While not every dealership is actively involved with social media, it's a form of connecting with potential customers that doesn't seem to be going away.  If your dealership is participating in social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, etc), try to avoid making these common mistakes.

Replacing Your Dealership Website with Social Media Profiles: Maintain both for optimal results.  When you put your energy and assets into another platform (Facebook, Twitter, etc), it becomes their intellectual property.  If they were to shut down, your dealership would be left without a web presence.  Make sure you maintain your auto dealer website as well as social media sites.

Expecting Instant Success: As with most (not all) forms of marketing, you won't see results overnight.  Social media marketing takes time to build relationships and grow your network.  Set goals and benchmarks to help measure success, but keep in mind that you may not hit them instantly.

Not Targeting Properly: Reaching out to people that aren't in your market area will most likely be a waste of time and effort.  Make sure the people you are targeting can be reasonably expected to do business with your dealership (avoid spam-bots and buying "Friends" from Bangladesh).

Too Much Marketing: People use social media to connect, whether that be with your business or with their friends. Make sure your profile has all of the relevant information, and that when you post specials and inventory, it is done with an informational spin, and not overly “salesy”.  Use your social media profiles as a way to add a human touch to your dealership, and to provide ways for potential customers to reach your store.  Too much marketing and they’ll be driven away.

While not every dealership is actively involved with social media, it's a form of connecting with potential customers that doesn't seem to be going away.  If your dealership is participating in social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, etc), try to avoid making these common mistakes.

Replacing Your Dealership Website with Social Media Profiles: Maintain both for optimal results.  When you put your energy and assets into another platform (Facebook, Twitter, etc), it becomes their intellectual property.  If they were to shut down, your dealership would be left without a web presence.  Make sure you maintain your auto dealer website as well as social media sites.

Expecting Instant Success: As with most (not all) forms of marketing, you won't see results overnight.  Social media marketing takes time to build relationships and grow your network.  Set goals and benchmarks to help measure success, but keep in mind that you may not hit them instantly.

Not Targeting Properly: Reaching out to people that aren't in your market area will most likely be a waste of time and effort.  Make sure the people you are targeting can be reasonably expected to do business with your dealership (avoid spam-bots and buying "Friends" from Bangladesh).

Too Much Marketing: People use social media to connect, whether that be with your business or with their friends. Make sure your profile has all of the relevant information, and that when you post specials and inventory, it is done with an informational spin, and not overly “salesy”.  Use your social media profiles as a way to add a human touch to your dealership, and to provide ways for potential customers to reach your store.  Too much marketing and they’ll be driven away.

Having a dealership YouTube channel is important for many reasons (as I touched on last year), but once your dealership has a channel, what do you do next?  Here are some tips and best practices to help your dealership’s YouTube channel get better search engine visibility:

Upload Regularly: Just like a blog, YouTube channels that are updated regularly will rank better than those that never are.  For this reason, if you have a lot of videos on your site or in your marketing collateral, upload a few per day to YouTube.

Encourage Interaction: If your videos have a voiceover or text, consider adding a call to action asking viewers to leave a comment, subscribe to your dealership’s channel, or like the video.  Interaction on your videos can help increase the likelihood they get ranked well.

Optimize Titles: The titles and tags on your videos should be treated like you do those on your car dealership website.  Tags help form the Related Videos shown, so keep that in mind when adding the 5-10 tags that give your video context.  Video titles should use keywords, but only when relevant.  Use it to describe your video.

These tips will help your dealership’s YouTube channel do better on the video portal’s internal search engine, as well as in Google’s blended search.

Having a dealership YouTube channel is important for many reasons (as I touched on last year), but once your dealership has a channel, what do you do next?  Here are some tips and best practices to help your dealership’s YouTube channel get better search engine visibility:

Upload Regularly: Just like a blog, YouTube channels that are updated regularly will rank better than those that never are.  For this reason, if you have a lot of videos on your site or in your marketing collateral, upload a few per day to YouTube.

Encourage Interaction: If your videos have a voiceover or text, consider adding a call to action asking viewers to leave a comment, subscribe to your dealership’s channel, or like the video.  Interaction on your videos can help increase the likelihood they get ranked well.

Optimize Titles: The titles and tags on your videos should be treated like you do those on your car dealership website.  Tags help form the Related Videos shown, so keep that in mind when adding the 5-10 tags that give your video context.  Video titles should use keywords, but only when relevant.  Use it to describe your video.

These tips will help your dealership’s YouTube channel do better on the video portal’s internal search engine, as well as in Google’s blended search.

Most times, Google will make changes to their algorithm that either largely go unnoticed (meaning they only affect niche sites) or unannounced (your site will see SERP changes but won't necessarily know why).  On Tuesday, Google announced 40 changes to search quality they have made over the past month or so.

While many of these changes are pretty high level, some websites are taking a hit on their search engine results.

Some of the algorithm changes that could be affecting these sites down on the SERP are:

Improvements to Freshness - Google added "new signals which help us surface fresh content in our results even more quickly."  I first wrote about this in November, but this update indicates it is a continued focus for the search engine.

Improved Local Results - A new system allows them to better "detect when both queries and documents are local to the user."

Panda Update - "This launch refreshes data in the Panda system, making it more accurate and more sensitive to recent changes on the web."

If you're seeing a change in how your auto dealer website is ranking in Google's search results, ask your car dealership website provider about the changes Google has recently made.  It's very possible that this latest round of changes could be affecting your site.

Most times, Google will make changes to their algorithm that either largely go unnoticed (meaning they only affect niche sites) or unannounced (your site will see SERP changes but won't necessarily know why).  On Tuesday, Google announced 40 changes to search quality they have made over the past month or so.

While many of these changes are pretty high level, some websites are taking a hit on their search engine results.

Some of the algorithm changes that could be affecting these sites down on the SERP are:

Improvements to Freshness - Google added "new signals which help us surface fresh content in our results even more quickly."  I first wrote about this in November, but this update indicates it is a continued focus for the search engine.

Improved Local Results - A new system allows them to better "detect when both queries and documents are local to the user."

Panda Update - "This launch refreshes data in the Panda system, making it more accurate and more sensitive to recent changes on the web."

If you're seeing a change in how your auto dealer website is ranking in Google's search results, ask your car dealership website provider about the changes Google has recently made.  It's very possible that this latest round of changes could be affecting your site.

Title tags should be a part of the SEO strategy of every car dealership website.  Why?  Its contents not only provide the text for the blue-links shown on search engine result pages (meaning users use them to help decide whether or not to click onto your dealership’s site), but also tell search engines what each unique web page contains.

Many auto dealers leave this important SEO aspect up to their dealership website providers.  For those that choose to take a more proactive approach, here are some things you should consider:

Create an Accurate Description of the Page: The title tag for the page should reflect the text content that actually exists on the page, both for human and search engine purposes.  Besides, why would you want anyone landing on your vehicle details page if they weren’t interested in the vehicle merchandised in that content?  For a dealership, most pages should contain information about your dealership, your inventory, and the locations that you serve.

Use Brief, but Descriptive Titles: Google only shows the first 70 characters of your title tag, including spaces, in its results.  Search engines tend to give less value to the content in title tags the further away from the start of the tag the content.  70 characters isn’t a maximum length for the title tag, but know that, for SEO purposes, you may not see the same results, and there are decreasing returns for more keywords.

Avoid Filler Words: Why waste your limited title tag space with words like “the”, “and”, “but” or “or”?  Make sure your title tag still flows and makes sense, but remember that these filler words don’t add any SEO value, so use them sparingly.

Keep Them Unique: Each page on your site has unique content (or at least it should), so each page should have its own unique title tag.

It Needs To Make Sense: Title tags are a mix of SEO and describing the content on the page.  That means that keyword stuffing should absolutely not be done.  Both website visitors and search engine users will see this content, so make sure it accurately describes the content.

Title tags can be a great tool in your SEO campaign, when used properly.  Check with your website provider to make sure your dealership site is getting the full advantage of properly optimized title tags.

Title tags should be a part of the SEO strategy of every car dealership website.  Why?  Its contents not only provide the text for the blue-links shown on search engine result pages (meaning users use them to help decide whether or not to click onto your dealership’s site), but also tell search engines what each unique web page contains.

Many auto dealers leave this important SEO aspect up to their dealership website providers.  For those that choose to take a more proactive approach, here are some things you should consider:

Create an Accurate Description of the Page: The title tag for the page should reflect the text content that actually exists on the page, both for human and search engine purposes.  Besides, why would you want anyone landing on your vehicle details page if they weren’t interested in the vehicle merchandised in that content?  For a dealership, most pages should contain information about your dealership, your inventory, and the locations that you serve.

Use Brief, but Descriptive Titles: Google only shows the first 70 characters of your title tag, including spaces, in its results.  Search engines tend to give less value to the content in title tags the further away from the start of the tag the content.  70 characters isn’t a maximum length for the title tag, but know that, for SEO purposes, you may not see the same results, and there are decreasing returns for more keywords.

Avoid Filler Words: Why waste your limited title tag space with words like “the”, “and”, “but” or “or”?  Make sure your title tag still flows and makes sense, but remember that these filler words don’t add any SEO value, so use them sparingly.

Keep Them Unique: Each page on your site has unique content (or at least it should), so each page should have its own unique title tag.

It Needs To Make Sense: Title tags are a mix of SEO and describing the content on the page.  That means that keyword stuffing should absolutely not be done.  Both website visitors and search engine users will see this content, so make sure it accurately describes the content.

Title tags can be a great tool in your SEO campaign, when used properly.  Check with your website provider to make sure your dealership site is getting the full advantage of properly optimized title tags.

While at NADA, I heard quite a bit of buzz about mobile websites. Does my dealership need one?  If I already have one, do I need to actually optimize it?  Is mobile traffic really growing as rapidly as everyone says it is?  Should I be making my car dealership’s mobile website a priority to sell more cars?

The answer to all four of those questions is absolutely, unequivocally--YES.

Some stats:

• The number of mobile searches has grown 400% in the last year
• 1 in 3 mobile searches is related to local search
• 79% of smartphone owners use their phones to help with shopping (compare prices, find product info, locate a retailer, etc)
• 28% of those that see a mobile ad take action
• 59% of users visit an online store after looking it up online

In short, mobile traffic is growing extremely quickly, and is expected to be the predominant mode of searching online for local content by 2013.  If your dealership is neglecting your mobile websites, you’ll be behind the curve as time goes on.

Your car dealership mobile website optimization efforts should focus on two things: earning top rankings in the mobile SERPs and making the site's layout mobile friendly.

You can use this tool to test how your mobile site looks on an iPhone, or use Google's GoMo to preview your mobile site and find resources to help if your site isn't as quality as you'd like it to be.  Make sure you talk to your mobile website provider to ensure they are optimizing your mobile site and helping your dealership achieve your mobile optimization goals.

While at NADA, I heard quite a bit of buzz about mobile websites. Does my dealership need one?  If I already have one, do I need to actually optimize it?  Is mobile traffic really growing as rapidly as everyone says it is?  Should I be making my car dealership’s mobile website a priority to sell more cars?

The answer to all four of those questions is absolutely, unequivocally--YES.

Some stats:

• The number of mobile searches has grown 400% in the last year
• 1 in 3 mobile searches is related to local search
• 79% of smartphone owners use their phones to help with shopping (compare prices, find product info, locate a retailer, etc)
• 28% of those that see a mobile ad take action
• 59% of users visit an online store after looking it up online

In short, mobile traffic is growing extremely quickly, and is expected to be the predominant mode of searching online for local content by 2013.  If your dealership is neglecting your mobile websites, you’ll be behind the curve as time goes on.

Your car dealership mobile website optimization efforts should focus on two things: earning top rankings in the mobile SERPs and making the site's layout mobile friendly.

You can use this tool to test how your mobile site looks on an iPhone, or use Google's GoMo to preview your mobile site and find resources to help if your site isn't as quality as you'd like it to be.  Make sure you talk to your mobile website provider to ensure they are optimizing your mobile site and helping your dealership achieve your mobile optimization goals.