By Brian Pasch

Haystak Digital Marketing is now part of the Autotrader family of companies serving car dealers.  The announcement further enhances the products that Autotrader can offer dealers to merchandise and advertise their inventory and dealership services.  In recent years other acquisitions have included Kelley Blue Book, vAuto, and VinSolutions.  

Haystak Digital Marketing was spun out of Moore & Scarry a few years ago.  Moore & Scarry is an full service advertising agency with headquarters in Ft Myers Florida.   According to the official press release, VinSolutions is the purchaser.

The search engine market place is crowded with well established providers, so what’s different?  Haystak Digital Marketing in recent years has stormed the automotive marketplace offering car dealers VIN level pay-per-click advertising, regardless of website platform dealers use to run their business.

Automated Adwords campaigns based on in-stock inventory is not a new concept.  Dealer.com and Cobalt have been offering this service to dealers for years however both companies only offer this integration for dealers on their website platform. VIN-level advertising allows car dealers to more effectively advertise their used cars on Google, Bing, and Yahoo. 

For example, a Ford dealer who has a 2011 Chevrolet Silverado in stock, can make sure local shoppers searching for a 2011 Silverado know that their local Ford dealer has a pristine truck in stock and priced to sell.  The secret sauce is knowing how to bundle vehicles into campaigns and using intelligence to adjust bid management strategies. 

These capabilities are outside the realm of individuals that manage their own search budgets. Google Adwords recently announced that VIN-LEVEL advertising is available directly from Adwords but it does not have the same level of sophistication offered by the Haystak platform.

Transparency In Digital Advertising ROI

What has made Haystak a household name is that their advertising services are platform independent and that they offer a higher level of transparency on how the dealer’s budget is spent.  Haystak has partnered with many automotive website platform companies to integrate Adwords campaigns with replaceable phone numbers to track calls generated by Adwords investments.

Dealers using the Haystak platform have their own login which can show them their advertising investments and the performance of their ad groups.   In the example below, an executive level report will show the basic ROI of their investments for the past 30 days.  

This type of report is perfect for dealership executives who do not want to get into the details of ad management.  Detailed reports are also available from the backend tools provided by dealers, in addition to monthly reports emailed to Haystak clients.

Cobalt is the only major website platform that has decided not to allow Haystak to integrate their campaigns with Cobalt website phone tracking.  Dealer.com, who normally does not allow third parties to leverage their replaceable phone number technology, was obliged to allow Haystak to run on their platform because of the Chrysler PAP program. Both Haystak and Dealer.com are certified to offer Chrysler dealers co-op funded advertising solutions.

The Haystak Digital Marketing platform competes with Dealer.com’s Total Control Dominator (TCD) platform, which was first to market for VIN-Level advertising for dealers.  The TCD platform and Haystak Digital Marketing are both winners of  the 2012 Automotive Website Award for digital advertising.

Haystak Is A Strategic Investment For VinSolutions Customers

The purchase of Haystak is a strategic investment for a number of reasons.  First, Haystak is one of a handful of companies awarded Google SMB designation.  As an SMB partner, Haystak benefits from high-level access to Google, which means that new product innovations are normally first disclosed with their best clients.

The second reason why Haystak is a strategic investment is that it gives VinSolutions customers a stronger digital advertising platform.  Today, Haystak is a completely stand-alone product. In the future, I could see tighter integration into the VinSolutions platform on the product roadmap.

Currently, the VinSolutions platform has integrated direct marketing campaigns allowing dealers to design direct mail pieces and send mailers to targeted lists.  Adding integrated Google Adwords, Bing, and Facebook campaigns would be a logical step allowing dealers to control their marketing strategies from within a single interface.

The Haystak platform will fall under VinSolutions product management teams. VinSolutions will benefit from having an integrated advertising dashboard similar to ones offered by Cobalt and Dealer.com.  The integration would also help VinSolutions be more competitive for new OEM website endorsements.

What Is Next For Autotrader?

Is the acquisition spree for Autotrader.com coming to and end? Who do you think they should acquire next?

Brian Pasch, CEO

PCG Consulting

732.672.2356

Google

How confident are you that your digital marketing campaigns are delivering incremental sales each month?  Are you aware of the most common mistakes dealers make when using Google Adwords?  

What is new in digital marketing that is helping dealers jump to the next level in monthly sales?

If you would like sneak peak from leaders who will be sharing their insights and training at the upcoming 4th Annual Boot Camp, register for this free webinar today.

The webinar will be held at 1pm on Monday April 15th 2013.  The webinar will last for one hour.   Q&A from the audience will be allowed for another 30 minutes.
Brian Pasch, CEO of PCG Consulting will be moderating the webinar.  We are pleased to have three digital advertising educators on this webinar:

- Dmitriy Gamarnik - PCG Digital Marketing
- Chris Deringer - DealerOn
- Jason Wiley - Haystak Digital Marketing

As part of a new series of educational presentations leading up to Automotive Bootcamp on May 14 - 16 in Philadelphia, we've designed these webinars, called Training Exercises.

Training Exercise Webinars will be held on brief topics, which will be expanded upon by speakers at Bootcamp. To learn more about the full event in Philadelphia, visit http://www.automotivebootcamp.com

Don't miss this opportunity to ask specific questions about your marketing investments on this webinar!

Register here!

​Are you engaging your web traffic? Are you interested in getting more leads for your business?

Then you need to learn about Gubaggo. Gubagoo is an “On-Site” Behavioral Engagement & Scoring Technology called the B.E.A.S.T., making “Anonymous” web traffic identifiable through a behavior score index.

B.E.A.S.T makes it easy to engage or re-engage with your customers because of data collected about website visitors like Vehicle of Interest, Repeat Visits, Time Spent on Pages, High Traffic URLs and more.

Pete Orlando will join Brian Pasch for a special Gubagoo demonstration. The duo will host a webinar on Thursday April 11, 2013 at 1PM EST. Learn all about the Gubagoo services and how they can help car dealers with "Making Leads Happen!"

Register for the exclusive Gubagoo webinar here.

The 2012 DrivingSales Executive Summit (DSES) was one of the most impressive automotive conferences that I have attended. 

The conference attracted close to 1,000 attendees, which more than doubled attendance from last year.   Congratulations to Jared Hamilton and the DrivingSales team for a job well done.

A popular thread to many of the speakers and workshops at DSES was “Big Data”; a new term for car dealers but not so new in other industries.  The term refers to how businesses can leverage the massive amounts of structured and unstructured data that is being collected every day electronically.

One example of structured data is the information that is typed into checkout forms on websites like Amazon.com.  Following this example, unstructured data would be the history of page views and clicks consumers make on Amazon.com while shopping. Unstructured data can also include how consumers came to the website; organic search, paid search, social media, or a referral link.  Amazon can use your past purchases (structured data) and your shopping style (unstructured data) to display certain products as recommendations on each page. 

The use of Big Data by Amazon.com is designed to increase sales and enhance the customer shopping experience.  Applying this to the automotive industry, why wouldn’t dealership websites present a customized version of the site for each shopper based on their personal shopping behavior?   This is a rhetorical question, but we first have to understand how that data in “Big Data” is collected.

If you have looked at Google Analytics reports for a dealership, you will see that a segment of customers visit the dealership website multiple times.  Automotive website providers have the “ability” to track repeat visitors and also to store what actions they took while on the dealership website.  Despite the ability to capture this data, only a few companies have taken the initiative to use historical data to help dealers sell more cars.  

Websites like Amazon.com, Expedia.com, and Travelocity use shopper data to change the website experience dynamically. Using this “on-site” information, website companies can present a customized experience without the need for data partnerships with outside parties.

Customizing A Dealership Website With Big Data

If we could use on-site data from a dealership website, a consumer who searched for used cars on their first visit to the website might see used car specials and promotions on the home page next time they visited.  A customer searching for a new and used Ford F-150 on the dealership website could be presented with an F-150 Coupon or promo on the home page on the second visit.  In other cases, dealers may want to offer up a general “incentive” when a consumer visits on the second or third time.  All of these examples will be a reality in 2013 as new versions of website software are offered to car dealers that leverage Big Data concepts.

For car dealers, limiting website customization to only what consumers are doing on their own website would miss the bigger opportunities that Big Data advocates promise.   Imagine a world where data “markets” are available where customer behavior and shopping activity can be passed to dealers to create a better shopping experience the FIRST TIME a consumer arrives to their website or contacts the dealership via email, phone, or chat!

Wouldn’t dealers want to know if the consumer who is visiting their website for the first time came recently shopped on Cars.com?  Autotrader.com? Wouldn’t it be helpful if a Big Data supplier also told the dealer’s website company that while they were on that third party website, they were looking at used Honda Accords?    How nice would it be for the customer to see home page promotions for Honda Accords when they arrived?

Or how about the case where a lead was submitted by a consumer and the dealership’s sales team marked it as dead.  Wouldn’t it be great to be notified if that same consumer is back shopping on your website or on a third party classified website?  Imagine how “timely” that call back to that prospect would seem from the dealership asking if they could still help them find a vehicle!

Once again, that data is only of value if the dealer’s website and/or CRM system could use that information to create a better consumer experience. In 2013 dealers will see updated automotive website and CRM software that will start to leverage “on-site” data with “off-site” data.  

Big Data Players

So which company has a rich set of off-site data that can be leveraged to improve dealership merchandising and consumer communications?  If you answered Dataium, that would be a logical choice since they have been the leaders in creating awareness about “Big Data” opportunities in the automotive industry.  Dataium’s cloud intelligence is being integrated into great products that are on the market today, like Hooklogic’s Lead To Show product, and more will come in 2013.

However, Dataium is not the only player to consider.  Think about the thousands of websites that ADP/Cobalt and Dealer.com manage.  They are smart cookies! (Sorry for the pun) These two companies record millions of consumer searches, clicks, and transactions each month.  Imagine the perspective that their business intelligence experts have on the consumer journey.  They have a wealth of structured and unstructured data at their disposal and it will be interesting to see how they leverage that data into their products.

Another key player is AutoTrader Companies (ATC), which consists of Autotrader.com, KBB.com, VinSolutions, Manheim, and others.  The combined dataset of these companies provides another “Big Data” lens by which customization and personalization can be achieved.   

So when you hear the term “Big Data” you can start to understand why so many people are excited about what is ahead for our industry.  Other large industries have been leveraging Big Data for years yet our industry is just in its infancy.  Big Data will answer some of the questions that have been haunting dealers for years, including which marketing investments are influencing consumers during their shopping journey.

Last year I wrote many articles inspired by Google’s book “Winning The Zero Moment of Truth” authored by Jim Lecinski.  Their research showed that consumers visited, on average, 18 online sources during their shopping path to purchase a vehicle.  Big Data will help shed light on which websites are the most important to consumers shopping for a vehicle in their local market.  It will also help dealers test customized marketing messages to increase conversion.

Downside To The Rush To Big Data?

Are there some downsides to the Big Data trend?  Privacy advocates as well as industry leaders warn about the potential for data sharing abuses.  All parties need to understand the language of their website and CRM data sharing contracts. Dealers will not want to be in a position where their local competitors are using their own data against them.

Dennis Galbraith from DrivingSales also brought up the need to standardization and normalization of data if dealers are to compare the relative effectiveness of similar marketing platforms. This will be something to watch as industry leaders seek to create industry wide data definitions.

Will dealers embrace Big Data?  I have some concerns that until dealers get a better handle on the data and reports that are being generated today, more data, from Big Data, may be undervalued. 

The Big Data discussion is a great opportunity to encourage dealers to decide which data elements from the existing vendor/system reports allow for business decisions to be made.  A data “audit” is a good discipline to create in the dealership because dealers will be getting MORE data options in the years to come. It is time to start managing the existing wide data pipe in the dealership; you can’t drink out of a fire hose! 

Let’s make a commitment to put the processes in place that create a “reducer valve” on the data pipe available to dealers.  I see the need to create a simplified set of multi-vendor reports that empower dealers to make better business decisions and not overwhelm them with nonsense.   I hope that the implementation of Big Data solutions are designed with the knowledge and attention level that dealers have to manage their business.

Big Data is exciting as long as it comes with a reducer valve.

Brian

Brian Pasch, CEO

PCG Consulting

732.672.2356

If you haven't noticed, about 14% of dealership website visitorsare coming on mobile devices with another 5% on tablets.  Your numbers may vary slightly but dealers would be remiss if they did not take mobile shoppers seriously.

Google searches done on mobile phones have a different urgency compared to searches done on mobile devices. How do I know this?  The Google Adwords campaigns that I run for mobile devices have a Click Through Rate (CTR) that is four times that of normal SEM campaigns that target desktop users.

The conversion rates on mobile ads range from 30-40% which includes many phone calls generated by the "Click to Call" feature that Adwords provides.  If you are not investing in mobile paid search, take a minute to read why I strongly encourage you to get started immediately.

Mobile Advertising and Device Targeting

If you are not familiar with Google Adwords options for mobile devices, speak with the Adwords management company you are using.  The degree of granularity is amazing, so you can target specific devices with marketing campaigns that are optimized for their screen size.

By default, many Adwords campaigns are set to target "All Available Devices" which can create inefficiencies and a poor consumer experience.  For example, a dealer creates a landing page on their primary website to promote the 2012 RAM 1500 truck.  Once the page is published, they create an Adwords campaign to drive traffic to that page.

Most likely, that page does not exist on the dealers mobile website, nor can it be easily added.  

So the 15-20% of mobile users who may be clicking on that paid ad for RAM 1500 trucks, will never see the custom landing page.  What they will see is the home page of the dealer's mobile website which will not convert very well.

Testing Your Mobile Strategy

Today I am up in Seattle visiting with the team at Cobalt for their Automotive Website Awards (AWA) product demonstrations.  This morning I conducted a number of searches on my iPhone that could represent a mobile shopper experience.

I encourage readers of this article to do the same test in their local market on their smartphone.   Test new, used, and service searches on your smart phone to see if your dealership is in the first two paid ads that are shaded in yellow.

The green stars represents that at least one franchise dealer was showing up in the two paid search ads designed for mobile devices.  How is your dealership showing on your smart phone?  Please share your experience in the comments area of this blog post.

Missed Opportunities & Review Advertising Warnings 

The search for "Nissan Service" in Seattle was a missed opportunity for Seattle franchise dealers which is allowing Midas and Firestone to connect with mobile users first.  There were a number of other franchise dealers that were not  appearing in search results, it was just not Nissan.

I really like the Adwords Ad Format that Hyundai of Kirkland is running because not only are they targeting mobile users, they have the "Click to Call" feature and their REVIEWS highlighted in the ad.  This combination is IDEAL for dealers that have a strong reputation management program at their dealership.  

My recommendation for this Hyundai store would be to focus on getting their reviews over a 4-star rating before using this ad format.  I'm note sure if I would want to advertise that my store is 3 out of 5 stars, or 15/30.  More importantly, the last two reviews on Google+ local are very bad, so this ad format is not really help them, 

Since they are running on a Cobalt platform, I would suggets that they contact their Cobalt Pro-Care representative and ask about the Cobalt Reputation Management solution.  I had a demo of the product yesterday and the latest update is very powerful and it would fix the problem of not having enough positive reviews for the store.

Mobile Should Not Be Ignored So How Are You Doing?

Take the 30 second challenge on your smartphone today.

If your dealership is not appearing in the first two ad spots for your specific list of keywords that would be used by mobile shoppers for sales or service, get that problem fixed immediately.

If you found this article helpful, please share it on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ to encourage other dealers to check their mobile strategy as well.

Thanks!

Brian

Brian Pasch, CEO

PCG Consulting

732.672.2356

Join me on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/brianpasch

I was visiting a dealership recently and the General Manager I was speaking with got a bit agitated when I asked him about their technology infrastructure.  In the past quarter, their store had gone through a website changeover that was painful, negatively impacted by the recent HomeNet upgrade, and experienced a CRM Server hardware failure which caused 14 days of CRM downtime.

I didn't catch on to the depth of his frustration while I was talking about "new" ideas and strategies that he could implement at his store.  At one point he stopped me, and looked in my eyes and said:

"Brian, I have never seen such a lack of reliability over the past 24 months from my automotive vendor partners.  It seems like vendors are sprinting to introduce more new features or introducing a new product but I don't think anyone is really testing them very well.  I just want the products I bought to work so that I can run my business!  When problems are indentified I need real solutions and not the run around."

I'm sharing this story because I think that many dealers feel the same way.  By the time dealers get their website platform debugged, and merchandized properly, a new version comes out that introduces new bugs and instability.  A new CRM product advertises to simplify the workload of sales professionals but many of the features don't work as advertised. 

Can anyone relate to the frustration of this General Manager? Are we reaching a tipping point for the patience levels of dealership executives?  

Are vendors cutting the testing budgets to keep pace with their competitors but hurting their long term brand in the marketplace?   I think that our industry needs to look inward and ask why their end users are feeling so abused.

What are your thoughts?  What companies are doing it right?

Brian

Brian Pasch, CEO

PCG Consulting

732.672.2356

It is very common in the automotive industry, which relies heavily on the Internet to provide sales prospects, to put a great deal of pressure on Internet/BDC departments to answer leads in a timely fashion.  

In fact, some OEM's hold dealers to a time-clock; they must respond to leads personally within a set number of minutes. 

Is your dealership focused on lead response time?  Do your employees that work in the Internet Department have emails also coming to their cell phones so that they can respond promptly to leads when they are out to lunch, traveling to a meeting, or after hours when the store is closed? 

For many of you, the answers to the questions above would be "yes, of course we do!".   This is even more common in smaller stores where the Internet department is only one or two people.

So what if I told you that unless the dealership have a specific policy and training program in place, the leads that your employees are responding to while driving could cost you millions of dollars?  Would you believe me?

Coca Cola Pays 21 Million Dollars

To understand the severity of the matter, you have to read this press release where Coca Cola Refreshments was pulled into a lawsuit because a car accident occurred when one of their drivers was distracted by their mobile device.  Here are two excerpts from the press release:

Two law firms came together to bring the cell phone distraction case to a jury after it was discovered in the lawsuit that Coca Cola had a vague and ambiguous cell phone policy for its delivery drivers, according to court documents. The jury was to decide whether or not Venice Wilson's injuries were caused by a distracted Coca Cola delivery driver who was on a cell phone.

"From the time I took the Coca Cola driver's testimony and obtained the company's inadequate cell phone driving policy, I knew we had a corporate giant with a huge safety problem on our hands. I also knew that taking on Coca Cola's policy that affects hundreds of thousands of its employees would require assembling a trial team with the horse power necessary to fight and win. More importantly, I knew Mrs. Wilson deserved justice, and the rest of the motoring public deserved safer drivers; so, Bob Hilliard and I decided to put our law firm litigation teams together to shred Coca Cola's policy."

What the jury found was that it was Coca Cola's responsibility to train and educate their employees about the dangers of cell phone usage when driving.  In fact, the policy must be clear that they are not to text, email, or violate laws when driving to respond to company matters on their mobile device. 

What Would The Jury Say About Your Policy?

If a dealer was facing a lawsuit involving an employee who was answering work emails while driving, lawyers involved could very easily line up dozens of employees who could testify that the dealership had a "15 minute" email response policy.   Would the dealer drag in the OEM and ask them to share the blame?

What would your employees say if interviewed?  I bet most would say that there was no formal policy or training that they should not respond to a company email or text while they were driving.

This is a very serious matter since this jury found that the employer was liable.  It would seem that even though most states have a law on the books about texting and cell phone usage while driving, if dealers remotely link compensation to lead response time they could be opening themselves up to a bigger problem.

How To Protect Your Business

I would advise all dealers to contact your compliance consulting firm to get a policy and training in place immediately.  

If you do not use a compliance consultant, I recommend that you contact Vane Clayton, CEO of KPA.  You can learn more about their company by visiting http://www.KPAOnline.com

AT&T Also Has A Technology Solution

To ensure compliance with your new texting policy, you can also take advantage of a new program offered by AT&T called "Associate PLEDGE" that is carrier agnostic. 

Associate PLEDGE from AT&T enables organization to take control of the problem and help protect your company from what you do not see and hear today. Associate PLEDGE empowers the corporation to:

• - Help protect itself from OSHA fines
• - Get notification of employees breaking corporate mobile device usage policy
• - Provide an audit trail for accountability around mobile device policy usage
• - Easy to use and deploy
• - No additional hardware to buy
• - Minimal learning curve
• - Centralized system management
• - Cross-Carrier solution
• - Works on multiple mobile devices including AndroidTM and BlackBerry®
• - Restrict functional use of the device Features while moving
• - Capture device usage information including use of Bluetooth, phone, and text activity received or placed from SmartPhones
• - Track device usage via GPS enabling company to know who, what, where, when and how fast

Associate Pledge Information

The Associate PLEDGE program is a monthly fee per cell phone device.  You don't have to be a member of the AT&T network to sign-up.  If you would like more information on the program contact Jolie Nadler from AT&T by calling 973-610-1761, who I thank for sharing this information with me. 

I hope that you will take action at your dealership and please share this article within the automotive community, Facebook, Twitter to ensure that dealers take action immediately.  

Dealer Principals can no afford to ignore the massive changes in operating liability that the Internet and technology has created.  Stay connected and work with a good compliance and regulatory advisor.

Brian

Brian Pasch, CEO

PCG Digital Marketing

732.672.2356

Jason Stein, a writer for Automotive News, broke the story today that TrueCar has ended their exclusive relationship with Yahoo to drive traffic and leads to the TrueCar platform.  The breakup was due to the lack of traffic and leads that Yahoo Autos was producing.

According the the article by Stein:

"Under the revised deal, TrueCar's payments to Yahoo will be triggered when TrueCar receives a minimum number of leads and a minimum number of high-quality leads from Yahoo Autos, according to a TrueCar source. Terms of those minimums were not disclosed. "

This does not surprise me especially when Cars.com walked away from Yahoo Autos.  It would seem that the price that Yahoo thinks exposure on Yahoo Autos is worth is highly overpriced.

On another note, TrueCar.com has been working hard with dealers and regulators to get their business model in full compliance with state laws.  Get ready for TrueCar 2.0. 

The turmoil has continued since Google announced that Google+ Local would be using a new review system in lieu of the old Google Places "five-star" rating system.

Dealers have been having trouble posting reviews from Apple iOS devices.  For many dealers, the review button was no longer visible on iPhone and iPads.

Google+ Local App For iPhones

This week something unexpected occurred when I chose to bulk update my apps on my iPhone.  The former Google Places  app was replaced by the Google+ Local App and a new icon design was introduced, highlighted in the red box on the right.

The new version of the App makes it easy to post reviews on Google+ Local.  I recommend that all dealers update their iPhone and iPads so that they can continue to use their devices to encourage Google users to post reviews.

The New Look of Reviews

The Google+ Local App business search feature is the same format as before, and I have included a few screen shots to show the development of the user interface.

I did a search for "Prestige Volvo" and the new search results show both the number of reviews and the overall "score" based on the new "Zagat" inspired voting system.

The highest score a dealer can receive is 30 and since Prestige has a score of 29, it places them as one of the highest rated Volvo dealers in the US. 

Google+ Voting Categories

The voting system is broken out into three categories as shown in the screen capture on the right.  

- Quality

- Appeal

- Service

One caveat is that for some dealers, there are NOT three voting blocks. This has to do with how the Google+ Local account is setup.

Under these three voting units is place for the customer to add their own comments.  

I strongly encourage dealers who have customers posting comments to use the comments feature to add credibility to the review.

Comment Tips

Here are a few things that customers can add to their comments that can help the dealer staff and the dealership's online CSI score.

- The name of their sales/service person

- The car that they purchased/serviced

- The reason why they came to the dealership

- Why they would recommend the dealership to others

By adding names of people that helped them or by discussing why they purchased their 2012 Volvo from the dealership,  makes the review more meaningful.  Comments that only say "Great Place", "Highly Recommended", etc. look suspicious.

So what are you waiting for?  Get your iPhone, iPad, or Android devices updated and loaded with the new Google+ Local App.

Implementing An Effective Review Engagement Process

If you have been having a difficult time getting your review counts increased by engaging your customers in sales and service, you need to make a commitment to ask for help.  Your dealership can not delay much longer without seeing a negative impact on sales and service.  There are a number of products offered by companies that can jumpstart and guide the review engagement process.   Do your research. 

Recently I visited a dealership that was praising the Dominion Dealer Solutions Prime Response product and how it has automated the engagement process and has increased reviews at all of their stores.

I also saw a demo of Cobalt's IRM solution recently and that was impressive!  There is no shortage of great solutions on the market.  Check out the vendor reviews here on DrivingSales. 

For some dealers it is not a product they need but more of a focus on process and merchandising the dealership.  There is not a one size fits all solution for dealers so find one that works with your culture. 

IRM Webinar For Guidance

If you would like assistance, join us for our next Reputation Management Webinar lead by Glenn Pasch.  Glenn will outline the process, training, and merchandising that has been effective for hundreds of dealers.  

Glenn will also cover a few products on the market that can help you like those offered by Cobalt, Dominion Dealer Solutions, and AAN.  Maybe we can get some guest speakers from companies offering products to join the webinar!

You can get on the IRM webinar notification list by emailing: reputation@pcgdigitalmarketing.com

If you found this article helpful, please Tweet, Post, and Share on Google+.

Brian

Brian Pasch, CEO

PCG Digital Marketing

732.672.2356

>

I received a call yesterday from a Dealer that was negatively impacted by the Google Penguin update.  Their organic search traffic is down about 25% and they asked me to take a look at their Analytics and Webmaster Tools.

The frustrating part is that their marketing and "SEO Company" deleted the message inside of Webmaster Tools alerting the dealer that Google had some concerns about the linking strategy used by the dealership.  

So without a specific message to go on, I looked at the links that were built. What I noticed was that this "SEO Company" had submitted their site to a number of sketchy directory (link building) websites that would be classified as link farms.

If you need an example of what these sites look like, check out:  http://directorywebsitesubmit.com 

From the screen shot on the right you can see that this is a very attractive and professional site.  NOT.

Well in any case, their website URL on this site alone had 1,197 links pointing back to their home page.

As I went through their linking list, it was clear that someone used an automated tool to submit their URL to these bullshit sites, whose only goal was to product high volume, low relevancy links.   I advised this dealer to get their website removed from these poor quality and suspect sites.

What About Group Portal Sites

As I was going about the review, I noticed something that I never really thought about but in the "Post Penguin"  era, everything has to be looked at with a different eye.  

What I noticed was that their group portal site had created 76,846 links to the home page of their Nissan website. A group portal site is one where a number of stores are combined into one site that shares inventory and information for all stores in the group.

How did these 76,846 links get created?  The group site had links on Vehicle Detail Pages that pointed to the store's website that had the car in stock.  There were also a number of forms on the group site that linked to the dealer's site on words like "Driving Directions & Map".  

Neither of these links are adding any SEO value to the individual store's website. So, I started to think would Google find these high volume links as suspicious?

So here is my recommendation.  If you have a group site that utilizes sidebar links on VDP pages, credit forms, or information pages back to a store website, contact your website provider and ask them to make them "No follow" links.    

This is not an overnight change, but it is one that all website providers who have created group sites should consider.

Portal Sites Are Not Bad

Are thousands of links from the group portal website the cause of the problem?  No.  

I think the shady SEO link farms were the issue here otherwise many more dealer groups would be screaming.

However, with Google seriously looking at link quality, there is no reason to make (Non SEO) user navigation links from portal site pages "follow" links.

This is a very easy change if the website development community agrees with me and updates their master templates on Group Sites to use the "no follow" tag on templated pages.

To make a link "no follow" this line of code is added to the link on the HTML coding of the page:  rel="nofollow"

Do you have any specific questions, start the dialogue here or feel free to drop me a line:  brian@pcgmailer.com.  

If you enjoyed this post please share it on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook.

Brian

Brian Pasch, CEO

PCG Digital Marketing

Brian Pasch