News Alert: Facebook will now allow users to create their own vanity URL similar to other social networking websites. A vanity URL is one that is easy to remember; it can be your name or something pertaining to you.

Starting at 12:01 a.m. (EDT) on Saturday, June 13, 2009, you will be able to select a user name at http://www.facebook.com/username. For more information, visit the Username help topic.

Facebook Vanity URL Names

Currently, my Facebook profile URL is: www.facebook.com/people/Brian-Pasch/685389902 . This URL is odd looking and what is that number on the end? It's a way to make the URL unique so that any other Brian Pasch in the world can create their own profile.

With the new offering, the URL can be: www.facebook.com/brianpasch. The trick is that only ONE URL can be created like that so first come first served. So if you want to reserve your name without putting a number after it, you must act quickly.

Does Vanity URL's Help SEO

Why is this important? That is debatable. For one thing it is easier and cleaner to add to an email signature or just to remember. Think of it as a calling card.

Secondly, if you can create a URL that is a HIGH value keyword like "bostonnissan" then maybe that Facebook profile will come up for searches on Boston Nissan. The ideal situation is that you reserve your name and if you have a business fan page, you also can customize it with a vanity URL.

This is also KEY for Internet Reputation Management. What would happen if an ANGRY customer or employee reserved your name?

An example of this is when you search in Google and Bing for "Automotive SEO". You will see vanity URL from Vox ( http://automotiveseo.vox.com) and Ning (http://automotive-seo.ning.com) in Google search results so vanity URL do make a difference. If it is free, why not reserve a good name?

What URL Should You Use?

So your question should be: What vanity name to use?

One strategy might be to look at your Google Analytics data and Google Adwords data to see what search phrases bring the most traffic to your website and then grab that vanity name. There are other strategies, of course.

I do not know if the business fan pages have any restriction for vanity names so you will have to see that on midnight, this Friday when the doors open at Facebook.

I hope that this post allows the early birds to get the worm.

I have been helping car dealers fine tune their Internet marketing strategy through my blogs and lately I have been getting a number of emails on Microsites. The focus of these inquiries: How can I use microsites for lead generation? Eventually the conversation always includes one important question: "What domain name should I use?"

The focus of this article is to help you with that decision making process. Domain names can make or break your marketing budget. A few assumptions have to be made for this discussion to be meaningful.

Mega Bucks Projects

The first assumption is that you are not building a multi-million dollar project that will be a national brand that has a HUGE marketing budget. An example would be Uggs and the domain www.uggs.com. No one was typing that word into Google before the brand launched. This is both good and bad. The good part is that the name had little competition once the word got out. The bad part is that it costs money to get the word out.

Short Term Goals

The second assumption is that you don't need an immediate blast of visitor traffic or the website is for a short term sale. If you need an immediate blast of sales or traffic that means you will most likely need to use paid advertising campaigns. Think Google AdWords or Yahoo Search Marketing.

In this case, you might not be concerned that your domain name is search friendly. Examples of this could be a short term promotion or sale that you don't need organic rankings to develop over time. In this case you could pick a domain name like www.cars100.com if you were selling 100 cars over a weekend and were using radio, print and web to drive people to the event. A domain name like www.cars100.com is something that could be easily remembered from a radio spot.

Domain Purchasing Guidelines

So, with those two cases put aside let's make sure we consider all our options before we purchase a domain name. I will attempt to condense years of testing into a few points of guidance. Time to put on your search engine optimization learning caps.

Look For Exact Matches

For most cases, an exact match on the services you offer will results in the most visibility. So, if you are a divorce lawyer in New Jersey, owning www.njdivorceattorney.com is a much better choice that www.charlesschwartzmcfeen.com. Use free keyword research tools to decide if "divorce attorney" or "divorce lawyer" get more monthly search traffic to help guide decisions. Search traffic is not the only tool to consider but it is important.

Buy the .NET if the .COM is parked

If you have a search phrases you want to target and the .com is taken the .NET may be just as good. A "parked" domain is one that has no website. If a .com domain is parked or forwarding to another website, that is actually GREAT for you. Forwarded domains will never be in a search result. So, if you wanted www.bostonnissan.com and it was parked or forwarded and you could buy www.bostonnissan.net , purchase it immediately and setup a microsite.

Dashes Are OK

If have a website called www.dealer-seo.com and it is #1 in the USA for searches on "automotive SEO" and "car dealer SEO" and the domain has a dash. Following our previous example, if www.bostonnissan.com and www.bostonnissan.net were taken, see if you could buy www.boston-nissan.com. If you can, purchase it and start your microsite strategy.

Does Size Matter?

It seems that size is not as important as the words in the domain name. If you are in the business of precision metal casting and you purchased www.precisionmetalcasting.com you would not be penalized that you domain is long. The focus should be on the search phrases you want to attack and since you can put up microsites very inexpensively using Wordpress, you could in fact have multiple microsites placed on long tail keywords.

Content is King

Keep in mind that any site you create should have good content and should have over 10 pages of content as a starting base. There are no sustainable shortcuts to top Google rankings without good content.

WordPress as a Microsite Tool

WordPress microsites are easy to maintain, self-publishing and they have SEO marketing plug-ins that be installed. WordPress combined with an effective domain marketing strategy can yield amazing results. Here are some examples of taking this domain strategy in conjunction with WordPress to market:

• The term "mass bmw" or "bmw mass" is searched over 5,000 times a month and a WordPress microsite placed on www.massbmw.com is on Google Page One
• The term "Ford Massachusetts" gets over 6,000 searches a month. We just completed a WordPress microsites on www.fordmassachusetts.com and in a few weeks this will start to move to the top of Google Page One.
• The term "salon lights" and "salon lighting" is searched in Google approximately 2,000 times a month and a WordPress microsite placed on www. salonlights.com is on Google Page one for both terms.
• The term "house painting nj" is searched about 400 times a month and related search phrases "house painting Somerset County", "house painting Hunterdon County" represent smaller but targeted potential clients. A WordPress microsite on www.housepaintingnj.com is on Google Page one for these search phrases.

The point is that regardless of traffic as little as 1,000 hits a month, if that search phrase it resulting in good leads and sales, that is all that matters. A WordPress microsite can pay itself back with one car sale. You should always addd Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools to your WordPress sites to track the visitors and usage of the microsites just like you would on your main dealer website.

Microsite Benefits

A good microsite strategy gives you many benefits:

• Keyword Targeted Websites
• Website That You Own and Not Lease
• Easy to use Content Publishing Tools

Now the question is, when will you get started?

As I continue to build out WordPress microsites for car dealers the question about how microsites handle leads is always a concern. In particular, some CRM system will take leads from a basic web form email with simple text data. Other automotive CRM systems require the leads to be in ADF format so that all the data field are properly parsed.

Most of the form plugins for WordPress, Ning or Vox are not setup for Automotive Data Format (ADF) which is basically an XML file with a fixed set of field names. Our solution was to create an email handler that can be directly embedded into an HTML page or in some cases, it may be better to iframe the form, like a widget. Each case depends on how much control you have over the HTML code.

I bring this up because as more free tools evolve to create instant blogs and marketing portals, Internet Sales Managers will need to leverage the content they create with simple lead generation strategies.

Imagine the benefits if all your articles on social networking sites and blogs had simple ADF forms that would feed leads directly into your automotive CRM system, with important data fields required.

If there is interest in this concept of have an ADF quote form widget developed for WordPress, NING and other portals, send me a note.

Here are a few Wordpress skinned blogs that have an ADF form handler as a persistent element of the website. The style and content of a lead form can vary, so these are just examples of ADF compliant forms can work inside blogs and social portals. The last example, shows a form that is on the bottom of a page instead of in the sidebar.

• Stoneham Ford
• Greenway Jeep
• Cash for Clunkers
• Mark Wilson Used Cars

Content publishing for Automotive SEO strategies has proven very effective, so keep writing. If you can also provide an easy way to have an interested consumers submit a usable lead, you have the best of both worlds.

I have been noticing a few changes in Google organic search results and the trends that I see are very encouraging to car dealers who are using press releases to promote their business. Today I posted a press release for an upcoming SEO briefing that I am conducting in Red Bank New Jersey.

Just three hours later, when I was doing a Google search on my name, I noticed that Google had a special graphic to call attention to my press release since it included my name.

The little newspaper graphic really calls out attention to the news story which I consider a big win for dealers where are taking the time to promote their businesses with content publishing. Notice that the press release title and teaser are included in the SERP as well as the press release source. The graphic "call-out" for the story will make your press releases more noticeable on a search results page.

If you are not publishing a press release every month, you are missing a great opportunity to gain Google page one placement for local targeted search phrases. In previous blog posts, I have listed a number of free press releases websites that can help your Internet visibility immediately. If you need to start somewhere, try www.prlog.org. Now, with these newspaper icons highlighting press releases, it makes even greater sense to start writing.

Google Profiles in Search Results

In addition to press releases, Google will also display a graphic/photo along with your name if you have created a free Google Profile. If you have a Google email address, log into to Google and go to http://www.google.com/profiles and you can create a free listing. When you create the profile, make sure you customize the URL with your name. If your name is taken, you can add your state on the end to make it unique. This way your URL is personally branded like this: http://www.google.com/profiles/brianpaschnj

When you do a search on your name, Google will show your profile if it is completely filled out. Here is what you see when you do a search for my name. Once again, anyone doing business today will have their name Googled. So why not have a free iconic listing showing up in Google search results. Your profile can have all your contact information as well as a link to your website. This free personal branding is something that should not be ignored.

The 6^th Annual Digital Dealer Conference is now over and I'm exhausted. This was my first year at the event and it was a great opportunity to meet with other automotive professionals who wanted to learn and improve the visibility of their websites. The conference schedule was packed with a wide array of topics and the conference seminar participation was strong.

My seminar was in the last time slot on Monday and I was a little concerned about starting a seminar at 5:15 pm. My fears were laid to rest as the room filled up and the questions started to flow. When I started to discuss the importance of unique page Titles and META descriptions, you could tell that I hit a nerve in the audience. We looked at a few volunteer's websites and most websites had ineffective page titles and META descriptions.

Duplicate Titles & Tags

One attendee asked "Why would car dealer platform providers put out websites with dozens of duplicate page titles and META tags when they just have to be corrected by someone else? "

I can't speak for the industry other than to say that good page titles and META description involve some research and then some simple editing. It would seem that either car dealers are not paying for an optimized website package or the platform provider does not understand what Google outlines in their SEO starter guide.

Since many car dealer platforms allow users to update these important SEO tags, I encouraged everyone to contact their provider and ask how they can eliminate these duplicate tags. Once you have the proper login to update page titles, simple changes can go a long way for improve organic search rankings.

The Role of Content

Another hot question was posed "If content is so important for organic search rankings, why are most dealer platform created without a blogging module?"

Changes to dealer platforms with a large installed based don't turn on a dime. Changes that involve an addition like a blog module can be costly in both programming manpower and training. However, I would predict that within the next few months, providers will start to integrate blogging tools like Wordpress.

If car dealer website providers offered an integrated Wordpress blog, a number of organic marketing issues would be resolved. Then the next task would be to train car dealers how to write effectively to maximize a WordPress blog. These WordPress integrated pages could be used for Adwords landing pages, testimonials, car model feature pages, and the sky is the limit.

Automotive SEO is a Hot Topic

The quality of questions from the audience was excellent and we ending up staying another 30 minutes longer than was schedule. This was a benefit of having the last session of the day. If I offered up a happy hour at 6:30 I bet the crowd would have stayed another hour longer!

The good news is that many attendees made the effort and commitment to make their websites more effective for organic search results. I think that these types of forums provide the venue for dealers to know that they are not alone in their struggle to understand how Google works and how to make improvements. If you could not make the conference, I offer up my PowerPoint slideshow for your personal use.

You can download a copy of my presentation at: http://www.paschconsulting.com/PDF/pasch-ddc.pdf

I have already written about the most important consumer review websites that car dealers should be monitoring. The focus of this post is how to implement a consistent Internet Reputation Management (IRM) process.

If you wait until negative reviews show up for your auto dealership it will be more difficult to control the impact of a critical post. By creating a standard operating procedure for IRM you will ensure that positive reviews are being added on your dealer profiles each month.

Your dealership should focus on sites like www.DealerRater.com, www.Yelp.com, www.InsiderPages.com, Google Maps and www.Judysbook.com. When a negative post then hits, it will be in the minority of negative reviews and the single post's power will be diminished.

The biggest stumbling block for most car dealers that can't seem to implement a consistent Internet Reputation Management (IRM) system is time. The time required to call, email and follow-up some customers is much longer than others. That's why setting up a system that can keep the process moving is so vital. Hard to reach customers have to be skipped over since you only need a small percentage of your customers to participate to effect change.

Creating a Sustainable IRM Process

I have been helping auto dealers setup a manageable IRM process that can be kept in house or outsourced. The key is to prepare, in advance, a list of all the review sites you want to target and to create a script that someone can use to answer customer questions while on the phone.

You must have a good FAQ sheet prepared so that when you call a customer and ask them to post a review, the caller is not taken off guard with their questions. The FAQ sheet should include responses to:

• What should I write?
• How long should the review be?
• Should I give my full name?
• What if I had a mixed experience and can't give you a five star review?
• Will I get compensated for my time?

The process requires that a list of satisfied customers is provided to the person who will be implementing your IRM process. This can be done on a weekly or monthly basis. The sooner the request comes from the date of purchase is likely to yield the best results.

Creating a Good Follow-up Email

Once a customer agrees on the phone to post a positive review, we recommend that you follow-up the call with an email explaining which sites you would like them to post. The email should include a direct link(s) to your business profile page. Your email should also walk them through the review process on each site, calling out any special requirements that may be needed.

A well written email will make it easy for your customers and increase the number of posts that are actually made. Don't overwhelm them by asking them to post on too many sites. Listing one, two or three sites is all you need from any one customer. By giving them a choice of sites to post, we have found it makes them feel more comfortable with the process.

When speaking with customers ask them to commit to a date that they will post their review. Make sure you have a system to follow-up on these dates. By asking them when they will be posting, it makes sending a reminder email very appropriate if they don't post.

Pace Your Customer Reviews

When implemented, a car dealership can change the dynamics of web reviews in just a matter of weeks or months. This of course depends on how many negative reviews exist for your business. The key to remember is that Rome was not built overnight. Take your time and let your IRM deliver steady reviews over the next year.

Don't rush too many reviews in any one month since dates are shown on review websites. Never lie. Never post reviews under anyone's name other than yourself. Never encourage your customers to lie. Don't have your customers post reviews from your Internet lounge which may appear that you are posting false reviews.

If you create a process based IRM system, potential customers will see the great things you do on these popular reviews sites as well as Google Maps. Positive reviews will generate more clicks to your website.

The customers that we have implemented a process based IRM system have seen their pace of monthly positive reviews increase over 200%. You can also consider a bonus reward plan for your IRM staff as they hit certain milestones for positive review counts.

This week I met with Stan Sher (aka RedNumbat) and his passion for providing car dealers with a new way to generate quality sales leads was very clear. His willingness to step out and join an entrepreneurial endeavor is just what the car industry needs.

Innovations in the car industry could not come at a better time. Car dealers are eagerly searching for ways to lower advertising costs and still drive quality leads to their website.

The idea of a "RedNumbat" or a "Twitter" or a "Facebook" innovating car dealer sales just a few years ago would have been met with frowns. The Internet is creating new communication tools and channels that can deliver messages to thousands of "followers" in seconds. No wonder why the idea of an instant car price quote from a Red Marsupial has traction in the marketplace.

I look forward to testing the RedNumbat technology on a few client websites in the coming months. I'll report my findings on this blog as soon as we collect enough data. www.rednumbat.com

Protecting Your Dealer Name

In the past few weeks I have been talking with dealers across the US and Canada that were inspired by a free webinar I conducted with Dealers Edge on March 10th. From the calls, it is clear that the economy has reignited a passion for car dealers to compete on the Internet. Dealers want innovators to step up and shake up the old establishment; they are just cautious about spending money.

Significant interest from callers was focused on protecting their dealer name from third party lead collectors. This is one of the easiest things that car dealers can do to increase consumer direct leads; get third party leads collectors off of Google page one for searches on their dealer name. Dealers should roll up their sleeves and use free web publishing tools like:

• www.merchantcircle.com
• www.vox.com
• www.blogspot.com
• www.squidoo.com

to create "dealer name" branded web assets that they can use to share content about the cars that they sell; talk about promotions, rebates, safety or third party reviews. The key is to "name" these web assets with their dealer name so they appear for dealer name searches. Think of these web assets as your free blogging tools without expenses or the need to know HTML programming.

What About Facebook

This week I was speaking with a dealer that said that their Facebook project sold three cars this past week. This was exciting to hear that car dealers are testing and measuring some of the latest trends in social networking. It is too early to definitively say how to use Facebook efficiently. Anyone with experiences with Facebook I encourage to share on this forum or by sending and email to me at brian@paschconsulting.com. Your feedback will be welcome since Facebook is hot topic of conversation amongst marketing professionals.

What About Twitter

I'm still testing to see how to use Twitter for car dealers, so if anyone has some data to share, please share your experiences. Is Twitter instant messaging a new way to sell cars?

If you would like to join me on my next Webinar on April 2, 2009, click here: SEO Webinar

If you are actively writing on the Internet to promote your car dealership, let me suggest another way to measure the effectiveness of your work. This measurement tools can provide real-time feedback to which of your online efforts is generating the most visitor traffic to your website.

Car dealers have Google Analytics or a similar package in place to track inbound traffic, page views and the referring URL's. Reading through the "referrer URL" report each day and matching these cryptic URL's with specific posts you are making on the Internet is practically impossible.

Google Analytics provides a way to click on a referring URL and see what the article was, but that is very time consuming. Now image active Internet sales Managers or dealerships that are posting dozens of posts a month directly or through a consultant.

Tracking The ROI of Your Web Time

Finding which websites are linking to your website from post hyperlinks is easy. The real question is what posts or topics brought the most traffic. Did you hit any "nerves" with consumers with an article that drove more traffic to your website than others in past? Did one type of car or one price point bring you the most traffic on Craigslist? Did your parts managers reply to someone on a car forum drive more traffic to your parts website?

I have discussed in the past that good content is very important for search engine optimization and so are the potential inbound links and traffic that good content can generate. This content can be on your own website or blog but it also can be on outside blogs and content aggregator websites.

So how do you try to equate your work posting on consumer forums, car forums or on your own blogs to specific traffic? For this I would suggest testing www.budurl.com . This service converts your cryptic URL to a simple URL that you can add to any website post. You label the budurl in your account control panel so that you can remember the topic of the post. Then you can log into your account see how many people clicked on that link.

Links to Ford Dealer Specials Pages

For example, if you make a post on a community automotive forum to tell people about the specials your dealership was offering, the actually page link you would normally post would be something like this:

http://www.prestonford.com/coupons.asp?keywords=specials

You would replace this with a budurl that would look like this: http://budurl.com/forddealercoupons

If you click on both URL's you will see that they take you to the same webpage. The trick is that you can now log into your budurl account and see how many people clicked on your link. If you label your budurl's carefully, you can create an instant dashboard of activity that updates in real-time. So, if one type of post or headline generates 3 times the traffic of other posts, this data can help prioritize future content development.

You can also use budurl for LIVE tracking on specials or promotions you add on your homepage. The possibilities are endless and the real-time stats can make testing different landing pages or promotional pages easy. There are third party statistics packages that offer similar features but I like the simplicity of this system. Anyone can easily setup a BudURL and turn themselves into an Internet marketing maven with real data for tracking the ROI of their efforts.

Automotive SEO Ideas

If you found this article helpful, click here for more ideas on our Automotive SEO blog: http://budurl.com/automotiveseotips

Internet Sales Managers are looking for ways to increase their Internet visibility without spending hard cash in this challenging economy.

I'm often asked by car dealers what they can do for themselves to save on Internet marketing costs.

In an ideal world, it is great to have the Internet Sales Manager involved in many aspects of the tactical Automotive SEO tasks so they can see their work rewarded.

I have outlined one project that everyone who is reading this can implement in their organization. Automotive SEO does not have to be the sole responsibility of any outside consultant.

Check Your Page Titles

Just this week I was on the phone with a dealer group reviewing their six websites. I showed them that many of the primary website pages (see below) had the dealer name starting in the HTML title tag. Their domain was an exact match for their dealership name so this was something that should be fixed.

Hypothetical Example: Your website is located at www.bmwpeabody.com and on every primary page you started the title text with BMW Peabody.

It is my experience that if your domain name is an exact match for your dealership name, you do not need to have it on every HTML page title. In fact, this will hurt your Automotive SEO strategy because the TITLE tag is an important part of Google and Yahoo's indexing algorithm. If you have any questions about this, read the Google SEO Starter Guide.

Fixing Page Titles

Correcting website page titles is something that an Internet Sales Manager or IT staff member can edit on their own and make an immediate impact on their search visibility.

Anyone reading this article should do a quick check to see that your page titles are in compliance. The basic "commandments" are: Page titles should be descriptive of the page. You should not have duplicate page titles.

Check your page titles by typing into Google this command: site:www.xxxxxxx.com

Replace the xxxxxxx with your domain name.

Primary Pages for Optimization

Many dealer website platforms give you the ability to edit META tags on all pages except inventory detail pages. Check with your website provider to see how you can update the META Titles and META descriptions on each key page.

For many automotive websites, their are about 20 primary web pages. These pages would include:

• New Cars Specials
• Used Car Specials
• Service Coupons
• Parts Coupons
• Service Appointments
• Order Parts
• About Us
• Contact Us
• Directions
• Price Quote
• Financing

If someone follows this outline, your page titles can be updated in as little as one hour once you do your research. It takes some tweaking and testing but it is better to try and fix your titles than to leave them sloppy or duplicated.

Page Title Guidance

Any time an SEO consultant suggest a strategy there is a risk for criticism that someone has a better strategy so review what I have to say and check with out credible sources. Also see how your competition is titling their main pages to get soem ideas.

In this example, let's take a Chrevrolet dealer located in my old home town of North Plainfield, New Jersey. If you were a Chevy dealer in North Plainfield, you might write page titles follows (in red):

Service -"Chevy Service Repair Center North Plainfield - Chevrolet Dealer Somerset County NJ"

Used Car Specials - "NJ Chevy Used Car Dealer - Preowned Chevrolet Cars North Plainfield"

About Us Page - "Somerset County Chevy Car Dealer - North Plainfield NJ"

The idea is that you should not start the page titles with "Brian Chevy" if your website is at www.brianchevy.com and your page titles should be focused statements, without fluff words, that are keyword rich.

Do not create page titles like this "Brian Chevy is the Best Chevy Service Center in the North Plainfield area". This is to say don't make the HTML title a sentence but rather a condensed statement about the page with keywords in mind.

I hope this is helpful to anyone who wants to do some search engine optimization internally. If you have any further questions, you can drop me a line at: 732-450-8200.

I have been invited by DealersEdge to present a free webinar on Automotive Digital Marketing. If anyone from the forum would like to attend, I would love to have you particpate and there will be a Q&A session at the end.

The webinar will discuss my current Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies and how free Internet marketing tools and resources can provide a steady stream of organic, no-cost and low-cost internet leads.

The free webinar will take place March 10^th, 2009 and will run 90 minutes,

Topics to be discussed include:

• - How to put your dealership website through a SEO diagnostic test.
• - Five things you can do to increase visitor traffic for free.
• - How to use social tagging to create a viral marketing machine.
• - How to create a "controllable" social network for your dealership.
• - How to use free inventory distribution websites to sell more cars.
• - Why blogging works for auto dealers and tips on how to start your own blog.
• - How to use press releases to drive traffic to your website.
• - How to increase your visibility outside your PMA.

Advance registration is required. The seminar is ideal for Internet Sales Managers, BDC Professionals, General Managers and car dealer marketing professionals.

At the completion of the webinar participants will be able to further improve the Internet visibility of the car dealer websites without cost with the knowledge they gain from the webinar material.

Register Free Here - Automotive SEO Webinar