Pulse rates are different depending on what artery you check and what method you use. Checking someone's carotid artery by hand can yield a slightly different result than taking it with a machine through the brachial artery. The same thing happens in the car business, which is why I like to talk to different people from different parts of the industry.

Today, a good friend gave me a pulse check on his dealers' opinions about SEO. The feeling he was getting is that all SEO products are the same in our industry. This took me by surprise because I see SEO from the exact opposite perspective; the differences between what one company considers SEO and what another company considers SEO is like comparing apples and orangutans. Some have bite. Others bite.

The reality from a completely biased source, me, can tell you with certainty that once you peel back the top layer, the differences are very clear. If there are multiple layers to peel back, the fruit is no good. Why? Because SEO isn't hard to understand. It's not complicated. It's not even that difficult to do. However, doing it right is time consuming. This is why so many companies opt for a magic trick version of SEO rather than actually rolling up the sleeves and getting to work.

The magic trick approach means that they like to use misdirection (and even redirection) to point to this factor and that action that they're doing in order to achieve a result that may or may not be clear. They produce reports that have lots of numbers and well-organized color charts. The have an SEO guru/expert/wizard who sounds like a literal snake oil salesman from an old Clint Eastwood movie.

The real approach builds content on and off site, takes advantage of the power of social media, and makes certain that the boring technical aspects like citations and Schema.org (though small those components may be) are in order. The reports are clear - substantial organic traffic increases with acceptable time on site and pages viewed as well as ranking tracking for important keywords.

The real approach also focuses on one thing: increasing business. No level of reporting and no acts of wizardry will accomplish this. If you're not selling more cars and getting more service business, your SEO isn't working.

Using cliches and analogies is the only way I can keep from getting upset by the state of the search engine optimization world for car dealers. You deserve better.

We were interviewing someone last week who currently works at a dealership that wanted to come work with us when the solution to many problems in the automotive industry came to me suddenly. It started with a simple question, "Why do you want to work with us?"

The first response was about how "awesome" our company and products seemed to be, so that was instant bonus points added to the resume. When we asked him for other reasons, he described how things were at this and nearly every dealership he's worked at in the last two decades. When sales are good, the atmosphere is wonderful. When sales are down, people get fired.

"I don't like working in fear if we have a bad month or two," he admitted.

This response tied into some of the things we've been hearing during product presentations. With SEO being one of the primary components of our product, dealers always want to know how long it will take for them to see results. They aren't interested in how traffic will be in two or three months. They want to know what sort of instant SEO impact we can make. Some of them readily admit that they're much more worried about the cars they can sell today rather than the cars they can sell tomorrow.

It's part of the reason that the industry has survived in tough times and flourished in good times. We are an industry of the present. We are driven by what's happening right now and that's a good thing. However, marketing strategy decisions should not be based solely on the instant impact. For a proper, holistic marketing plan to work, dealers must start building for today while looking towards tomorrow.

As a friend once told me, automotive digital marketing is like driving a car. You can drive faster and with better overall results when you're keeping your eyes looking much further ahead than the immediate road ahead of you. If you're looking one car length ahead, it's harder to get up to speed. You look down the road while staying cognizant of the immediate future.

Unfortunately, many dealerships focus only on what's going to help them sell more cars today. As a result, they're constantly chasing that boost in immediate sales rather than building proper marketing campaigns and aligning advertising strategies that will help sell cars today as well as tomorrow. If, as an industry, we focus on the future with the present still in view, we'll be able to make much better marketing decisions.

I've seen dealers spending tens of thousands of dollars every month on PPC. Then, you look at their SEO and realize that it's abysmal. How can this be? Had they invested a fraction of their PPC budget towards SEO last year or earlier, they wouldn't have to spend as much on PPC today. Instead, they're in the mode of constantly buying more traffic when they could have much more for less money had they invested properly before.

Dealers shouldn't make marketing decisions based solely on today. It's possible to have your cake and eat it too with the right strategies. When a dealership is stuck in the mentality of today-only marketing, they're never going to get ahead. They'll never be able to build something that expands upon itself. It's time to stop the fear marketing and focus on the real marketing.

We were interviewing someone last week who currently works at a dealership that wanted to come work with us when the solution to many problems in the automotive industry came to me suddenly. It started with a simple question, "Why do you want to work with us?"

The first response was about how "awesome" our company and products seemed to be, so that was instant bonus points added to the resume. When we asked him for other reasons, he described how things were at this and nearly every dealership he's worked at in the last two decades. When sales are good, the atmosphere is wonderful. When sales are down, people get fired.

"I don't like working in fear if we have a bad month or two," he admitted.

This response tied into some of the things we've been hearing during product presentations. With SEO being one of the primary components of our product, dealers always want to know how long it will take for them to see results. They aren't interested in how traffic will be in two or three months. They want to know what sort of instant SEO impact we can make. Some of them readily admit that they're much more worried about the cars they can sell today rather than the cars they can sell tomorrow.

It's part of the reason that the industry has survived in tough times and flourished in good times. We are an industry of the present. We are driven by what's happening right now and that's a good thing. However, marketing strategy decisions should not be based solely on the instant impact. For a proper, holistic marketing plan to work, dealers must start building for today while looking towards tomorrow.

As a friend once told me, automotive digital marketing is like driving a car. You can drive faster and with better overall results when you're keeping your eyes looking much further ahead than the immediate road ahead of you. If you're looking one car length ahead, it's harder to get up to speed. You look down the road while staying cognizant of the immediate future.

Unfortunately, many dealerships focus only on what's going to help them sell more cars today. As a result, they're constantly chasing that boost in immediate sales rather than building proper marketing campaigns and aligning advertising strategies that will help sell cars today as well as tomorrow. If, as an industry, we focus on the future with the present still in view, we'll be able to make much better marketing decisions.

I've seen dealers spending tens of thousands of dollars every month on PPC. Then, you look at their SEO and realize that it's abysmal. How can this be? Had they invested a fraction of their PPC budget towards SEO last year or earlier, they wouldn't have to spend as much on PPC today. Instead, they're in the mode of constantly buying more traffic when they could have much more for less money had they invested properly before.

Dealers shouldn't make marketing decisions based solely on today. It's possible to have your cake and eat it too with the right strategies. When a dealership is stuck in the mentality of today-only marketing, they're never going to get ahead. They'll never be able to build something that expands upon itself. It's time to stop the fear marketing and focus on the real marketing.

We've all heard the phrase, "content is king." The question that you should ask about your content is whether or not it's worthy of being the king of something important or the king of crap. Unfortunately, much of what is pawned off as content turns out to be ruling over nothing important.

I've said it in different ways in multiple articles and videos in the past, but it's worth saying again: if you're going to build content, make sure that every single piece of content you create counts. Content for the sake of content is not only worthless. It can be damaging.

Content marketing in the automotive industry has been a gamechanger for years. It's been prevalent in the cutting edge world of digital marketing for nearly a decade but really started coming into its own around 2010 in the automotive industry. Let's take a brief look at that history before diving into the meat and potatoes of this article.

When Content was a Shiny New Tool

I remember vividly what most dealer websites looked like around 2010. The boring websites on HTML platforms were starting to get more engaging and the beautiful Flash websites were disappearing due to indexing and mobile challenges. Parody started to reign in the industry, but dealers who started embracing content marketing were getting an edge over the competition.

Things were great for a few months. Then, the bulk mentality started kicking in. Some website providers started going after what they actually proudly called "the phone book concept" of search engine optimization. Google loved content, so why not give them more and more. They would actually promote the fact that they had thousands, even tens of thousands of pages on their websites and that it was a good thing. After a few penalties here and websites getting deindexed there, that concept started falling away, culminating in the last of the phone book vendors shifting their platform in 2014.

There were a few shining examples of excellence between 2010 and 2013 - at least excellent in the automotive industry. Bulk video providers started busting out with dozens of videos per week on YouTube channels. Content pages were being built on websites either by the dealer or by certain vendors. For the most part it wasn't great content but they were still able to rule over fairly large kingdoms (market area domination) due to the fact that they had content and competitors did not.

The Content Bandwagon

Around 2013, the majority of major website vendors started putting out content to match. Some even put together content strategies and premium products to pump out better content more frequently. The kings of the recent past were getting lost in the mix. In essence, everyone had some variation of content with different levels of quality and uniqueness. Some put together spinner elements to make content that seemed unique to programs like Copyscape and, in theory, Google.

The problem that arose from this content revolution was clear and became one of the driving forces for me to want to build a new company. Content was better. In fact, much of it was actually pretty good. However, if most are doing pretty good at producing content, then the gap was being diminished. In other words, if everyone was good, then everyone was actually average. There was very little that set one dealership's website, blog, or social media apart from the competition.

Make it Count

Today, the content revolution is heading in a better direction: quality over quantity. It's no longer a matter of producing 1000 words of content every week in order to make an impact on sales. The reality is that producing high-quality content that is worthy of being shared by others, even linked to organically from external websites, has become the most powerful tool in automotive digital marketing. Those who are fully embracing content marketing know three things:

1. Post often but put real effort into making sure that something is worth posting.
2. It's better to not post at all, whether in the form of a landing page, blog post, or social media post, than to post crap.
3. If you build a foundation as the authority content producer about your particular makes and models in your area, you will acquire more relevant traffic, leads, and sales.

These three rules in automotive content marketing should guide your overall plan of attack. If you make sure your content is actually the real king in your local area, you'll find that search, social, and buzz are all going to be pointing towards you.

We've all heard the phrase, "content is king." The question that you should ask about your content is whether or not it's worthy of being the king of something important or the king of crap. Unfortunately, much of what is pawned off as content turns out to be ruling over nothing important.

I've said it in different ways in multiple articles and videos in the past, but it's worth saying again: if you're going to build content, make sure that every single piece of content you create counts. Content for the sake of content is not only worthless. It can be damaging.

Content marketing in the automotive industry has been a gamechanger for years. It's been prevalent in the cutting edge world of digital marketing for nearly a decade but really started coming into its own around 2010 in the automotive industry. Let's take a brief look at that history before diving into the meat and potatoes of this article.

When Content was a Shiny New Tool

I remember vividly what most dealer websites looked like around 2010. The boring websites on HTML platforms were starting to get more engaging and the beautiful Flash websites were disappearing due to indexing and mobile challenges. Parody started to reign in the industry, but dealers who started embracing content marketing were getting an edge over the competition.

Things were great for a few months. Then, the bulk mentality started kicking in. Some website providers started going after what they actually proudly called "the phone book concept" of search engine optimization. Google loved content, so why not give them more and more. They would actually promote the fact that they had thousands, even tens of thousands of pages on their websites and that it was a good thing. After a few penalties here and websites getting deindexed there, that concept started falling away, culminating in the last of the phone book vendors shifting their platform in 2014.

There were a few shining examples of excellence between 2010 and 2013 - at least excellent in the automotive industry. Bulk video providers started busting out with dozens of videos per week on YouTube channels. Content pages were being built on websites either by the dealer or by certain vendors. For the most part it wasn't great content but they were still able to rule over fairly large kingdoms (market area domination) due to the fact that they had content and competitors did not.

The Content Bandwagon

Around 2013, the majority of major website vendors started putting out content to match. Some even put together content strategies and premium products to pump out better content more frequently. The kings of the recent past were getting lost in the mix. In essence, everyone had some variation of content with different levels of quality and uniqueness. Some put together spinner elements to make content that seemed unique to programs like Copyscape and, in theory, Google.

The problem that arose from this content revolution was clear and became one of the driving forces for me to want to build a new company. Content was better. In fact, much of it was actually pretty good. However, if most are doing pretty good at producing content, then the gap was being diminished. In other words, if everyone was good, then everyone was actually average. There was very little that set one dealership's website, blog, or social media apart from the competition.

Make it Count

Today, the content revolution is heading in a better direction: quality over quantity. It's no longer a matter of producing 1000 words of content every week in order to make an impact on sales. The reality is that producing high-quality content that is worthy of being shared by others, even linked to organically from external websites, has become the most powerful tool in automotive digital marketing. Those who are fully embracing content marketing know three things:

1. Post often but put real effort into making sure that something is worth posting.
2. It's better to not post at all, whether in the form of a landing page, blog post, or social media post, than to post crap.
3. If you build a foundation as the authority content producer about your particular makes and models in your area, you will acquire more relevant traffic, leads, and sales.

These three rules in automotive content marketing should guide your overall plan of attack. If you make sure your content is actually the real king in your local area, you'll find that search, social, and buzz are all going to be pointing towards you.

Perhaps a better way to title this would be to indicate that the same problem has already brewed in the industry. We're already there, but let's first discuss Keurig. The popular coffee machine and personal pod maker has seen better days. Stocks have dropped 25% this year already and they're making big adjustments to salvage things.

What went wrong? The company was sailing in 2013 and 2014. Now, stores are having trouble moving the machines, particularly their latest 2.0 version. Reviews on Amazon are fading. Faithful users are moving on to greener pastures. How could this have happened so quickly.

In short, they outsmarted themselves by overestimating their own internalized popularity. With the original models, users could take the base machine and utilize their own favorite coffees with their popular K-cup accessory. The new model does not have that option. Instead, they are trying to force customers to buy their brand of coffee pods only.

This was done for a few reasons, most notably quality-control and profits. They make more money when people buy their coffee rather than using their own. When they use their own, they don't get a cut of the ongoing purchases. From a quality perspective, they feel (or at least they've convinced themselves of it) that the Green Mountain Coffee they put in their pods is superior to whatever individual users would put into the K-cups.

Sound familiar? Have you ever felt like your OEM was trying to force you to use this service or that provider in an effort to maintain "quality control?" Were you ever concerned that the OEM or the OEMs advertising proxy was getting something in return when their dealers used particular vendors?

Just as there are better (and worse) coffees than what are mandated by Keurig, there are also better (and worse) vendors than what are mandated by the OEMs.

Keurig has learned their lesson and have reduced their annual projections until they can right the ship and bring choice back to their customers in the form of a new K-cup. Will OEMs continue to mandate vendors or will some of them realize that eliminating choice and free will for the sake of "quality control" is actually hurting their overall marketing?

Perhaps a better way to title this would be to indicate that the same problem has already brewed in the industry. We're already there, but let's first discuss Keurig. The popular coffee machine and personal pod maker has seen better days. Stocks have dropped 25% this year already and they're making big adjustments to salvage things.

What went wrong? The company was sailing in 2013 and 2014. Now, stores are having trouble moving the machines, particularly their latest 2.0 version. Reviews on Amazon are fading. Faithful users are moving on to greener pastures. How could this have happened so quickly.

In short, they outsmarted themselves by overestimating their own internalized popularity. With the original models, users could take the base machine and utilize their own favorite coffees with their popular K-cup accessory. The new model does not have that option. Instead, they are trying to force customers to buy their brand of coffee pods only.

This was done for a few reasons, most notably quality-control and profits. They make more money when people buy their coffee rather than using their own. When they use their own, they don't get a cut of the ongoing purchases. From a quality perspective, they feel (or at least they've convinced themselves of it) that the Green Mountain Coffee they put in their pods is superior to whatever individual users would put into the K-cups.

Sound familiar? Have you ever felt like your OEM was trying to force you to use this service or that provider in an effort to maintain "quality control?" Were you ever concerned that the OEM or the OEMs advertising proxy was getting something in return when their dealers used particular vendors?

Just as there are better (and worse) coffees than what are mandated by Keurig, there are also better (and worse) vendors than what are mandated by the OEMs.

Keurig has learned their lesson and have reduced their annual projections until they can right the ship and bring choice back to their customers in the form of a new K-cup. Will OEMs continue to mandate vendors or will some of them realize that eliminating choice and free will for the sake of "quality control" is actually hurting their overall marketing?

There's a trend we're seeing from the automotive industry that is both interesting and a little disturbing for conscientious vendors. When sales are down, changes are often made. When sales are up, they're not. This model needs to be looked at more closely.

We know that it was a worse-than-expected month for many dealers in April because our lead count as a vendor rose. That seems to always happen; when sales numbers are not met, there's a reaction that prompts many dealers to make changes to their marketing. While we appreciate all of the new business, this should be much more steady from month-to-month. Why? Because when sales are down you should look to improve and when sales are up you should also be looking to improve.

The old idiom states that "when it ain't broke, don't fix it." We agree to some extent, but with a slight variation to that model.

Just because something isn't broken doesn't mean that it can't be improved.

You should always be looking to improve. It's not just a matter of fixing things when they're not working. It's even more important to make sure you marketing, processes, and intangibles are all in a state of improvement and maintenance.

Think of it like car maintenance. You would never tell a customer to wait to get their oil changed when they start smelling something burning in their engine. With your marketing, you shouldn't wait until you lose market share before you start to make adjustments.

In most cases, the adjustments necessary are not as dramatic as firing vendors and hiring new ones. We often tell prospects that they don't have enough room for improvement to take on our high-level services even if they're willing. Sometimes, a minor tweak here or focus paid to something there is enough to make the right impact.

There is always room for improvement, but there are also things that vendors can do that are detrimental to success. It should be a matter of degrees when turning the knobs. If sales are slipping, it might be time to make bigger changes, to turn the knob further. When sales are doing fine, the knob may only need to be turned a little bit, perhaps adding in a small element here or experimenting on something new over there.

The bottom line is this: don't wait for sales to drop before making adjustments. On the flip side, don't get rid of things that are probably working just because sales slip. Looking at the numbers, understanding the effects, and making decisions based upon effectiveness of the components of your marketing will help you to fix things when they're broken and improve things when they're working.

There's a trend we're seeing from the automotive industry that is both interesting and a little disturbing for conscientious vendors. When sales are down, changes are often made. When sales are up, they're not. This model needs to be looked at more closely.

We know that it was a worse-than-expected month for many dealers in April because our lead count as a vendor rose. That seems to always happen; when sales numbers are not met, there's a reaction that prompts many dealers to make changes to their marketing. While we appreciate all of the new business, this should be much more steady from month-to-month. Why? Because when sales are down you should look to improve and when sales are up you should also be looking to improve.

The old idiom states that "when it ain't broke, don't fix it." We agree to some extent, but with a slight variation to that model.

Just because something isn't broken doesn't mean that it can't be improved.

You should always be looking to improve. It's not just a matter of fixing things when they're not working. It's even more important to make sure you marketing, processes, and intangibles are all in a state of improvement and maintenance.

Think of it like car maintenance. You would never tell a customer to wait to get their oil changed when they start smelling something burning in their engine. With your marketing, you shouldn't wait until you lose market share before you start to make adjustments.

In most cases, the adjustments necessary are not as dramatic as firing vendors and hiring new ones. We often tell prospects that they don't have enough room for improvement to take on our high-level services even if they're willing. Sometimes, a minor tweak here or focus paid to something there is enough to make the right impact.

There is always room for improvement, but there are also things that vendors can do that are detrimental to success. It should be a matter of degrees when turning the knobs. If sales are slipping, it might be time to make bigger changes, to turn the knob further. When sales are doing fine, the knob may only need to be turned a little bit, perhaps adding in a small element here or experimenting on something new over there.

The bottom line is this: don't wait for sales to drop before making adjustments. On the flip side, don't get rid of things that are probably working just because sales slip. Looking at the numbers, understanding the effects, and making decisions based upon effectiveness of the components of your marketing will help you to fix things when they're broken and improve things when they're working.

Most dealers have tried blogging at some point in the past. Some are still doing it today. Most dealers have failed at blogging. Some are still failing today. It's a trend that goes back to poor practices taught years ago that have somehow been perpetuated to the point that being like "most dealers" is a very bad thing.

Let's get all of the controversial points out of the way first. Blogging is NOT intended to create content that will rank in Google. I can hear the responses already being typed, but hear me out. Dealers should not want a blog post on their website to rank for important searches. That's where landing pages come into play. When people do a search for "2015 Toyota Camry Oregon" they are not trying to find a blog post about Toyota Camrys in the northwest. They're looking for inventory so you should be driving them to either a landing page that helps them get to the inventory or you should be driving them to the inventory itself.

You can and should, howver, blog about how the 2015 Toyota Camry Hybrid gets 680 miles on a single tank of gas. Within that blog post (which is not intended to rank on search engines for any important keywords) you can link to the inventory or landing pages that you do want to rank for important Camry keywords. This internal authoritative linking practice isn't just the most relevant way to do things from a search engine optimization perspective. It also happens to be the way that Google and Bing want you to improve your website through blogging.

A landing page has pertinent information for buyers and therefore is intended to rank for important search terms. A blog post has interesting, up-to-date news and opinions about thngs and is not intended to rank for car buying search terms. It can rank for things such as "Connecting Bluetooth in a 2015 Toyota Camry" but not for the buying terms.

Landing pages help convert. Blog posts help inform. They're both crucial for successfully driving shoppers to your website and must be used together. Alone, neither can be very effective for SEO.

There's another component. Just because you blog about something doesn't mean people are going to read it. It's for this reason that we tie in social media promotions and campaigns very closely with SEO. It's why the most successful at either search or social are almost always effective at both simultaneously. Search and social are tied together by content.

If you get exposure for your blog posts through social media, it helps the target pages such as landing pages or inventory to rank better. I could end up rambling about the entire strategy for several blog posts but I hope you get the basic point.

Now for the non-controversial stuff. Stop blogging with SEO in mind. Blog with readers in mind. Blog with the intention of bringing real value in the form of information, entertainment, or both through your blog posts and they will be much more successful. I think that few would be willing to deny this.

You're the expert. You're the authority about your particular brand in the local area. Help those who aren't authorities, namely the people who own or who want to own one of your vehicles. That's the point of blogging. When done in unison with landing pages and social media, blogging can be an incredible tool.

If you blog like the majority of dealers and vendors in our industry, you might be able to drive some traffic but it's not going to generate anything meaningful (such as a sale).