Ten months down, two to go. 2010 was an interesting "rebound" year for many (particularly, I'm sure, those who are active on Driving Sales). What's next? What is emerging or what will emerge in 2011 that will push the industry to an even better year?

2010 saw the (belated) emergence of SEO and PPC as needs rather than wants. It saw social media become a player in many dealers' marketing budgets. Reputation management has taken center stage of late. What's next?

Will it be even more focused on reputation management based upon the recent Google changes? How about mobile and Location-based automotive marketing? Is car dealer Facebook going to get even bigger or will it prove to be smoke and mirrors?

Sales will always be in focus, but what about customer retention and reclamation? Are we going to focus on using the Internet for fixed-op marketing? What about using it for finance penetration?

Will dealers continue to focus on their dealer PPC budgets or will they switch to dealer SEO? Why not PPC AND SEO?

Perhaps the biggest question is WHO we will listen to when making our decisions. Will be it Joe Webb or Gary May? Paul Potratz or Volker Jaeckel? Missy Jensen or Larry Bruce? Why not all of them?

Luckily, we have those choices here at Driving Sales.

What do you think? What's "the next big thing" in 2011? Comment here or post your thoughts on the discussion about Automotive Marketing 2011.

Ten months down, two to go. 2010 was an interesting "rebound" year for many (particularly, I'm sure, those who are active on Driving Sales). What's next? What is emerging or what will emerge in 2011 that will push the industry to an even better year?

2010 saw the (belated) emergence of SEO and PPC as needs rather than wants. It saw social media become a player in many dealers' marketing budgets. Reputation management has taken center stage of late. What's next?

Will it be even more focused on reputation management based upon the recent Google changes? How about mobile and Location-based automotive marketing? Is car dealer Facebook going to get even bigger or will it prove to be smoke and mirrors?

Sales will always be in focus, but what about customer retention and reclamation? Are we going to focus on using the Internet for fixed-op marketing? What about using it for finance penetration?

Will dealers continue to focus on their dealer PPC budgets or will they switch to dealer SEO? Why not PPC AND SEO?

Perhaps the biggest question is WHO we will listen to when making our decisions. Will be it Joe Webb or Gary May? Paul Potratz or Volker Jaeckel? Missy Jensen or Larry Bruce? Why not all of them?

Luckily, we have those choices here at Driving Sales.

What do you think? What's "the next big thing" in 2011? Comment here or post your thoughts on the discussion about Automotive Marketing 2011.

Google is integrating Google Places (maps) with their organic listings to have a seemless search experience for users. It brings two major points to the top of mind for dealers:

1. Organic SEO, which will now power maps, is extremely important (even more important than it was before.
2. Reputation management and reviews are going to be more visible than ever before.

Watch the Automotive SEO video below for a brief overview of the changes and what they mean to you.

Google is integrating Google Places (maps) with their organic listings to have a seemless search experience for users. It brings two major points to the top of mind for dealers:

1. Organic SEO, which will now power maps, is extremely important (even more important than it was before.
2. Reputation management and reviews are going to be more visible than ever before.

Watch the Automotive SEO video below for a brief overview of the changes and what they mean to you.

Perhaps the biggest mistake that dealers and their automotive SEO vendors make when tracking their results is to focus solely on your own websites. Knowing where you stand is important, but knowing where your competitors stand can influence your strategy and help you make decisions about what to attack, what to defend, and what to leave alone.

Unlike pay-per-click marketing, SEO is not an unlimited endeavor. With PPC, a dealer can target hundreds, thousands, even tens of thousands of different variations of keywords. This is because your only limits in PPC are budget and relevance. If you are willing to spend enough money and focus on keywords that are low-bounce and relevant, you have no concern over search volume for a keyword. In other words, you can throw in keywords that 5, 3, or even 0 people search for in a given month because if the keyword gets no clicks, technically you don't have to pay for it.

In SEO, you have to be more focused and strategic. You must go after bulk keywords, but you have to prioritize regarding which to point your focus. In SEO, the "juice" that you can throw at various keywords is finite. To try to optimize for too many keywords results in not successfully optimizing very many of them at all.

Whether you do it manually or using software, watching your competitors moving up or down in particular searches can help you identify the right automotive SEO strategy. Below are some tips that you can use that have helped make TK Carsites' clients successful:

Identify Your Threats with a Standard "Health Check"

While most (if not all) automated SEO evaluation programs are limited in their ability to create actionable data, there are come basic factors that you can check to find the obvious threats.

• - SEO Quality Score: While more scoring systems are flawed, they can give you a basic overview of how you and your competitors MAY be doing. There are no tools that can give you the full and accurate picture you need, they can help you by pointing you in the right direction.
•  
• - PageRank: Google has made it clear that PageRank (PR) is an indicator that in and of itself cannot determine who should rank or who shouldn't. With that said, most SEO firms still look at PageRank as one of the factors. You can check the PageRank of your site and those of your competitors through various PR checking websites. There are also Google toolbar options (particularly on Firefox and Chrome) that will check every page that you visit.
•  
• - Indexed Pages: Do NOT fall into the trap that more is necessarily better. Having hundreds of spammy indexed pages circulating through your website will do more harm than good. Still, it's an important factor and can give you at least a little understanding of where your competitors stand.
•  
• - Backlinks: Every time a website links to your website, it loosely counts as a "vote" in the eyes of a search engine. Quality is more important than quantity, so having 2000 links may not be as meaningful or effective as 5-10 high-quality links.

You Versus Your Competitors' Rankings

Diligence is the key to successfully staying on top once you get there. The search engines, particularly Google, can turn on a dime and send the rankings into flux. You may feel safe one day, then less than a months later a competitor is ahead of you.

Whether utilizing software or doing it manually, you can see moves being made that could turn into a threat.  The software above is one that we use to keep tabs on our clients' rankings as well as their competitors rankings.

It can be done without software but can be very time-consuming.

* * *

In the next post, we will take this topic further and discuss why it's important to track competitors and what you can do to have a positive influence on your own rankings.

Perhaps the biggest mistake that dealers and their automotive SEO vendors make when tracking their results is to focus solely on your own websites. Knowing where you stand is important, but knowing where your competitors stand can influence your strategy and help you make decisions about what to attack, what to defend, and what to leave alone.

Unlike pay-per-click marketing, SEO is not an unlimited endeavor. With PPC, a dealer can target hundreds, thousands, even tens of thousands of different variations of keywords. This is because your only limits in PPC are budget and relevance. If you are willing to spend enough money and focus on keywords that are low-bounce and relevant, you have no concern over search volume for a keyword. In other words, you can throw in keywords that 5, 3, or even 0 people search for in a given month because if the keyword gets no clicks, technically you don't have to pay for it.

In SEO, you have to be more focused and strategic. You must go after bulk keywords, but you have to prioritize regarding which to point your focus. In SEO, the "juice" that you can throw at various keywords is finite. To try to optimize for too many keywords results in not successfully optimizing very many of them at all.

Whether you do it manually or using software, watching your competitors moving up or down in particular searches can help you identify the right automotive SEO strategy. Below are some tips that you can use that have helped make TK Carsites' clients successful:

Identify Your Threats with a Standard "Health Check"

While most (if not all) automated SEO evaluation programs are limited in their ability to create actionable data, there are come basic factors that you can check to find the obvious threats.

• - SEO Quality Score: While more scoring systems are flawed, they can give you a basic overview of how you and your competitors MAY be doing. There are no tools that can give you the full and accurate picture you need, they can help you by pointing you in the right direction.
•  
• - PageRank: Google has made it clear that PageRank (PR) is an indicator that in and of itself cannot determine who should rank or who shouldn't. With that said, most SEO firms still look at PageRank as one of the factors. You can check the PageRank of your site and those of your competitors through various PR checking websites. There are also Google toolbar options (particularly on Firefox and Chrome) that will check every page that you visit.
•  
• - Indexed Pages: Do NOT fall into the trap that more is necessarily better. Having hundreds of spammy indexed pages circulating through your website will do more harm than good. Still, it's an important factor and can give you at least a little understanding of where your competitors stand.
•  
• - Backlinks: Every time a website links to your website, it loosely counts as a "vote" in the eyes of a search engine. Quality is more important than quantity, so having 2000 links may not be as meaningful or effective as 5-10 high-quality links.

You Versus Your Competitors' Rankings

Diligence is the key to successfully staying on top once you get there. The search engines, particularly Google, can turn on a dime and send the rankings into flux. You may feel safe one day, then less than a months later a competitor is ahead of you.

Whether utilizing software or doing it manually, you can see moves being made that could turn into a threat.  The software above is one that we use to keep tabs on our clients' rankings as well as their competitors rankings.

It can be done without software but can be very time-consuming.

* * *

In the next post, we will take this topic further and discuss why it's important to track competitors and what you can do to have a positive influence on your own rankings.

Part of my job as the Marketing Executive for TK Carsites is putting together our weekly webinar series to train dealers on the latest and greatest techniques being used in car dealer Internet marketing and other disciplines. With JD Rucker and other experts on our team, one would think that we get most of our data, particularly regarding social media, from various gurus and strategists that we talk to regularly.

If one thought that, they would be incorrect as our primary source for learning how best to position automotive social media is through you - the dealers in the field. Experience in the trenches is always more valuable than what can be learned theoretically in a classroom, from a white paper, or in a book.

Below, I've listed a few basic tips that one can learn from other dealers. The point here is that if you really, really want to understand how Facebook can work in the automotive industry, your best resource is other dealers. See what they're doing. Is it working? Can it spark unique ideas that you can implement?

Yes.

We are compiling a list of good Facebook dealers right now. If you know anyone (yourself included) who is doing innovative things with Facebook and demonstrating success, please let us know. We'd love to feature you or them.

Now, on to the tips...

On Facebook, People Love Facebook

The only common thread that binds everyone who is active on Facebook is just that... they're active on Facebook. Talking ABOUT Facebook is an easy way to develop engagement in a non-threatening, universally acceptable manner.

This technique is especially effective for smaller pages with under 1000 people liking it as sharing Facebook data on Facebook itself can get a higher percentage of people involved.

Customize Your Landing Page

It cannot be said enough. When sending people who are not currently liking you to your Facebook page, they should land on a custom page. The chances that they'll "like" your page (become a fan) is nearly double than when you send them to the default wall.

Focus on Your Manufacturer's Brands

You have to assume that most of the people who like your page are local and interested in the manufacturers you represent. Become their resource for both local content as well as national manufacturer content.

There is an opportunity here to keep people coming back for more and (perhaps more importantly) sharing your page with their friends. Be interesting, informative, and a resource for your customers.

Great Banners and Avatars

There are few things more annoying than spending time, money, or both on an excellent banner for your Facebook page, only to realize that the avatar (which pulls from a portion of the banner) doesn't look right.

In the example above, the banner extends well below with more information about the dealership, but a nicely proportioned square section of the banner fits nicely within the avatar area as well.

Ask Universal Questions

Perhaps the most challenging thing for many business owners to understand is the reasoning behind going "off topic" with their questions and comments on their wall. While most engagement should have some relevance to your business, brand, or geography, it doesn't hurt to ask universal questions every now and then.

Don't forget that in many cases people can see when their friends are interacting somewhere. Having the opportunity to pull in these friends to visit your page is quick, easy, and can at times be (gulp) fun.

* * *

We will post more tips soon, but don't forget to check out other Facebook pages as well. Our list is just getting started but it already has plenty of automotive-related Facebook pages from which you can draw inspiration.

Have fun!

Part of my job as the Marketing Executive for TK Carsites is putting together our weekly webinar series to train dealers on the latest and greatest techniques being used in car dealer Internet marketing and other disciplines. With JD Rucker and other experts on our team, one would think that we get most of our data, particularly regarding social media, from various gurus and strategists that we talk to regularly.

If one thought that, they would be incorrect as our primary source for learning how best to position automotive social media is through you - the dealers in the field. Experience in the trenches is always more valuable than what can be learned theoretically in a classroom, from a white paper, or in a book.

Below, I've listed a few basic tips that one can learn from other dealers. The point here is that if you really, really want to understand how Facebook can work in the automotive industry, your best resource is other dealers. See what they're doing. Is it working? Can it spark unique ideas that you can implement?

Yes.

We are compiling a list of good Facebook dealers right now. If you know anyone (yourself included) who is doing innovative things with Facebook and demonstrating success, please let us know. We'd love to feature you or them.

Now, on to the tips...

On Facebook, People Love Facebook

The only common thread that binds everyone who is active on Facebook is just that... they're active on Facebook. Talking ABOUT Facebook is an easy way to develop engagement in a non-threatening, universally acceptable manner.

This technique is especially effective for smaller pages with under 1000 people liking it as sharing Facebook data on Facebook itself can get a higher percentage of people involved.

Customize Your Landing Page

It cannot be said enough. When sending people who are not currently liking you to your Facebook page, they should land on a custom page. The chances that they'll "like" your page (become a fan) is nearly double than when you send them to the default wall.

Focus on Your Manufacturer's Brands

You have to assume that most of the people who like your page are local and interested in the manufacturers you represent. Become their resource for both local content as well as national manufacturer content.

There is an opportunity here to keep people coming back for more and (perhaps more importantly) sharing your page with their friends. Be interesting, informative, and a resource for your customers.

Great Banners and Avatars

There are few things more annoying than spending time, money, or both on an excellent banner for your Facebook page, only to realize that the avatar (which pulls from a portion of the banner) doesn't look right.

In the example above, the banner extends well below with more information about the dealership, but a nicely proportioned square section of the banner fits nicely within the avatar area as well.

Ask Universal Questions

Perhaps the most challenging thing for many business owners to understand is the reasoning behind going "off topic" with their questions and comments on their wall. While most engagement should have some relevance to your business, brand, or geography, it doesn't hurt to ask universal questions every now and then.

Don't forget that in many cases people can see when their friends are interacting somewhere. Having the opportunity to pull in these friends to visit your page is quick, easy, and can at times be (gulp) fun.

* * *

We will post more tips soon, but don't forget to check out other Facebook pages as well. Our list is just getting started but it already has plenty of automotive-related Facebook pages from which you can draw inspiration.

Have fun!

As most know now, Yahoo! will be changing their search interface to Bing in the coming months. It can theoretically happen by the end of August, though most say it won't happen until late October and there is still a chance that it will have to be pushed off to next year if the transition isn't smooth.

The implications to both paid and organic search are tremendous as many companies focus only on Google for their SEO efforts and only do pay-per-click through Google Adwords. With projections for the new, combined search of Yahoo!, Bing, and their partners ranging from 28%-39% of total search, it is no longer something that anyone can afford to ignore.

Below are some findings that we've made over the last year that have helped our dealers stay on top of Bing. Use them wisely - ignoring "the other search engines" in the coming months would be a big mistake.

SEO for Bing/Yahoo

Like Google, the current Bing algorithm gives heavy preference to links. The difference seems to be in the weight of low-value links versus high-value links. Google has a tendency to give at least a little weight to more common links such as directories and obscure social bookmarks while Bing focuses on higher-value blog, strong social media sites, and general web properties. This could be by design or it may be a side-effect of having a less-frequented directory.

In other words, the combined search traffic of Yahoo! and Bing may shift this closer to Google's bulk style once the overall search traffic increases for the Bing platform after the Yahoo! integration. Then again, it may not.

An example of this is in the search for "Automotive Social Media". The #3 website on Bing, Hasai, is ranked #39 on Google. There is only 1 link pointing to Hasai.com with the anchor text "Automotive Social Media" but it was a high-value, high-PageRank link and by itself propelled the site (which really has little to do with automotive social media other than 1 article) to the top on Bing.

• Takeaway 1: Links from aged, authoritative blogs and major social media sites such as Digg, Reddit, and Tumblr hold more weight in Bing than in Google (even though Google LOVES these links as well)

Google is very quick at indexing pages. When they officially launched Google Caffeine earlier this year, the effects were instantly felt and measurable. Pages that may have taken days to index were being found in hours (even minutes) and the spiders seem to crawl more often when a page is updated regularly.

Bing's algorithm gives less weight to fresh content but takes the value of the content more into account. It favors proper saturation of keywords using "natural speak" and seems to pay no attention whatsoever to meta-descriptions or meta-keywords for ranking purposes.

• Takeaway 2: Content is still extremely important for Bing, but updating the same pages seems less important than adding new ones.

URL structure and the presence of keywords in the domain, sub-directory, or sub-domain name has always been important to Google, but it appears even more relevant to Bing. Searching for "Automotive Website Design" shows that #2 on Bing is automotive-website-design.com.

We couldn't find this website on Google at all going back several pages.

• Takeaway 3: Include keywords in your URLs whenever possible.

PPC for Bing/Yahoo!

This part is easy. IF you are using PPC as part of your marketing strategy and IF you have the available budget, you should be ready to include Yahoo! and Bing in your budget.

On the other hand, if you have a low budget for PPC, you may want to consider SWITCHING from Google to Yahoo! and Bing. The cost per click will be lower on them and the exposure, while still only around half of Google, will be something that you can get more bang for your buck if you do it right.

Regardless, you should always consider PPC as a supplement to strong SEO and maps listings, not a replacement.

Feel free to contact us if you have any questions about this. I hope it helped.

As most know now, Yahoo! will be changing their search interface to Bing in the coming months. It can theoretically happen by the end of August, though most say it won't happen until late October and there is still a chance that it will have to be pushed off to next year if the transition isn't smooth.

The implications to both paid and organic search are tremendous as many companies focus only on Google for their SEO efforts and only do pay-per-click through Google Adwords. With projections for the new, combined search of Yahoo!, Bing, and their partners ranging from 28%-39% of total search, it is no longer something that anyone can afford to ignore.

Below are some findings that we've made over the last year that have helped our dealers stay on top of Bing. Use them wisely - ignoring "the other search engines" in the coming months would be a big mistake.

SEO for Bing/Yahoo

Like Google, the current Bing algorithm gives heavy preference to links. The difference seems to be in the weight of low-value links versus high-value links. Google has a tendency to give at least a little weight to more common links such as directories and obscure social bookmarks while Bing focuses on higher-value blog, strong social media sites, and general web properties. This could be by design or it may be a side-effect of having a less-frequented directory.

In other words, the combined search traffic of Yahoo! and Bing may shift this closer to Google's bulk style once the overall search traffic increases for the Bing platform after the Yahoo! integration. Then again, it may not.

An example of this is in the search for "Automotive Social Media". The #3 website on Bing, Hasai, is ranked #39 on Google. There is only 1 link pointing to Hasai.com with the anchor text "Automotive Social Media" but it was a high-value, high-PageRank link and by itself propelled the site (which really has little to do with automotive social media other than 1 article) to the top on Bing.

• Takeaway 1: Links from aged, authoritative blogs and major social media sites such as Digg, Reddit, and Tumblr hold more weight in Bing than in Google (even though Google LOVES these links as well)

Google is very quick at indexing pages. When they officially launched Google Caffeine earlier this year, the effects were instantly felt and measurable. Pages that may have taken days to index were being found in hours (even minutes) and the spiders seem to crawl more often when a page is updated regularly.

Bing's algorithm gives less weight to fresh content but takes the value of the content more into account. It favors proper saturation of keywords using "natural speak" and seems to pay no attention whatsoever to meta-descriptions or meta-keywords for ranking purposes.

• Takeaway 2: Content is still extremely important for Bing, but updating the same pages seems less important than adding new ones.

URL structure and the presence of keywords in the domain, sub-directory, or sub-domain name has always been important to Google, but it appears even more relevant to Bing. Searching for "Automotive Website Design" shows that #2 on Bing is automotive-website-design.com.

We couldn't find this website on Google at all going back several pages.

• Takeaway 3: Include keywords in your URLs whenever possible.

PPC for Bing/Yahoo!

This part is easy. IF you are using PPC as part of your marketing strategy and IF you have the available budget, you should be ready to include Yahoo! and Bing in your budget.

On the other hand, if you have a low budget for PPC, you may want to consider SWITCHING from Google to Yahoo! and Bing. The cost per click will be lower on them and the exposure, while still only around half of Google, will be something that you can get more bang for your buck if you do it right.

Regardless, you should always consider PPC as a supplement to strong SEO and maps listings, not a replacement.

Feel free to contact us if you have any questions about this. I hope it helped.