Within the past year, Maryland has been hit by an earthquake and a hurricane (in the same week!), as well as a huge snowstorm, all fairly uncommon occurrences in our state.  While DealerOn, both the office and our employees, were lucky enough to dodge any real damage, it definitely made us all think about how prepared we are for these kinds of emergencies.

DealerOn had enough warning before Hurricane Irene (and dodged damage from the earthquake) to ensure our account managers were set up to work remotely if necessary.  That way we knew that all of our customers’ dealership websites wouldn’t be affected, and we could continue to provide the exceptional customer service on which we pride ourselves.  And while we were lucky to avoid damage, many in our area were not, and are still without power.

After a natural disaster, your first priority will obviously be to ensure your friends, family, and co-workers are safe.  But after that?  Here are some things to think about to keep your dealership up and running:

Who is expected to report to work?  What if they can't get there?  What are your leave policies for those without power, damaged homes, etc?

How will you let your employees know if you are open for business?  Does a phone tree exist?  Will you have every employee call you to report their status?

What about dealership customers that have appointments set?  Is your service manager responsible for contacting his/her customers, and a sales manager responsible for contacting theirs?

Taking the time to think about, plan, and inform your dealership staff about these things could reduce a huge headache (as well as save money) after a natural disaster.  As we recently learned ourselves, no natural disaster scenario (or two) is too far-fetched.

How prepared for such an emergency is your dealership?  For those affected by Irene, what steps did your dealership take to get ready?

Within the past year, Maryland has been hit by an earthquake and a hurricane (in the same week!), as well as a huge snowstorm, all fairly uncommon occurrences in our state.  While DealerOn, both the office and our employees, were lucky enough to dodge any real damage, it definitely made us all think about how prepared we are for these kinds of emergencies.

DealerOn had enough warning before Hurricane Irene (and dodged damage from the earthquake) to ensure our account managers were set up to work remotely if necessary.  That way we knew that all of our customers’ dealership websites wouldn’t be affected, and we could continue to provide the exceptional customer service on which we pride ourselves.  And while we were lucky to avoid damage, many in our area were not, and are still without power.

After a natural disaster, your first priority will obviously be to ensure your friends, family, and co-workers are safe.  But after that?  Here are some things to think about to keep your dealership up and running:

Who is expected to report to work?  What if they can't get there?  What are your leave policies for those without power, damaged homes, etc?

How will you let your employees know if you are open for business?  Does a phone tree exist?  Will you have every employee call you to report their status?

What about dealership customers that have appointments set?  Is your service manager responsible for contacting his/her customers, and a sales manager responsible for contacting theirs?

Taking the time to think about, plan, and inform your dealership staff about these things could reduce a huge headache (as well as save money) after a natural disaster.  As we recently learned ourselves, no natural disaster scenario (or two) is too far-fetched.

How prepared for such an emergency is your dealership?  For those affected by Irene, what steps did your dealership take to get ready?

One of the SEO sites that I frequently read (www.searchengineland.com) has a VERY interesting post by a  reader, LebSEO Design's Wissam Dandan.  He has found examples of Google Adwords ads appearing at the bottom of the page for some searches.

No one on our search team at DealerOn has come across these examples yet, and  judging by the information I've seen on other SEO industry blogs, it’s a fairly limited test, since not many searchers are.

This could have interesting implications to PPC buys if Google decides to keep this test as a permanent feature.  I haven’t seen anything about how Google would report on the placement for ads that run at the bottom of a results page. 

This could be a positive for dealers using PPC as a marketing strategy. If your ads were previously being pushed to page 2, they may now be on the bottom of page 1. 

I wonder how Google will incorporate these ad positions into their “Position Preference” targeting.    It is entirely possible that ads would be more effective on a Cost-Per-Acquisition (CPA) basis when they’re at the bottom of the page.  Potentially you could target your campaigns to reach users that had scrolled through the organic results to the bottom of the page, most likely not finding what they were looking for.  This could be very interesting and a huge campaign management changer for PPC providers.

What are your thoughts on how this might impact your Google Adwords campaigns?

One of the SEO sites that I frequently read (www.searchengineland.com) has a VERY interesting post by a  reader, LebSEO Design's Wissam Dandan.  He has found examples of Google Adwords ads appearing at the bottom of the page for some searches.

No one on our search team at DealerOn has come across these examples yet, and  judging by the information I've seen on other SEO industry blogs, it’s a fairly limited test, since not many searchers are.

This could have interesting implications to PPC buys if Google decides to keep this test as a permanent feature.  I haven’t seen anything about how Google would report on the placement for ads that run at the bottom of a results page. 

This could be a positive for dealers using PPC as a marketing strategy. If your ads were previously being pushed to page 2, they may now be on the bottom of page 1. 

I wonder how Google will incorporate these ad positions into their “Position Preference” targeting.    It is entirely possible that ads would be more effective on a Cost-Per-Acquisition (CPA) basis when they’re at the bottom of the page.  Potentially you could target your campaigns to reach users that had scrolled through the organic results to the bottom of the page, most likely not finding what they were looking for.  This could be very interesting and a huge campaign management changer for PPC providers.

What are your thoughts on how this might impact your Google Adwords campaigns?

In a follow-up comment to a post I wrote last week about social media web tools, Jared Hamilton asked me about other free tools I’d recommend for dealers and internet managers to be as effective as possible in their daily marketing efforts.  Below are some tools that various team members at DealerOn use or have used in the past.

Compete.com --By entering your website and those of your competitors, you can see site traffic history, competitive analytics, and your "Compete Rank", a stat based on unique visitors.

Quantcast.com --  Similar information to Compete.com, Quantcast gives you another site to triangulate on information about your website, your visitors, and your competitors’ website visitors.   

Spyfu.com – Not free, but they provide a free trial, and if you find it useful, it’s fairly cheap.  Spyfu provides information about your competitors keywords (organic and paid), ad copy, and spend levels.  The data isn’t perfect, but it’s interesting and helpful.

Website Grader--This is similar to Compete.com, providing information on various aspects of your site (metadata, readability level, indexed pages, linking domains, etc), and ways you can improve your website's score.

Google Keyword Tool--This well-known tool allows you to see how many searches are done on a keyword, as well as related terms.  It's a good, basic way to help start your keyword research for your website.  It also serves as a keyword discovery tool--providing additional keyword suggestions, that Google views as similar to the keywords you provide.

Google Webmaster Tools--Get the most out of your website by seeing how Google sees your site, get information about internal and external links, and make sure Google has your sitemap.

Google Analytics--I recently wrote a post about the importance of incorporating this analytics tool on your dealership site.  There’s absolutely no good reason not to have it, its free, and even if you don’t check it but every few months, getting your site coded today, will mean that 2 months from now, you haveenough data to actually draw some conclusions about your site and your traffic.

Google Alerts--At a minimum, your dealership should be tracking when your employee's names, dealership name, and competitors’ brand names are mentioned online.  Results are delivered to your email inbox.

Backlink Checker--By simply entering your URL, you can find out how many backlinks Yahoo, Bing, and Google have to your site.  You can click onto the results to see which sites are linking to your website.  This is a useful stat to keep an eye on--if there is a sudden increase or decrease, you'll want to find out why.

If you have any questions about how best to use these or other free web tools, feel free to contact DealerOn at clientresults@dealeron.com.  Are there are any other free web tools that your dealership uses?  Please share below.

In a follow-up comment to a post I wrote last week about social media web tools, Jared Hamilton asked me about other free tools I’d recommend for dealers and internet managers to be as effective as possible in their daily marketing efforts.  Below are some tools that various team members at DealerOn use or have used in the past.

Compete.com --By entering your website and those of your competitors, you can see site traffic history, competitive analytics, and your "Compete Rank", a stat based on unique visitors.

Quantcast.com --  Similar information to Compete.com, Quantcast gives you another site to triangulate on information about your website, your visitors, and your competitors’ website visitors.   

Spyfu.com – Not free, but they provide a free trial, and if you find it useful, it’s fairly cheap.  Spyfu provides information about your competitors keywords (organic and paid), ad copy, and spend levels.  The data isn’t perfect, but it’s interesting and helpful.

Website Grader--This is similar to Compete.com, providing information on various aspects of your site (metadata, readability level, indexed pages, linking domains, etc), and ways you can improve your website's score.

Google Keyword Tool--This well-known tool allows you to see how many searches are done on a keyword, as well as related terms.  It's a good, basic way to help start your keyword research for your website.  It also serves as a keyword discovery tool--providing additional keyword suggestions, that Google views as similar to the keywords you provide.

Google Webmaster Tools--Get the most out of your website by seeing how Google sees your site, get information about internal and external links, and make sure Google has your sitemap.

Google Analytics--I recently wrote a post about the importance of incorporating this analytics tool on your dealership site.  There’s absolutely no good reason not to have it, its free, and even if you don’t check it but every few months, getting your site coded today, will mean that 2 months from now, you haveenough data to actually draw some conclusions about your site and your traffic.

Google Alerts--At a minimum, your dealership should be tracking when your employee's names, dealership name, and competitors’ brand names are mentioned online.  Results are delivered to your email inbox.

Backlink Checker--By simply entering your URL, you can find out how many backlinks Yahoo, Bing, and Google have to your site.  You can click onto the results to see which sites are linking to your website.  This is a useful stat to keep an eye on--if there is a sudden increase or decrease, you'll want to find out why.

If you have any questions about how best to use these or other free web tools, feel free to contact DealerOn at clientresults@dealeron.com.  Are there are any other free web tools that your dealership uses?  Please share below.

In addition to rolling out Google+ and the Google +1 button, Google has also recently rolled out a new version of Google Analytics.  Google Analytics 5 includes a complete user interface re-design which allows users to create multiple dashboards, more easily search across multiple accounts, create custom reports (and goals), and Analytics Intelligence, a tool that allows for automatic alerts.

One of the more exciting new features of Google Analytics 5 is the ability to track Google +1 clicks.  To get this functionality on your site, you need to make sure you are using the updated tracking code.  If you've recently added Google Analytics to your site, you should have the right code.  If not, make sure when you sign into your Google Analytics account, you're using the "New Version".  If your page looks like this:

you aren't.  So click "New Version" and you're set.

Now, click the Gear icon in the orange toolbar.  Click "Tracking Code" and you'll have the latest version of the code for your site.

Make sure that when you put the code on your site you get it before the closing of the </head> tag of your HTML file.

It's important to make sure your dealership website has this updated Google Analytics code on your site, so check with your dealer site provider to make sure they've added them.  If you have any questions beyond that, feel free to contact DealerOn at clientresults@dealeron.com and check out our post from last week on how to get Google Analytics on your dealership website.

In addition to rolling out Google+ and the Google +1 button, Google has also recently rolled out a new version of Google Analytics.  Google Analytics 5 includes a complete user interface re-design which allows users to create multiple dashboards, more easily search across multiple accounts, create custom reports (and goals), and Analytics Intelligence, a tool that allows for automatic alerts.

One of the more exciting new features of Google Analytics 5 is the ability to track Google +1 clicks.  To get this functionality on your site, you need to make sure you are using the updated tracking code.  If you've recently added Google Analytics to your site, you should have the right code.  If not, make sure when you sign into your Google Analytics account, you're using the "New Version".  If your page looks like this:

you aren't.  So click "New Version" and you're set.

Now, click the Gear icon in the orange toolbar.  Click "Tracking Code" and you'll have the latest version of the code for your site.

Make sure that when you put the code on your site you get it before the closing of the </head> tag of your HTML file.

It's important to make sure your dealership website has this updated Google Analytics code on your site, so check with your dealer site provider to make sure they've added them.  If you have any questions beyond that, feel free to contact DealerOn at clientresults@dealeron.com and check out our post from last week on how to get Google Analytics on your dealership website.

No matter how sophisticated or rudimentary your website provider‘s reporting platform is, having Google Analytics on your website is a “no-brainer”.  You want to “trust, but verify” your website provider’s analytics by making sure they are similar to those in Google Analytics.  At DealerOn, we have made it a standard part of our process to create a Google Analytics account for each of our customers’ websites. 

Luckily, if your auto dealership website provider doesn't already provide Google Analytics tracking code (which I believe they should), it is fairly simple to add to your own website.  Here are the 5 steps to implement Google Analytics on your dealership websites:

1. After logging into your Google account, visit https://www.google.com/analytics/provision/.  Click "Sign Up".

2. Enter the information about your dealership website, and click "Continue".

3. Enter your contact information.

4. Read and approve the User Agreements.  Make sure you set your Data Sharing Settings before clicking "Create New Account".

5. You will have to choose whether  you are tracking a single domain, one domain with multiple subdomains, or multiple top-level domains.  For most dealerships, you will be tracking a single domain.  Choose which best fits your needs, and Google will provide you with a code snippet to put on each page you'd like to track.  Send this code to your dealership website provider, and they should be able to take care of this for you. 

That's it.  5 simple steps to creating your own Google Analytics tracking code and reporting system.

While it is not reasonable to expect the data you see from your website provider and Google Analytics to match exactly, (your provider should have filters and visit/session rules that may not be precisely the same as those in Google Analytics), they should be fairly close and they should trend in the same directions.

Having Google Analytics reporting on your site is also important in case you switch providers at some point.  You will have a complete history of YOUR website’s performance from an unbiased 3rd party.  Also, Google Analytics is a flexible platform that allows you to create reports and track key metrics that your website provider may not provide.

If you have any questions, or would like more information about getting Google Analytics on your website, just drop us an email at clientresults@dealeron.com.

No matter how sophisticated or rudimentary your website provider‘s reporting platform is, having Google Analytics on your website is a “no-brainer”.  You want to “trust, but verify” your website provider’s analytics by making sure they are similar to those in Google Analytics.  At DealerOn, we have made it a standard part of our process to create a Google Analytics account for each of our customers’ websites. 

Luckily, if your auto dealership website provider doesn't already provide Google Analytics tracking code (which I believe they should), it is fairly simple to add to your own website.  Here are the 5 steps to implement Google Analytics on your dealership websites:

1. After logging into your Google account, visit https://www.google.com/analytics/provision/.  Click "Sign Up".

2. Enter the information about your dealership website, and click "Continue".

3. Enter your contact information.

4. Read and approve the User Agreements.  Make sure you set your Data Sharing Settings before clicking "Create New Account".

5. You will have to choose whether  you are tracking a single domain, one domain with multiple subdomains, or multiple top-level domains.  For most dealerships, you will be tracking a single domain.  Choose which best fits your needs, and Google will provide you with a code snippet to put on each page you'd like to track.  Send this code to your dealership website provider, and they should be able to take care of this for you. 

That's it.  5 simple steps to creating your own Google Analytics tracking code and reporting system.

While it is not reasonable to expect the data you see from your website provider and Google Analytics to match exactly, (your provider should have filters and visit/session rules that may not be precisely the same as those in Google Analytics), they should be fairly close and they should trend in the same directions.

Having Google Analytics reporting on your site is also important in case you switch providers at some point.  You will have a complete history of YOUR website’s performance from an unbiased 3rd party.  Also, Google Analytics is a flexible platform that allows you to create reports and track key metrics that your website provider may not provide.

If you have any questions, or would like more information about getting Google Analytics on your website, just drop us an email at clientresults@dealeron.com.