Google+ has been promoted lately by many in the SEO industry as a "must-do" for local businesses to help their search engine optimization efforts.  While an important tool for SEO moving forward, there are other areas your dealership can utilize to keep your search engine optimization on the cutting edge.

Here are a couple of additional things your car dealership should be keeping an eye on to keep your SEO efforts top-notch as the search landscape continues to change:

Monitor Your Best Referral Sites: Check your Google Analytics for the third party sites that are sending quality traffic to your site.  This means it is traffic that converts into leads, and eventually sales.  It could be local sites, social media portals, or even your third party lead providers.  Keep track of this information and nurture those sites (and your relationship with them).

Generate Quality Content: Good content is good content, regardless of which platform you put it on.  That means it's important to make the content your dealership produces "shareable" to other platforms.  One way this can be done is to make sure you have social media sharing buttons on your blog.  Also, create content with your SEO keywords in mind in case they do get shared and spread through the Internet.

Mobile Technology:  Mobile is big and getting bigger!  Its roughly 20% of a typical dealer’s traffic right now, and growing every month!  Find out what your consumers want by taking every opportunity to survey them -- ask for suggestions in your newsletters, converse with them via social media, and track the existing mobile traffic to your site through analytics.  Right now is the time to ensure your mobile site is properly search optimized so your dealership doesn't get left behind in the future.

Google+ is just one of many SEO extras your dealership should be focusing on moving forward.  Once your car dealer website is properly optimized, make sure your dealership or SEO provider is engaging search engines through as many mediums as possible.

While some dealerships are successful with their email marketing campaigns, it is a task that can easily fall to the back burner or be neglected.  When done correctly, email marketing is an effective way to stay in touch with existing customers, and build a relationship with potential car buyers. 

If your dealership has let your email marketing efforts go in recent years, here are some tips to refresh your campaigns and help keep them successful:

Add a Human Element: Make sure you email sounds as though an actual person wrote it.  Email users get so many automated messages as it is; put a personal touch and tone in yours to connect with your past, current, and future customers.

Send Often, but Relevant: If your dealership has relevant, quality information you want to get out to your customers, send it!  Worry less about frequency, and more about quality.

Design Matters: When was the last time you took a look at the design of your outgoing email marketing?  Is it branded well?  Pleasing to look at?  Devote some resources to making sure your email template matches your other branding for a consistent message, and that it looks good.

Essentially, put some effort in, and it will show.  Make your emails worthwhile to read, sound as though they were actually written by a person, and are pleasing to the eye.   If you’re going to use email marketing, integrate it into your car dealer online marketing plan. Remember, the goal of email marketing is to establish, develop, or maintain relationships, so send emails (and give it the time and effort) that reflect that goal.

While some dealerships are successful with their email marketing campaigns, it is a task that can easily fall to the back burner or be neglected.  When done correctly, email marketing is an effective way to stay in touch with existing customers, and build a relationship with potential car buyers. 

If your dealership has let your email marketing efforts go in recent years, here are some tips to refresh your campaigns and help keep them successful:

Add a Human Element: Make sure you email sounds as though an actual person wrote it.  Email users get so many automated messages as it is; put a personal touch and tone in yours to connect with your past, current, and future customers.

Send Often, but Relevant: If your dealership has relevant, quality information you want to get out to your customers, send it!  Worry less about frequency, and more about quality.

Design Matters: When was the last time you took a look at the design of your outgoing email marketing?  Is it branded well?  Pleasing to look at?  Devote some resources to making sure your email template matches your other branding for a consistent message, and that it looks good.

Essentially, put some effort in, and it will show.  Make your emails worthwhile to read, sound as though they were actually written by a person, and are pleasing to the eye.   If you’re going to use email marketing, integrate it into your car dealer online marketing plan. Remember, the goal of email marketing is to establish, develop, or maintain relationships, so send emails (and give it the time and effort) that reflect that goal.

Rockville, MD - February 3, 2012 - DealerOn Inc. is the recipient of a “Top Rated” Websites award in the third annual DrivingSales Dealer Satisfaction Awards, presented in conjunction with the 2012 National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) Convention & Expo.

"What makes this award so meaningful is that it literally comes from our customers—our partners," said Ali Amirrezvani, CEO and Co-Founder of DealerOn.  "At DealerOn, every single employee knows that our goal is to make our dealers truly happy in every way we can.  We work with them to improve our platform, our support processes, our products, and their results because that’s what makes our dealers happy.  We’re not building a customer base; we’re building partnerships with dealers.  Winning this award is further proof that we're on the right track."

DealerOn has become noted for documenting (through Google Analytics and 3^rd party CRM reports) an average increase of over 200% in lead volume for their auto dealer clients.  They have recently announced a Lead Volume Increase, Money-back GUARANTEE for new customers.

The DrivingSales Dealer Satisfaction Awards measure dealer satisfaction by allowing dealers to rate and review their vendors at DrivingSales.com Vendor Ratings, the industry’s only neutral, comprehensive vendor rating forum featuring real-time peer reviews and honest competitor comparisons.  Only vendors who achieved top rankings in dealer satisfaction in each category, as determined by the thousands of auto dealers who are part of the DrivingSales.com community, received awards. The awards also incorporate the results of the 2011 Vendor Ratings survey, which was deployed to nearly 18,000 dealerships nationwide.

“We are proud to present a DrivingSales Dealer Satisfaction ‘Top Rated’ Websites Award to DealerOn for achieving the most coveted accolade of all, the satisfaction of its dealer customers,” said DrivingSales CEO and Founder Jared Hamilton. “This award, based on the direct input of the dealer community, recognizes service providers like DealerOn who are leading the way in innovation, performance, and customer service. We congratulate DealerOn on their excellent results and for achieving the satisfaction of their dealer customers.”

Full award results are available online at http://dealersatisfactionawards.com/. Full broadcast coverage of the DrivingSales Dealer Satisfaction Awards ceremony will be available at www.drivingsalestv.com following NADA.

About DealerOn, Inc.

DealerOn, Inc. is the leading website provider and digital agency serving the retail automotive industry.  DealerOn was named to the 2011 Inc. 5000 List of Fastest Growing Private Companies with a three-year sales growth of 127%.  DealerOn has pioneered the analytics-based marketing approach in the retail auto industry with their DealerOn Digital Marketing Dashboard.  The Digital Dashboard helps to document the precise impact of their services for every new customer.  Since creating this process in 2009, DealerOn has documented an average increase of over 200% in lead volume for their auto dealer clients.

About DrivingSales Vendor Ratings

DrivingSales Vendor Ratings at is the industry’s only neutral, comprehensive vendor rating forum featuring real-time peer reviews and honest competitor comparisons “searchable by category, company or rating”  and is one of the most popular features of DrivingSales.com. Dealers are asked to rate their vendors on a 1-5 star scale, including whether they would recommend the vendor product to colleagues, and why they would or would not recommend the product.

About DrivingSales.com

DrivingSales is the auto industry's fastest-growing, most influential trade media property focused on delivering actionable profit-building information and business intelligence to auto retailers and industry professionals. Approximately, one in every four dealerships in the United States has a registered member in the DrivingSales community.

DrivingSales' information network includes flagship property DrivingSales.com (www.drivingsales.com), the world's largest car dealer social network; DrivingSalesTV (www.drivingsalestv.com), an interactive web channel which helps car dealers and auto professionals keep tabs on their industry and emerging technologies 24/7; DrivingSales University, an on-demand training platform where dealerships learn the latest web strategies from top e-commerce experts; DrivingSales Executive Summit (DSES) the industry's leading conference where progressive dealers collaborate and learn from world renowned experts, and DrivingSales Dealership Innovation Guide, a quarterly free publication featuring case studies of the industry's most innovative dealerships, solutions and best practices.

DealerOn, Inc. Media Relations:
Chris Deringer (chris@dealeron.com), VP Marketing, 877-543-4200

DrivingSales Media Relations:
Melanie Webber (melanie@mwebbcom.com), mWEBB Communications, 424.603.4340

Angela Jacobson (angela@mwebbcom.com), mWEBB Communications, 714.454.8776

Rockville, MD - February 3, 2012 - DealerOn Inc. is the recipient of a “Top Rated” Websites award in the third annual DrivingSales Dealer Satisfaction Awards, presented in conjunction with the 2012 National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) Convention & Expo.

"What makes this award so meaningful is that it literally comes from our customers—our partners," said Ali Amirrezvani, CEO and Co-Founder of DealerOn.  "At DealerOn, every single employee knows that our goal is to make our dealers truly happy in every way we can.  We work with them to improve our platform, our support processes, our products, and their results because that’s what makes our dealers happy.  We’re not building a customer base; we’re building partnerships with dealers.  Winning this award is further proof that we're on the right track."

DealerOn has become noted for documenting (through Google Analytics and 3^rd party CRM reports) an average increase of over 200% in lead volume for their auto dealer clients.  They have recently announced a Lead Volume Increase, Money-back GUARANTEE for new customers.

The DrivingSales Dealer Satisfaction Awards measure dealer satisfaction by allowing dealers to rate and review their vendors at DrivingSales.com Vendor Ratings, the industry’s only neutral, comprehensive vendor rating forum featuring real-time peer reviews and honest competitor comparisons.  Only vendors who achieved top rankings in dealer satisfaction in each category, as determined by the thousands of auto dealers who are part of the DrivingSales.com community, received awards. The awards also incorporate the results of the 2011 Vendor Ratings survey, which was deployed to nearly 18,000 dealerships nationwide.

“We are proud to present a DrivingSales Dealer Satisfaction ‘Top Rated’ Websites Award to DealerOn for achieving the most coveted accolade of all, the satisfaction of its dealer customers,” said DrivingSales CEO and Founder Jared Hamilton. “This award, based on the direct input of the dealer community, recognizes service providers like DealerOn who are leading the way in innovation, performance, and customer service. We congratulate DealerOn on their excellent results and for achieving the satisfaction of their dealer customers.”

Full award results are available online at http://dealersatisfactionawards.com/. Full broadcast coverage of the DrivingSales Dealer Satisfaction Awards ceremony will be available at www.drivingsalestv.com following NADA.

About DealerOn, Inc.

DealerOn, Inc. is the leading website provider and digital agency serving the retail automotive industry.  DealerOn was named to the 2011 Inc. 5000 List of Fastest Growing Private Companies with a three-year sales growth of 127%.  DealerOn has pioneered the analytics-based marketing approach in the retail auto industry with their DealerOn Digital Marketing Dashboard.  The Digital Dashboard helps to document the precise impact of their services for every new customer.  Since creating this process in 2009, DealerOn has documented an average increase of over 200% in lead volume for their auto dealer clients.

About DrivingSales Vendor Ratings

DrivingSales Vendor Ratings at is the industry’s only neutral, comprehensive vendor rating forum featuring real-time peer reviews and honest competitor comparisons “searchable by category, company or rating”  and is one of the most popular features of DrivingSales.com. Dealers are asked to rate their vendors on a 1-5 star scale, including whether they would recommend the vendor product to colleagues, and why they would or would not recommend the product.

About DrivingSales.com

DrivingSales is the auto industry's fastest-growing, most influential trade media property focused on delivering actionable profit-building information and business intelligence to auto retailers and industry professionals. Approximately, one in every four dealerships in the United States has a registered member in the DrivingSales community.

DrivingSales' information network includes flagship property DrivingSales.com (www.drivingsales.com), the world's largest car dealer social network; DrivingSalesTV (www.drivingsalestv.com), an interactive web channel which helps car dealers and auto professionals keep tabs on their industry and emerging technologies 24/7; DrivingSales University, an on-demand training platform where dealerships learn the latest web strategies from top e-commerce experts; DrivingSales Executive Summit (DSES) the industry's leading conference where progressive dealers collaborate and learn from world renowned experts, and DrivingSales Dealership Innovation Guide, a quarterly free publication featuring case studies of the industry's most innovative dealerships, solutions and best practices.

DealerOn, Inc. Media Relations:
Chris Deringer (chris@dealeron.com), VP Marketing, 877-543-4200

DrivingSales Media Relations:
Melanie Webber (melanie@mwebbcom.com), mWEBB Communications, 424.603.4340

Angela Jacobson (angela@mwebbcom.com), mWEBB Communications, 714.454.8776

Many dealerships focus their search engine optimization reporting on how well they are ranking for certain terms.  As long as they show up on Page 1 of Google's search results, they are happy.  While search engine page ranking is an important part of every dealership's online marketing efforts, what happens if your auto dealer website is showing up on page 1 for every keyword, but you aren't seeing any traffic?

If you are seeing this happening at your dealership, here are some potential causes:

Optimizing for the Wrong Keywords:  Your dealership can rank first for "blue widgets", but that probably won't help you with leads and sales for the cars on your lot.  Make sure you, your website provider, and your SEO provider are all on the same page when it comes to ranking for effective, relevant keywords.

Double Check Your SERP Listing: Your organic listing should have an informative title tag and meta-tag to help entice searchers to click onto your website.

The only way your dealership will know how much traffic, leads, and sales you are getting from your high ranking keywords is by tracking all of these metrics.  Make sure your website provider and/or SEO providers are measuring all of these stats and that you are double checking them with Google Analytics.

Many dealerships focus their search engine optimization reporting on how well they are ranking for certain terms.  As long as they show up on Page 1 of Google's search results, they are happy.  While search engine page ranking is an important part of every dealership's online marketing efforts, what happens if your auto dealer website is showing up on page 1 for every keyword, but you aren't seeing any traffic?

If you are seeing this happening at your dealership, here are some potential causes:

Optimizing for the Wrong Keywords:  Your dealership can rank first for "blue widgets", but that probably won't help you with leads and sales for the cars on your lot.  Make sure you, your website provider, and your SEO provider are all on the same page when it comes to ranking for effective, relevant keywords.

Double Check Your SERP Listing: Your organic listing should have an informative title tag and meta-tag to help entice searchers to click onto your website.

The only way your dealership will know how much traffic, leads, and sales you are getting from your high ranking keywords is by tracking all of these metrics.  Make sure your website provider and/or SEO providers are measuring all of these stats and that you are double checking them with Google Analytics.

While (I hope) most dealership websites won’t be affected by this, Google has recently announced they will begin penalizing websites that have too many ads at the top.  It's being called the "page layout algorithm" and affects sites that "don't have much content 'above-the-fold'", according to Google's Inside Search blog.

We've all clicked onto a site only to have to scroll down through the ads to actually find the content we are looking for.  This algorithm change will penalize sites with little or no “non-ad” content visible above the scroll line, so that they appear less frequently and with less prominence in Google’s search results.

So how does Google tell what is an ad and what isn't?  They have a "variety of signals that algorithmically determine what type of ad or content appears above the fold, but no further details to share.  It is completely algorithmic in its detection...".  Not surprisingly, Google isn't giving many details.

Double check your landing pages, micro-sites, and any sites your auto dealer website links out to, to ensure that none are so ad-heavy that users have to scroll down to see any content.  Keep in mind that the screen may appear smaller to those on an iPad or other tablet computer.

Google recommends using their Browser Size tool to see how much content and ads are visible under various screen resolutions.

While (I hope) most dealership websites won’t be affected by this, Google has recently announced they will begin penalizing websites that have too many ads at the top.  It's being called the "page layout algorithm" and affects sites that "don't have much content 'above-the-fold'", according to Google's Inside Search blog.

We've all clicked onto a site only to have to scroll down through the ads to actually find the content we are looking for.  This algorithm change will penalize sites with little or no “non-ad” content visible above the scroll line, so that they appear less frequently and with less prominence in Google’s search results.

So how does Google tell what is an ad and what isn't?  They have a "variety of signals that algorithmically determine what type of ad or content appears above the fold, but no further details to share.  It is completely algorithmic in its detection...".  Not surprisingly, Google isn't giving many details.

Double check your landing pages, micro-sites, and any sites your auto dealer website links out to, to ensure that none are so ad-heavy that users have to scroll down to see any content.  Keep in mind that the screen may appear smaller to those on an iPad or other tablet computer.

Google recommends using their Browser Size tool to see how much content and ads are visible under various screen resolutions.

I've written multiple pieces on how to properly set up and maintain your Google Places listing and account, but haven't touched on the mistakes you could be making, hurting your car dealership online marketing strategy.

Here are the places where you could really screw up your listing if you aren't careful:

Don't use a post office box. Even if this is where you get mail, make sure you use the actual address of your business.

Only enter the address into the address field.  That means no directions, no landmarks (turn left at the yellow building), and no descriptions.

Don't hide your address.  Google gives you the option of hiding your physical address--don't do it!  Google Places wants to be able to show users where you are located on a map, so let them.

Using a tracking number?  Stop.  Google has officially stated "Types of phone numbers that should not be included are: call tracking numbers and phone numbers that are not specific to a business location."

Don't ignore errors in your account, including a misplaced map pinpoint.  Google is notoriously difficult to get a hold of, but don't let that deter you from reporting an error if and when you see it.

A well developed and maintained Google Places listing can be a huge asset for your dealership's online marketing efforts.  If you need help with your Google Places account or other aspects of your Internet marketing program, feel free to contact DealerOn for help.