not diverting your customers into their data capturing devices. It means that disgruntled employees, customers and competitors will have a harder time abusing review websites to hurt your brand. It means that customers who are driven to the web by your radio, TV and print advertising investments are not diverted from your website.

A POD Score of 100 will yield MORE direct leads. There will be more discussion and a few videos created on how dealers can achieve a score of 80, 90, or 100 points. Anything less than a score of 70 means that your brand is being drained of its equity and you have made it easy for this to occur.