Dun and Bradstreet. It's a name that has been synonymous with credibility for two centuries. Now, a separate organization licensed to use their name is under fire for allegedly acquiring inbound links and their SEO agency has been completely banned in Google.

Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp had links purchased for them by iAcquire. They were reported two days ago and Google deindexed the search company behind it. We will see what sort of penalty is imposed on D&B.

The automotive industry is one that is relatively-free of companies that use such techniques, but this should act as a reminder that trying to do things the wrong way can lead to disaster. Google's Penguin Update is a good thing for legitimate SEO firms. It makes quality out-perform quantity and highlights that manual, appropriate content marketing trumps spammy link-building any day.

The buzz is very positive. The tech sites that have turned Yahoo into a red-headed punching bag for the last 3 years are nearly-universally saying this is a win for the beleagured tech giant. Despite fading from prominence, Yahoo has something sexy and modern that may bring them back to prominence.

This isn't a declaration that comes lightly. I've been one of the tech bloggers bashing them. I almost didn't even look at the program once it came across the wire until someone from a big tech blog pinged me for a quote. I'm glad I did.

For now, just check it out and start imagining the possibilities. If it takes off, there's a good chance that the automotive industry applications for this could be plentiful. Are they going to dethrone Google? Of course not. However, they may have just gotten a little more relevant for our business. Be informed. Check it out.

The social media world is in a state of flux with the Facebook IPO causing waves. That's the big news from this month, but it's been a rocky road throughout.

Social media has become one of the ways that business gets done. Car dealers are spending more time on it. Their customers are spending more time on it. Cracking that nut is tough, but it can definitely be done. Before getting into a long social media marketing discussion, let's take a look at the state of social media to date.

Click to enlarge.

As car dealers develop their SEO strategies with their vendors, they should be well-aware of how the companies they work with are handling Google Penguin. The update from April, 2012, has quite a few SEOs in other industries scrambling to regain their search rankings. It hasn't been as devastating in the automotive industry but we have seen some companies whose dealers have dropped.

Penguin is the "webspam" algorithm change that is going after aggressive link-building techniques. For years Google has utilized inbound links as a measurement to help determine search rankings. This is the best way for them to do this because it acts as a relevancy "voting" system of sorts; the more links you have from quality sites pointing to yours, the more authoritative it is in Google's eyes.

The challenge has been with strong SEO firms who are aware of this and exploit it by building links to their sites. There's nothing wrong with building links if it's a result of value, but Google wants to put an end to aggressive styles that are based upon trading, network building, or purchased links.

Here are the three primary attributes that a proper link-building plan should have to be successful with automotive SEO:

Quality

There was a time when links could be built in bulk to fool the search engines. There were companies that specialized in building tens, even hundreds of thousands of pages with the singular purpose of building "link juice" to their sites. Google has been combating this for years but the Penguin update has seen the biggest affect on this strategy.

It's better to get a single link from a high-value site that is trusted by the search engines and respected by readers than to get 10,000 links from spam sites. In fact, those spam link can do damage to a site (technically speaking, of course, as Google has said there's really no such thing as negative SEO except in extreme circumstances).

If you have content on your website and you think it will be of value on other sites, make sure that you're going after only trusted sites. Send them your content and if they like it they'll link to it. Avoid link-building programs that rely on forums, comments, or other low-quality venues.

Organic

There was a famous case of "Googlebombing" that happened when George W. Bush was in office when thousands of links were pointed to his website with the anchor text "Miserable Failure". It worked, and his site ranked #1 for a while. Recognizing what was happening, Google made adjustments in 2007 and ever since they've been on the lookout for keyword manipulation through this technique.

Google is smart. They can recognize when a website is getting natural links based upon quality and when it's getting tons of links built to it for the sake of nailing down a keyword. Diversity of anchor text is one of the biggest factors; they know that the chances that the majority of sites linking to a particular page would have the exact same anchor text are nil. Other than a website's name, there's no other words that could accomplish this. Real people link to Bob Howard Toyota, not Oklahoma City Toyota Tundra Service, for example.

Being organic means getting links that use the "money term" anchor text as well as links that are naturally anchored. To be "money term heavy" spells doom.

Relevant

This is the tricky one. Is it better to get a link from a PageRank2 automotive website or a PageRank6 non-automotive website?

The real answer is "yes" (in other words, get both) but it's important to understand the "why" this is important.

Google realizes that sites can become authorities for their industry or niche. As a result, they will get links from outside of the industry... at least they should. This is what makes it tricky when discussing in a blog post.

There's nothing wrong with links that come from outside of the industry but the focus should be on industry links. If you have a graphic on your website that can be embedded on an automotive website or a non-automotive website, there's nothing wrong with sending it to both types. Keep relevant but be open minded to becoming an authority from outside the industry.

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Google Penguin is just the beginning. The changes they are implementing with Google+ amongst other changes will continue to improve the search ranking pages and clean up the algorithm. This is a time to rejoice, not get worried. If your automotive SEO partner is legitimate and aware of the changes, you have nothing to worry about. If not, call us. We're ready to help.

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This post originally appeared on TopDealerSEO. Find +JD Rucker on Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest.

Nearly every business in the world has considered using social media for their brand (or at least been told by someone to do so). It's an important concept because social media has all of the characteristics of an excellent set of venues for getting out a brand message - popularity, ease, reach, and interactivity. The challenge is that with so many businesses doing it, many messages start with great intentions and end up falling on deaf (aka nonexistent) ears.

There are ways to use social media properly to get out the message whether it's a general PR item or a major announcement. While press releases are still a strong method of doing it, there are certain restrictions that make social media and blogs in particular a superior message delivery system. Those reasons are easy to list:

• * Press releases are good for an initial burst, but once published can fade quickly, get de-indexed, or get deleted altogether
• * Social media can take a message and spread it out over time
• * Blogs can diversify the message and "chop it up" into individual components (as we'll demonstrate below)
• * Creativity plays much better through blogs and social media channels; some press releases will be filtered if they get too creative
• * Most businesses are doing press releases right while doing social media wrong, giving those doing social media the right way an upper hand on the competition

Now that the "why" is out of the way, here's the "how"...

Choose the right topic

Something's happening at the company. It could be a new product or service. It could be a partnership or change in leadership. It could be a charitable contribution or simply taking a stand against an injustice. Regardless of what "it" is, there needs to be a campaign built around it.

The most common mistake that companies make when trying to send out a brand message is that they simply pick the wrong topic. It may seem impossible; how can the topic be anything other than obvious? The reality is that time and time again businesses focus on the wrong portion of the news because they go after what is most important to them rather than selecting something that will resonate properly through social media.

Here's an example to illustrate the importance of topic selection.
 

Pick the right channels

To really get a brand message out, one must select the right channels. A blog post is only the beginning. There are other venues through which to get the word out to the masses. The obvious ones are Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, but those only help to amplify the message once it's created. Social content sites like YouTube and Pinterest can enhance the message, giving it more bulk and enabling more opportunities to cross-pollinate the message.

It can be broken down into five channel types:

1. Social Networks
2. Blogs
3. Visual Content
4. Social News
5. Emerging Sites

Here's a breakdown of the different channels and how they work.
 

Use a blog as the hub

The hub and spoke model has been used in marketing for decades, well before the internet was even conceived. Modern variations include uses for search engine optimization and content marketing. These are not what we mean by using a blog as the hub.

In brand messaging, the goal is to get the masses back to a single point of consolidated information. This post in itself is a loose example; we're posting this article on TECHi with each point expanded through other blog posts. TECHi is the hub for this particular topic while the other posts, including the one on Business Insider about Why Blogs Should Be The Hub Of Social Media Strategies, each go into further detail on their particular component of the overall story.

The goal is to have multiple avenues through which to promote and draw people back to the original. Even if they don't visit the hub, they'll still get some form of important information that may have them explore further through search. They may read the spoke story and never come back. It doesn't matter. Having a single blog as the hub is a key to this strategy as well as others. Blogs make the only length restriction the attention span of the reader. No other limits are present.
 

Slice it up

Now that we know about the hub, it's time to plan it out for the slicing. In the example above that refers to the Sally's Shoe Company story, the hub story would be about everything without going into much detail about any of the components. Visitors to the hub story could explore the other topics more deeply. Here are some examples of spoke topics from the example above:

• * The Shinking Habitats of Endangered Animals in South America
• * How Sally's Shoes Protects the Brazilian Tree Frog
• * Sally's Shoes and Bueno Shoes: A Match Made in the Amazon
• * Animals, Partnerships, and Clevergirl Crosstrainers

There are other possibilities depending on the real situation, but these would each be linked from the longer hub story to go into more detail about the different components of the overall message. It becomes a two-way street of traffic and exposure and allows for more opportunities for people to latch onto and share on their own social networks.

From here, you could learn more about The Art of Multi-Posting.
 

"A hippo walks into a bar"

The real difference between social media and press releases is in the creative license. This doesn't have to be bland and boring. It can't be if it has any hopes of being shared socially.

Nearly every situation can have some color added to it. The "hippo in the bar" is an allusion to something funny, entertaining, or extremely interesting about the message. For Sally's Shoes, it could be something that's literally about a hippo that goes into a bar, leading up to a comedic result while still focusing on the idea that these endangered animals need a refuge of their own so they don't risk human contact that could turn deadly.
 

Spread out the layers

Now that the pieces are ready to be written, it's time to plan out the exposure. You can't simply post the stories and start Tweeting and Facebooking everything at once. Depending on the timing of the news, social media exposure can be spread out over time to allow for the maximum possible exposure of the overall news.

People latch onto different things when sharing on social media. Something that rings well for one person will be ignored by another. The goal is to get as much exposure for each individual component as possible, even covering one on top of another in a way that will lead people down a path to eventually land on the hub.
 

Bring it home

This process isn't nearly as easy as putting together a press release and pressing it through the proper channels. It's not designed to be easy, and that's a good thing. Your efforts will be greater than your competitors'. You results will be greater as well. Put in the effort. Take a swing.

Bring it home.

(Post originally published on TECHi)

+JD Rucker is Editor at Soshable, a Social Media Marketing Blog. Find him on Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest.

No, it's not spam, but it is associated with a pork product.

Search engine optimization has a bad name in many circles. It is synonymous with spamming much in the same way that racial, lifestyle, and religious stereotypes work; the few bad apples make the normal, honorable "SEOs" look bad. With that said, this isn't about them.

People are getting more involved with their websites and they often ask what they should be focused upon to get their search rankings higher. I always tell them the same thing, and it's held true since 2007. In fact, it's become even more important.

Bacon.

Bacon is the key to SEO when it comes to business owners or non-SEO tech people. It's part of every good SEOs arsenal but it's the one thing that truly requires no SEO or web development knowledge. Everyone can work with bacon.

It's not literally bacon, of course. It's the concept of having something extra that normally enhances but rarely stands alone as a singular factor. It adds flavor to the website, makes it more appealing, gives it the savory goodness that search engines crave, draws us in with its smell when cooking, enhances the quality of everything it touches, and engages directly with our taste buds.

How does this translate to SEO that business owners can do themselves? It's simple.

Bacon represents additional content, the type that may or may not be linked in the navigation menu but that exists solely to bring value to people who see it. It's not the standard type of value that people associate with their websites. Most look at value as offering resources or advice that pertains to their industry.

"Bacon content" is different. Its value is brought about from a different angle. It's not necessarily a part of the website that people can normally get to without knowing the URL, seeing it on social, or emerging in search. In essence, it's simply extra content.

Good bacon adds flavor to the site. The content can be a cool collection, an amazing video, a strong infographic, or unique written content. It can never be insincere, unnatural, or copied. Collections are not copies. For example, Chicago Toyota put out a page with high-quality images of the city that they compiled. That works. That's bacon.

Thick bacon gives substance. In the example above, there's a lot of content but not necessarily a lot of substance. It's not "thick" bacon. Infographics and articles can offer the thick cuts that search engines love. Don't forget, bacon doesn't have to be thick to be good but it's nice to have a thick slice or two every now and then.

The smell of bacon can bring people to the table. Similarly, the enchantment of quality bacon content can bring people to the website. These aren't necessarily customers, but they might just share the page which is the end goal.

The enhancement factor is similar to the flavor factor but works in reverse. By enhancing the website, bacon content is able to give the search engines something juicy to sink their teeth into, not just from what's on the site but the reactions through social media.

Engaging bacon (sounds scary, actually) is the concept that some bacon is able to take on a life of its own and start working with and through people. This is the most rare component of bacon content and is normally unplanned, but when it happens search magic can take place. This is one with obscure examples that few would recognize but the best real-life example of how it worked was the Old Spice Guy. It went viral online and off. People started watching it, waiting for it, talking about it - in essence the Old Spice Guy "optimized" a faltering deodorant brand and revitalized sales as a result.

Anyone can find and post bacon content, which is why it's the most important thing non-technical and untrained SEOs can do.

* * *

Originally posted on TECHi in conjunction with our webinar that featured Driving Sales' Eric Miltsch and Gary May.

Words of wisdom from Russia: some car buying customers will react more poorly than others.

The customer had recently purchased the new Suzuki from the dealership and brought it back in to have a faulty shock replaced. The dealership refused. The results were probably a bit more costly than the shocks would have been.

No further words of wisdom here as we do not know the exact circumstances of the "shocking" incident, but just be thankful this hasn't happened at your dealership.

I was having a discussion with a dealer over a nice vodka tonic and a nice cigar when the discussion turned to conferences. "There are just too many that it's hard to know which ones to go to and which ones to skip," he said.

This concerned me a bit. I've been on that side of the debate before but with the help of friends like Jared Hamilton, Brian Pasch, and Ralph Paglia I have come to the conclusion that the industry doesn't have enough conferenes. Before people start calling me a lunatic, hear me out...

NADA is "the" conference that most attend. It's the only one that can draw a large percentage of representation from the dealer community and often brings everything together in a single venue so that dealers can get the latest and greatest information, see the cool new products and innovations hitting the market, and network with their OEMs, peers, and vendors to help come up with solutions to keep the industry strong.

A decade ago, it was all that we needed. The changes were slow coming and even slower in integration.

Today, dealers should be attending conferences at least once a quarter and arguably once a month. Here's why:

The internet accounts for a portion of the vast majority of car deals. Research, location, comparisons, and buying tools flood the internet nearly as much as the consumers themselves who flood it. Therein lies the challenge because the internet is in a constant state of change. Trying to keep up with it is hard. Trying to do so by attending one or two conferences a year is impossible.

Many of the things that I heard at NADA just 2 months ago are, unfortunately, outdated. The internet is moving that quickly. NADA is and should always be the trade show of the year; we don't need more than one. However, conferences and summits are designed to talk about today and tomorrow and doing so requires constant refreshing, fine-tuning, and knowing what's working and what will be working (and more importantly what won't be working) in the near future.

The internet moves too fast for most dealers. That's not an insult. It's a matter of scale. Some dealers have digital advisors working at the dealership who stay on top of the latest developments, but most rely on an Internet Manager or Sales Manager to try to keep up with the changes. These people have jobs at the dealership that require attention and keeping up with (and implementing) the changes that happen in search, social, internet technologies, mobile technologies, and every other shiny ball bouncing around is a full time job.

That's what we do. It's what Jared does. It's what Gary May and Shaun Raines and Ralph Paglia and Brian Pasch and Steve Stauning and all of the other though-leaders in the industry do for a living. To get the word out, there are networks like Driving Sales to help us along but it's a heck of a lot easier to get this information in person at the conferences and summits.

More doesn't mean that everyone has to attend them all. It simply means that when we hear about a change at Google and it's buzzing around the networks, we shouldn't be waiting for months before we can go hear about them. We should be able to swing over to one of the conferences within a given month. That's how other industries work, and automotive is heading there but it isn't there yet.

For over a century, Oldsmobile was an iconic brand in American automaking. General Motors shuttered the division in 2009 as part of restructuring but now it is receiving a breath of life from an unexpected source: Google.

Since 2010, Google has pursued the dream of putting cars on the road that did not require active driving. Their Driverless Car Program had its first official "driver" participate in a promotional video as 95%-blind Steve Mahan took a drive to get tacos in a drive-thru and picked up his dry cleaning in a computer-controlled Toyota Prius.

Now, with a need to have a brand of their own, Google has purchased the rights to the Oldsmobile brand from General Motors. This move came as a shock to many until they realized that it was being announced on April 1st.

Every few months, we hear about how Google or Bing have a new program or change in their search algorithm that will kill search spammers. These rumors and announcements have often had an effect but it has never been enough to really make an impact. The last two weeks, there have been signs that the latest changes may actually be working. Can they eliminate search spam altogether by the end of the year?

When Google rolled out their Panda update last year, many of the larger content sites were affected. Low-quality content was the target last year and after nearly a dozen known updates, search results have been better as a result. What wasn't addressed was the plague of "blackhat SEO" that utilizes different tactics to help websites rank better for keywords that can send massive traffic to their clients.

An unofficial announcement at SXSW by Matt Cutts, Google search spam czar, points to changes that Google has planned that addresses the blackhat issue.

"We don’t normally pre-announce changes but there is something we are working in the last few months and hope to release it in the next months or few weeks," Cutts said. "We are trying to level the playing field a bit. All those people doing, for lack of a better word, over optimization or overly SEO – versus those making great content and great site."

The changes appear to be rolling out already as there have been reports of large SEO networks being de-indexed and forced to shut down as a result. Is beginning of a true crackdown on search spam?

"We should see this expand tremendously over the next few months," said Rocco Penn, an automotive SEO. "Google and Bing both want real content that people want to read, not automated spam that has worked so well in the past. If they can make this work, I'm pumped."

Finding blackhat SEO networks is relatively easy for a team the size of Google's Web Spam Division. They have been aware of many of the networks that influence search rankings by creating thousands of pages with a paragraph or two of content that includes anchor text to specific search targets. The challenge has been in how to address them.

It appears that the challenge has been accepted and the solution is de-indexing. By removing them from the search index, they completely eliminate the value that they are giving to their targets.

"We are trying to make GoogleBot smarter, make our relevance better, and we are also looking for those who abuse it, like too many keywords on a page, or exchange way too many links or go well beyond what you normally expect," Cutts said. "We have several engineers on my team working on this right now."

Eliminating Search Spam Altogether

It's a lofty goal but if they can apply this process on a wider scale they'll make a huge impact. It isn't that they'll be able to track down and de-index everybody, but the sheer threat of losing everything will be enough to make search engine optimization companies switch gears towards more honorable methods.

Google and Cutts have long-maintained that they "do not hate SEOs" and have gone so far as to declare that proper SEO techniques make their jobs easier. Websites and SEO companies that put out relevant content that is valuable to their "customers", the people searching, helps them identify the right websites to rank for relevant terms.

Blackhat SEO is a shortcut. It's a method by which the system can be gamed and the results can be altered. By taking on the spam networks, Google will be able to herd a good majority of the blackhats towards using acceptable SEO techniques.

There will be those who fight the change and try to find new ways to spam the search engines, but this is the first major development in search governing that has the entire SEO community buzzing since the Panda update. Panda only affected the sources of content, not the SEO firms that sculpted the rankings. This algorithm and procedural change affects the SEOs themselves.

Given that they have the power over their own search rankings, it is very likely that this effort will bring and end to the vast majority of search spam within the next several months.

Image: Annette Shaff / Shutterstock.com

(Article originally published on Fast Company)