A few days ago I posted about promotion versus attraction in content marketing and I used the example of a story we posted about the Willys Jeep. The concept is one that is unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your point of view) very challenging for dealers and even vendors to understand.

Why would we post something on a dealer's website that didn't directly help sell more cars?

It comes down to social signals and the trust factor associated with a website and its search engine opimization practices. Here's how:

The Valuable Resource

Those of us in the automotive industry are experts about cars and the different aspects of vehicles in ways that others simply are not. Our websites are normally all about cars and both Google and Bing know it. The challenge is that there are dozens, even hundreds of other websites associated with our local area that are also all about cars.

Pieces of content such as the one above put our websites in a different light. By becoming the authority in the area, we have the opportunity to have our sites rank higher for terms that are relevant to us.

Authority in the search engines are judged by two things. Inbound links from other authority websites act like "votes" in the eyes of the search engines. The more votes you get in relation to Dodge, for example, the better you'll rank for local terms that can make an impact such as the term "Hartford Dodge Dealers".

The other way search engines judge authority is based upon social signals. They recognize that people will share what they value on websites through their social media channels. The more they share, the better that Google and Bing like a page and the domain that it's on.

People won't share inventory. They won't share specials pages. They won't share service appointment pages. They will share pieces of content that interest them or bring value to others. For example, a good number of dealers are starting to post how-to videos on their websites. This is great! When people learn how to get their bluetooth hooked into their car properly as a result of a dealership tutorial rather than an instruction manual or OEM resource, they'll be more willing to share their find with their friends and family who may run into the same challenge.

The Willys Jeep story was one that didn't add a resource but rather discussed an interesting historical topic about the brand associated with the website. It made for good reading, offered a nice infographic that had some interesting data points, and had high-res images that are easily sharable through social media.

The Sharing Frenzy

This particular piece of content played very well on Reddit and Digg, two social news sites that value quality content. It was interesting to them, particularly the single fact that of the 135 automakers the US Government tapped for proposals, only two were sent in because the criteria were so strict. On Reddit, it ended up with over 400 points and on Digg it broke the 60 point mark.

As a result, that individual page had 32,493 in a day in a half. Those visitors likely yielded very few leads, but that wasn't the purpose. The goal was to create a page that could get massive social signal action and that's exactly what happened.

Now the question is, "How does this help sell more cars?"

The Results

The reason that we targeted this piece of content where we did was to help in our SEO efforts for a couple of keywords. Executive Dodge had dropped a couple of spots for the terms "Hartford Dodge Dealers" and "Hartford Dodge", so we created the content piece with the link to the homepage at the bottom with the anchor "Hartford Dodge". Within 72 hours after posting the piece, we'd moved back up to #2 for "Hartford Dodge" and to #1 for "Hartford Dodge Dealers."

Our system will check all of their keywords later in the week, but a spot check of several other keywords showed a bump in some of them with no other actions to attribute to the change other than the content marketing piece.

The social signals garnered by this piece helped to move search terms across the board up. It added credibility and authority in the eyes of the search engines and translated into improved results. Does that mean every dealer should post cool pictures or historical pieces and submit them to Reddit or Digg every day? Absolutely not. Those sites are extremely conscious of people trying to "game" them and only truly spectacular content has a chance of doing well from a car dealers' website. "Spamming" those sites with low quality content can actually do more harm than good.

This is a controversial strategy mostly because it's so easy to botch. This doesn't fall into the realm of "give it a shot" or "experiment with it" because once a site is deemed inappropriate on these sites, they can get banned forever. PLEASE feel free to email me if you have questions or want to bounce your strategies off of me. I'd rather answer a dozen questions today than receiving an email in a month saying, "I tried what you said and now I'm banned on Digg!"

Do it right or don't do it all. Either way, we're here to help.

jd.rucker@tkcarsites.com if you have any questions.

One of our KPA SEO clients asked about a particular piece of content we posted. It was a combination of an infographic, a story, and images that were only loosely-related to the purpose of the website as a Dodge/Jeep dealer. The article itself was about the Willys Jeep and offered some historical data and cool facts.

We explained that this particular piece wasn't designed necessarily to help them sell more cars but to help expose a sharable piece of content that could go viral through social media. We link to the homepage with an appropriate anchor text for clear SEO reason, but otherwise the entire piece is meant specifically to add value to the overall community by giving them some cool facts and figures that can be of interest.

The results are relatively predictable. On Reddit, it will do very well because it has a very nice TIL (Today I Learned) in the form of this quote: "TIL the US Army asked 135 automakers for bids to build a WWII recon vehicle. The criteria were so strict that only 2 replied. The result: the Willys Jeep." As a result, it should get 2,000-10,000 unique visitors in the next 24 hours. These visitors will be coming for the content, so there won't be any leads that come from them, but there will be plenty of sharing and linking associated with the post.

This is where the value is. It's also the hardest concept to show to both clients and other vendors I talk to about the subject.

Google and Bing both look very closely at social signals when determining the importance of a website. Those that are able to create content that is shared virally have a much better chance of ranking for their target keywords than those who do not (which in the automotive industry is nearly everyone).

There's a reason that many KPA SEO clients are able to rank outside of their own backyards for high-value terms. It has been hammered into our brains here at Driving Sales that SEO is really about content marketing and that has helped the community tremendously when it comes to knowing the proper ways to build and maintain their websites. However, content alone is often not enough. It's a competitive industry. Super competitive. Thankfully, social media allows the truly-savvy to take their SEO to the next level.

My SEO team could never produce the quantity nor quality of links that are necessary to maintain a high level of search dominance without understanding this simple principle, that having content that can attract people is as important (maybe more important) than content that we promote. I would be shocked if this particular piece received fewer than 100 retweets, 50 Facebook shares, and 30 Google Plus shares. We'll Tweet it out there, put it up on Pinterest, but it's through attracting the masses that the real magic will happen.

I'll post the results here once they're in. Stay tuned.

Every few months, I read articles or hear at a conference about how search engine optimization is dead. I've heard these statements for the last 5 years and they often attribute the same reasons for the demise of SEO (even years later).

Search engine optimization is still the single most important component for driving additional buyer traffic to a car dealer's website. Period. I would absolutely love to debate that point with anyone. There are shiny, bouncing balls that are valid such as social media and retargeting. They're important. They're just not as important as organic rankings on search.

Many look at PPC as a tangible, high-value method of driving traffic. It is. However, with less than 1/4th of searchers ever clicking on ads, it's simply not as powerful as strong search engine optimization that reaches nearly 100% of searchers.

The latest argument is about how Google and Bing have declared recently that they are making changes soon to attack over-optimized websites. This is true. We had 4 KPA people at SXSW this year and that was one of the things discussed by Google, Bing, and SEO Pro Danny Sullivan during one of the presentations. However, this is not a death knell for SEO despite a lot of people focusing on this small portion of the larger presentation.

What wasn't mentioned as often was when both Google and Bing declared that they appreciate quality SEO, even saying at one point that "we love SEOs because they make it easier for us to index pages properly."

Google and Bing are not coming after car dealers. They are attacking the viagra spammers. They are going after the websites that are automatically generating hundreds of thousands of new pages a day. They are going after the websites that are purchasing links.

A dealer website that is properly optimized and proactively working towards doing the things that Google and Bing want have nothing to fear. SEO is not dead. It's definitely getting harder - that much is certain. The search engines are getting smarter every day. Keeping up with the changes and adjustments is the reason that I still have a job.

If it was easy, everyone would do it well. Instead, it's hard, and at this point it's easier for people to say that "SEO is dead" rather than learning how to do proper SEO for their clients.

They say that speed kills, but on the internet it's a lack of speed that really does the damage. Today we are living in an "instant America" where increased speed and access to the internet has made us less patient and more expectant of having the things we want the moment we want them.

During normal internet browsing, around 25% of people will leave a website that doesn't load in 4 seconds or less. On mobile, the expectations are still great with around 50% leaving a website that takes over 10 seconds to load. With so much emphasis on speed, website owners must learn to simplify their websites to accommodate.

This infographic details that and other important facts about American culture and our love affair with instant results.

Created by: Online Graduate Programs

Image: Techi. Hat Tip: Automotive SEO.

UPDATE: Due to the demand for more information about Pinterest since posting this on Driving Sales, we are holding a webinar on March 7th on the topic.

As Pinterest continues to rise in exposure and prominence in social media, many dealers have been asking me how to make it work for them. There are certain techniques that we, fortunately or unfortunately, save for clients, but here's one that you can use today to help improve the virality and SEO of your website.

It starts with being interesting. Nobody on Pinterest (and social media in general) wants to see the special you have on your 2011 program cars. They want to see something "cool" on social media. Pinterest can make the fun part of managing your dealer website actually have value for your online marketing efforts.

Here's the technique:

1. Using your website content management system, create a page that looks something like this: 1969 Pontiac GTO Judge.
2. Be sure to include unique content - a paragraph or two is fine.
3. Don't forget your image credits! It's important that you link to the sources of the images. It's the right thing to do.
4. Include links at the bottom that go to your website or other websites that you're trying to optimize.
5. "Pin It" on Pinterest. Assuming you have a following (or want to build up a following) you'll want to have something awesome to show them such as the GTO.
6. Share the Pin on Facebook, Twitter, your blog, etc.

The goal here is to help your website be part of a viral spread. It isn't the direct traffic that you receive from the Pin or the social media sites you place it on. It's the authority you receive in the eyes of the search engines from all of the links that are generated.

Pinterest links are no-followed. Don't let that hamper you. Social signals are a part of rankings, but more importantly your goal isn't to rank for that vehicle necessarily. Your goal is to build that page as an authoritative source. By doing so, the links at the bottom of the page will help you rank for the important keywords you want to improve.

It may be complicated, but give it a shot. Depending on which CMS you're using, this could be a weekly process that takes about 15 minutes.

Under normal circumstances I try not to repost on multiple automotive social network venues, but this one was too easy. Here's why:

We had created a very simple infographic for Social Jumpstart. We build tons of infographics for various companies regularly, but this one stuck out for me because of the high velocity that it has been spreading virally. The research phase for this particular graphic gave me more information about social media and its unbelievable scale that I started digging deeper into the numbers.

What I found reaffirmed what we've been saying for a while, that social media is not a broadcasting tool for businesses but rather a venue through which traction comes from the stories surrounding goals and not the goals themselves. I'll go into more detail about the findings in a future DS blog post, but for now, here's the graphic.

It did very well on Venture Beat and is getting picked up by other major publications this week, but it's the way that it resonates with the target audience that opened my eyes. An average post on Venture Beat gets between 40-80 Tweets. Popular stories get betwee 150-300.

This graphic has 1,300 so far.

How can this be applied in the automotive industry? As I said, I'll go into more detail in a future post, but here's a tidbit that may spark your thinking a bit:

People come to us for vehicles. It's our niche and we're the experts. Vehicles can be enjoyable, sharable, and interesting. How can the amazing technologies and concept designs be leveraged to drive more local traffic to your dealership websites and social media posts?

The answer to that question is part of the winning social media formula for car dealers.

Gas prices are on the rise. We hear about the turmoil in the Middle East, the political fighting in the US, and the prices at the pump going up. Gas is trending and dealers should be helping their customers prepare for the changes through their websites and social media.

Instead of going over generalities, I'm going to paint a hypothetical of what I would be doing if I were running a dealership right now.

Step 1: Highlight the Challenge on the Homepage of My Site

Many dealers have banners on their homepage that can be changed very easily. The first banner I would present would ask a question, "How many MPGs does your vehicle get?"

Below the question, I would highlight the MPGs of three of my vehicles that get good gas mileage (or two that get good mileage and one EV if you have any available). It would simply be 3 pictures of vehicles with the MPGs listed next to them.

Step 2: Build an MPG Page

If your website vendor has an easy-to-use content management system, this shouldn't take much time at all. Create a page with an image and a paragraph for all of your highest MPG vehicles. The image should link to either the inventory for that vehicle, as should a link at the end of the paragraph.

There's no selling, here. If they have landed on this page, you have their attention. They know they want better gas mileage. Now they want to look at their options. Show them.

Step 3: Social Media Scare Tactics

This isn't as diabolical as it sounds. All you're doing is posting a fact or a tidbit of information about the potentially dramatic rise in gas prices and then linking to your new MPG page on your website. The fact should be informative; no need to say, "Gas prices are on the rise!"

Instead, it should say something like this:

"This headline just hit the wire: 'Gas prices begin their annual climb earlier than ever." Driving season is around the corner. What's your MPG?" [LINK TO YOUR MPG PAGE]

Step 4: Inform the Sales Team

At JD Rucker Motors, everyone in sales would be trained to ask about commutes and other regular travel that their ups have planned. They should be aware of the rough MPGs of a potential trade as it hits the lot. They would be well-versed on the MPGs of various vehicles that you sell, both small and large.

People make buying decisions based upon perceived value. How your hybrid SUV compares to the 2003 Tahoe that just rolled onto the lot can be a point of value for the customer.

* * *

Gas is just an example. Keep an eye on what's happening around you, both across the world and in the local area. This industry is too competitive to rely on people to come to you because they're in the market for a vehicle. Savvy dealers will bring people into the market even if they don't know they're ready to replace their current vehicle.

There have been many debates on Driving Sales about organic SEO versus pay per click advertising over the years. Google Places - the maps listings - is a topic that normally gets classified separately as it's not as easy to "buy" one's way to the top.

Or is it?

That's the topic of another discussion, but first let's take a look at the reasons behind the dual-top-rankings that are filling searches for car dealers on a regular basis.

Google started putting an emphasis on maps and changing them to what we're seeing today as the enhanced Google Places offering on October 16th, 2010. I remember vividly the call I received from TK Founder Richard Valenta something he had just seen with the adjusted maps. Moments later, it was gone, but he had screen shot evidence. I looked it up on SEO forums and "secret groups" in which I participated and nobody had seen it. We were onto something and didn't want to tip our hand so we simply watched and prepared.

What dealers and customers see today when searching for high-volume keywords like "Minneapolis Toyota" is one variation of the new Google. It has been changing rapidly over the last year and a half, consolidating in some ways and branching out in others, but for the most part we are seeing the transition into mobile search and the emergence of hyper-localization. For savvy dealers and vendors, this is a beautiful thing because it allows us to have a two-edged sword in our fight for clicks.

The numbers on Places clicks are rising. The amount of mobile searches are rising. The need to be at the top twice (three times if you include PPC) is rising. It means that the best-optimized dealers have an amazing opportunity to take more than their fair share of the search volume in their area.

We'll discuss this more in detail in the future, but first I wanted to share our latest video on Car Dealer SEO Tips. The video is below but the link takes you to an expanded explanation of each of the 7 tips.

Enjoy, and as always, feedback is strongly encouraged.

The trend for the last 3 or 4 years has been for businesses to try to tap into social media as a broadcasting tool. It's not universal, but many (most) see social media as a place to post their messages to prospective clients in hopes of switching on the social media faucet that touches a billion people worldwide.

The promise of social media for businesses, particularly local ones, has only been seen by a small percentage. Most believe there's something there, but they aren't certain that their efforts are going anywhere. In many cases, they're not. It's not that social media is so challenging that only the select few can get in, nor is it that there's no value in it.

It's about intention. Those with the intention of sheer marketing with social media will likely be met with limited rewards. People don't go to Facebook or Twitter to see what they want to buy or which services to select. They go to engage, to have fun, and to experience the virtual filter on the real world that social media has to offer them.

In other words, they don't want to see marketing. If and when they're ready to interact with a business through social media, it's because they have questions or needs that can be fulfilled through easy-access communication. This is the part that most businesses are missing.

The real promise of social media is not just to business, but lies an the center between business and consumer. More internet time is spent on social media than any other category; in fact, it's equal to the next three on the list (games, email, and portals) combined.

Businesses want to take advantage of this fact and many are trying, but customer service management is still 3rd on the list of initiatives they perform on social media with brand reputation management and driving promotions above it. This is backwards. Most businesses can achieve their top two goals by focusing on the customers themselves.

It comes down to a lack of understanding. Those who are able to focus their attention on their customers through social media will gain a better reputation and find it easier to broadcast their promotions as a result. It's counter-intuitive to all other forms of interactions with customers, but it makes sense once one realizes the true capacity of the medium.

This article was originally posted on Business Insider.
Click to enlarge.

Some would say that social media ROI cannot be properly tracked. Others look at assumed benefits as the reason to market on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Then, there are those who say there is a direct, measurable return on the investment of money and/or time into social media. Who's right?

That's the question that this infographic attempts to explore. A staggering 97% of marketers believe social media efforts have a marketing benefit for their businesses and clients. In the automotive industry through an unscientific straw poll we recently took with clients and non-clients, that number drops dramatically in automotive, hovering around 50%. Again, who's right?

Regardless of which side of the fence you're on, this graphic can give you some interesting information. Click to enlarge.