There has been a lot of discussion about staying relevant on social media, rightfully so. Too many businesses are trying to "fit in" on Facebook and Google+ by posting funny images that they found on any of the various funny picture resources out there. They are not the right venues for such activities from a business perspective. Twitter, however, is.

On Twitter, there is less of a differentiation between businesses and individuals. Facebook and Google+ both have pages for businesses that are handled differently from individual profiles. On Twitter, a profile is a profile whether it's a person, a business, or a anything else. An update is an update and most users could care less where it comes from as long as it's interesting. Whoever you are, person or entity, you can attract views and social media capital by posting things that are often too irrelevant to post on Facebook or Google+.

You never know when something's going to blow up and go viral.

Case in point, while I was at the New Media Expo in Las Vegas this week, an image struck me as funny and I posted it. Somewhere along the line it was seen by a "power account" and retweeted, starting a nice string of retweets that has kept my phone blowing up for the past couple of days. It didn't matter who I was. I could have been a business for all they cared. The content worked and it spread across Twitter.

The point is that businesses can be a little more risky, a little less relevant, and a little more fun on Twitter than they can on the other major social networks. The same holds true for Pinterest, but that's another story altogether. Here's the Tweet.

I think a bird fell in the snow and walked away. I think. twitter.com/louiebaur/stat…

— Louie Baur(@louiebaur) January 7, 2013

Feel free to retweet it if you like!

The last time I was involved with search engine optimization, Alta Vista was a player. I was working on my own sites and making a killing by taking advantage of the new world of search engines. Yahoo was making its move to the top. Google wasn’t even a word at the time.

Flash forward to 2007 and social media became my thing. I was able to drive great traffic with the social news sites and started really getting involved the marketing components in 2008. That’s when JD Rucker and I hooked up and started working the various social angles for clients, but he would always handle the search engine components. At the time, I never thought I would get back into SEO, but things have changed since before the Penguin update. We knew it was coming – listening to Google’s Matt Cutts and Bing’s Duane Forrester at the first SXSW I’d ever attended made us realize that the things I was doing in social would soon apply to search.

Fast forward to today. Social signals are a big thing. Many websites are able to make exceptional moves up in the search rankings through social signals alone. Now, rumors are spreading about a social-focused update called Zebra. Chances are good that it’s just a rumor, but the data that we’ve seen shows spikes in social signal influence over search when the signals are real. Those who are buying fake +1s, getting retweets from spam accounts, or inflating their Facebook likes are not seeing the same results that we are.

Social signals are the easiest way for the search engines to get human interaction with pages that they can monitor and utilize in rankings. There is no reason to believe that the usefulness will slow down. What will happen is that they will figure out more ways to sniff out the spammers. They’re already doing it with reviews; those who create accounts and write reviews with no past or future activity end up getting removed.

The point is that the rumors that social signals are losing value in search are being spread by those who are not putting out strong content that is able to get real social shares. Social signals simply make sense. They’ll be effective for the foreseeable future.

* * *

“Like” image courtesy of Shutterstock.

The normal order of business is to ensure that every department has a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) however, with the addition of Social Media in recent years; some companies may find it hard to create or unify their team members in keeping it not only followed but updated.

This has become a struggle with many companies that have added Social Media to the mix and since it too needs some order, the question often asked is “Does Social Media need an SOP?”

Merging a newer form of media as a part of your Internet Marketing plan is clearly important to remain relevant within your industry and as Social Media has not only gained trust and power, its influence for your brand can be significant, and in fact for some companies it has now become the majority of their marketing efforts. With that said Social Media changes fast and drastically unlike anything else that happens within a business so applying the same methods as you are used to when running your business may become a tad bit frustrating.

Social Media is a real-time Industry and changes sometimes overnight. Not only does it change with new social networks and social booking marking sites, but existing social sites often add new features regularly that if your business wants to remain in charge of their online presence need to test and try to see if the latest features are applicable to your brand.

This can often cause conflict to an existing SOP, or means that you need to constantly keep your SOP updated, which many businesses fail to do. Of course you need order, some sort of system to know where you begin and end your day and promotional needs. However, this does not mean that you should have an SOP that applies to more stable aspects of your business nor does it mean you need to spend time panicking that your team members understand what is expected of them.

What you need is to create a solid foundation that is strategized based on its core being flexible. A system that shares where to start and end when referring to social sites and blogs is a great way to start and adding what to do on those sites is a great way to remain organized, but you cannot make it solid, you need to leave room for change and to stay on top of what the changes are that occur within Social Media and it needs to become a part of your job (or for your vendor).

When a new feature is added, assign some team members to collectively try it and present their results to you with they’re pros and cons of how and why it would be of any benefit to your brand and if it targets any of your local area. Once a decision has been made then you need to figure where within the SOP it would fit best or make the most sense as you certainly want to ensure there is a path that keeps moving smoothly.

Yes, Social Media needs an SOP for your business, but remember that it needs to be flexible, you need to try features before adding them and you need to remain informed as well has informing your team of any and all changes. An SOP is important, but it is not going to be the one you are used to and be prepared for it to change in an instant.

[SOP image via redhillconsultinggroup]

While learning incredible things and meeting equally incredible people at the New Media Expo in Vegas, I ran into Triberr founder Dino Dogan. I was using Triberr a while back but stopped because it became too hard. The site used to be automated – set it and forget it. They turned it into more of a curation site and I fell of the radar as a result. Recently, I’ve rejuvenated my activity and found that if anything the curation component actually makes it better, which is why it was perfect timing to meet Dogan.

For those who are not familiar, Triberr is designed to group like-minded people into “Tribes”. These tribes fall into many different categories such as marketing, technology, and automotive. It is a “blog amplification platform”, which means that users within the tribes share some of each others’ posts on social media. Once you’re in a tribe, you’re given a stream of content that you can select to share on Twitter, Facebook, and/or LinkedIn. Your own content from your blog is fed into this stream so that other members can share your content as well.

The engine driving the site is elegant. You select how often you want content shared to your profiles – once every two hours, for example – then you go through and select the content you want added to the queue. It can hold up to 100 items in your queue, making it easy to go through and select the content in one sitting that will populate your social media profiles over time.

It’s very much a back-scratching environment – the more you share of others, the more they will share of yours. Unlike other platforms, however, the user has the ability to “mute” other users. This is extremely important for those who do not want to be bombarded by spam or articles that are off-topic. If you only want the best people’s content to show on your stream, so be it. By not sharing spam, you probably won’t get your content shared by them, either, but that’s perfectly fine by me. For my feed, I focus on high-quality bloggers. They are the ones that are also sharing the content I post, which makes it much more useful anyway. The traffic from the initial tests have shown to be much higher than I would have expected or even remember from when I was first using it and the social signals for search rankings are top-notch.

Check out Triberr. If your blog falls into one of the niches and your social profiles are good for sharing content in your area of expertise, it’s probably a perfect fit.

If you have a business page setup on Facebook and looking to gain more local people on your page as well as spread your brand further within your community, Facebook Nearby is a new mobile location based feature that has been helping profiles thus far but as of last month, Facebook decided to add a global update to their feature and include “Nearby” for businesses as well.

What is Facebook Nearby?

Facebook Nearby is a mobile feature that is now both on Android and iOS phones that becomes a mobile discovery dependent on friends for searching consumers. The feature will allow consumers to find local businesses through their connections on Facebook by browsing or searching via Facebook categories or by connecting directly from their phone; which includes check-in’s, getting directions, and allowing consumers to rate and share recommendations.

How do Facebook Users see Nearby Facebook Businesses?

The curated list that shows on your Facebook Nearby is dependent on friends’ recommendations, ratings, check-ins, and likes.

How-to have your physical business get discovered on Facebook Nearby

Firstly, you must have a physical location for your business in order to become discoverable on Facebook Nearby. To ensure that your business does get found is simple and you may already have the following information added to your Facebook page, if not or to double-check, here is what you need to have included on your Facebook page:

Update your Page to include basic information, such as your address, store hours, phone number, and details about your business in the “About section”.

Update your category. Ex: if you are a sushi restaurant, you will not appear if you do not have the correct category listed.

Encourage connections from customers: likes, check-ins, ratings, and recommendations.

Facebook Nearby is a feature that is a part of Facebook Locations and is intended to help your business not only get discovered online but to encourage people to come in-store, therefore you need to make sure that you are in the proper category and that all of your information is filled out. Take part in creating check-in deals to up the ante and most importantly, make sure that you are actively interacting with your online community to give your possible in-store community a preview of the excellent service they will receive by choosing your business.

The New Year has rung in and the Holiday Season is officially over. That means it is time to get revamped for the New Year and ensure your Dealership is staying ahead of the times when it comes to your social media strategy. You might already have one and think that it works so no need to fix it and you may be right, depending on your budget and your time, although the hopes is that many GM’s have resolved themselves in thinking that social media is a fad or has no purpose within the Automotive Industry, since if you haven’t felt the effects of what social media can do for your dealership it only means you are doing it wrong or have the wrong person or vendor aiding you on your behalf.

It is time to be blunt and straight forward about your social media efforts that no longer should be a back-burner priority since it should have by now been integrated within your marketing strategy as to how you not only create advertisement but how you can create engagement with others to build relationships. It is now 2013 and that means you no longer should have excuses as to why your dealership is not spending time on various social networks or appointing someone who continuously communicates to you as to what is going on because you care, even if you do not have the time to do it yourself, you care, not because it is social media, but because it is your brand and the means to connect and contact others in real-time is what is required of a business and you are a business. Period.

Therefore we are going to say farewell to negative thoughts surrounding social media and hop into the positive seat to drive your dealership into the houses and minds of potential buyers. As a dealership, you already know that one buyer can turn into generations of buyers, especially with your great staff and customer service. This is true for your presence on social networks, except now your efforts are amplified.

Here is a check list to ensure your dealership is starting the New Year off right.

Re-evaluate your current Social Media Strategy

This should already be on your schedule for review every few months, but no time like the New Year to review your current Social Media Strategy. This means that you will want to look at your insights and stats to see if what you are currently doing is actually improving overall engagement, those are the only numbers that truly matter. Other measurable numbers do matter, certainly growth, but growth doesn’t matter if you are not interacting. Much like a yearly inventory you need to see where you are and decide on where you plan to go, including any upcoming promotions or social events. Schedule them; a plan is always better than winging it, no matter how great you are.

Review your Current Social Networks, are they Still Relevant?

Just because you signed up to MySpace when it was hot doesn’t mean you should still be on it. Only be on social networks that are working for you, that people within your local area are present on and be sure to make your brand known on popular social networks, Facebook is no longer enough. It is time to try Pinterest or Instagram or both to begin broadening your horizons and honing in on people who are engaging and connect through images, since that is a popular form of interaction. Adding new social network to your list means you need to plan for it, decide on how you are going to use it as it is a social platform not a place to advertise and why you should be there, besides the reason that many people are.

Videos and Images are a MUST

If you have yet to check off using videos and images while sharing content to your social sites you are broken down and stuck on the side of the road. What happens in that instance? You need assistance, now is the time to find someone who can keep up with the social trends without violating images with watermarks (this is never cool). This doesn’t mean you have to run out and find a vendor but it does mean that you are already behind some of your competitors and you need to find someone with the know-how to get you back on the social media road.

Only Auto-Scheduling when you are away…

Auto-Scheduling content used to be a great way to save time and it still is but all too often dealers are not going back to what they scheduled to follow up so, if you are not responding to your audience than you need to limit your auto-scheduling and start adding time for real-time engagement.

This is a list you want to check twice and perhaps even add to as you begin working your way through it. With over 800 million unique views on YouTube each month, over a Billion people on Facebook and G+, Pinterest and Instagram easily following behind, you cannot afford the luxury of skipping out on social media for if you do, it is like investing on a car that doesn’t work, and now who would ever do that? Unless of course you have the money to start from scratch, but do you?

The hard facts are to see you succeed and not get lost in the traffic of the past. You need to move forward and begin 2013 with a check list that is sure to get your dealership automotivated.

[motivational image via voxifit]

It's one of the most overlooked components of a modern automotive internet marketing strategy. Some do it naturally, expressing the way they want the dealership to be perceived by customers and potential customers by instilling a unified sense of direction amongst employees, on their website, and throughout their online interactions such as on social media or when replying to reviews. Most have not set up a personality in the traditional sense and are just trying to get by day-to-day facing whatever obstacles come at them.

Your dealership's personality shines through regardless of whether you've established one or not. For most, it's one that is friendly, inviting, and competitive. This works. It just doesn't work as well as it could if the dealership took a more holistic approach to all customer-facing activities online and offline.

So, what exactly is a personality as it pertains to a dealership (or any business for that matter)? Let's start there...

Understanding Your Business Personality

It's not the easiest concept to understand. Sure, we all have a personality that shines through from the top, permeates to our employees, and (hopefully) manifests properly to our customers. It could be as simple as a "whatever it takes" personality, one that tries to communicate to customers (and employees) that we're here to earn your business and we're not going to let price get in the way. For others, it could be a community-effort personality, one that focuses on the family-owned-and-operated component that builds trust and lets customers (and employees) know that they can count on your dealership to be there for them.

Some go a more direct route. This is where the old television commercials come in with men screaming about amazing deals. This type of personality is often frowned upon, but it has been effective in the past and is, to some extent, still effective today. How long that will last, nobody knows. I would anticipate that the effectiveness is waning.

What is your focus point? That's the start of establishing your personality. Do you focus on being the volume dealer that can has the right vehicles and that can deliver the best prices possible? Do you focus on being honest and personable, making low pressure and pleasant experience the trademark of your company? Is your dealership fun with the owner wearing crazy hats and blow-up giant monkeys gracing your roof from time to time?

Whatever your focus is, you can build your personality around it. Now, let's look at the importance of establishing your personality from the dealership level straight through to websites and social media.

Why a Personality is Important

You can't be everything to everyone. You can't tell them on one hand that you're a volume dealership that does anything and everything to put them in a car, then try to be the low-pressure, awesome customer service and experience dealership that relies on repeat and referral business. You can try, but it doesn't work.

The only way to control the public perception of your dealership is to craft your personality around a single focus.That's not to say that you can't be a volume dealer that uses a low-pressure style and has a monkey on your roof. It means that you shouldn't try to communicate all of those things to your potential customers in your advertising and marketing. Different things appeal to different people, but more importantly different things turn people off. They may not care whether a dealership claims to offer the lowest price because they think that all dealers will negotiate down to the same price, particularly on new cars. They might have had a bad experience in the past with a dealership that claimed to be low-pressure, only to feel like they were getting ripped off.

The more personality types you try to maintain, the more opportunities you have to turn someone off about the dealership. Consolidate. Pick the single component of your potential personality that you feel will resonate best at the dealership and through your marketing.

Make sure it's real. If you're a dealership that questions the salespeople any time they take an up that doesn't make it into the showroom, you can't take on a low-pressure personality because your salespeople will not give that impression to the customers. If you hold gross and refuse to cater to the undercuts when your competitor down the block keeps giving away cars, don't try to take on a price-beater personality.

When you have a singular personality that resonates across all channels, you'll be able to attract customers who are seeking this particular type of dealership. That's not to say that you will be turning away the invoice minus half of holdback customers if you express a hometown, good-experience type of personality. It just means that you're targeting a particular type of customer specifically and avoiding having too many personalities that can turn more people away.

Once you've decided on a personality, it's time to make it a reality.

Building the Company Culture

Some of you have already established a true company culture and now need to make sure it's applied to your online marketing efforts. Those of you who fit this bill can skip to the next section.

For the rest, it's an absolute necessity to get the company culture built. Sounds hard. It's not. It really only takes an email or two and maybe a mention in the next company meeting.

You know who you are. Let your employees know. All of them. Here's a quick example of an email that can be sent out:

To The ABC Motors Family:

We wanted to thank you all for your commitment to our success and communicate with you some of the goals we have as a dealership. For starters, we are moving forward with a plan to adjust our marketing preference around the fact that we do business differently than our competitors.

As you know, we strive to give our customers the best experience possible. We want them to know when they buy a car or service their vehicle here, that we're going to go out of our way to make the experience an unexpected surprise. Car dealerships often have a bad reputation based upon the business model itself. At ABC Motors, our goal is to delight our customers. We need your help.

When you're communicating with customers, always be mindful that our company culture is centered around giving them an outstanding experience. We hold this with the highest regard and we will want you to as well. If you have any questions or suggestions, please email Ralph@ABCMotors.com.

When was the last time you sent out an email reaffirming to your employees what your company culture really was?

Translating the Company Culture into an Online Personality

This is the tricky part. How can you sculpt your message to accomplish everything that has been outlined here? You have the overview. Now it's time to make a plan. That's not something I can do directly in an article; it differs from dealership to dealership, personality type to personality type. What I can do is give you some things to keep in mind while you're formulating your holistic strategy:

• Make Your Website Match - There's nothing worse than a generic website. Despite what OEMs have been telling you (and thankfully some are finally starting to change their tune), a unified look and feel with your competitors is not a good thing. People are no longer "internet-challenged" the way they have been in the past. They know how to navigate any dealership's website very quickly regardless of how many they've visited. Make sure that the message that you're sending out through your website matches the dealership's personality.
• Focus on Certain Pages for Personality - You have a limited number of opportunities to communicate your personality to the dealership. It's not just a matter of putting a slogan in your header and calling it a day. Every important page of you website should reiterate the personality. The "important" page include About Us, Vehicle Details Pages, and the most overlooked but highly trafficked page on your website, Hours and Directions.
• Build Ads with Your Personality in Mind - Whether it's television, radio, online videos, or banner ads, you should set the tone properly. If you're loud and fun, don't use boring colors and boring voices. If you're down to earth and family-focused, put the kids or grand kids on the ads. Communicate your personality consistently with a slogan and, whenever appropriate, expand on that personality by making a longer commitment in every ad.
• Respond to Reviews with the Right Voice - There should be a consistency that flows in your response to all of your online reviews (you are replying to all of your reviews, good or bad, right?). That doesn't mean that you're saying the same thing over and over again. It means that the tone and personality flows through your responses and establishes a consistent voice. This is who you are. This is how you reply to customer complaints. This is how your reply to happy customers. Keep it unified.
• Center Your Social Profiles Around Building Your Personality - The vast majority of dealerships do not have an appropriate voice on social media. This is different from your review response voice. It's your way of interacting with past and potential customers that reinforces that personality. There is a ton of potential symbolism involved here as well as the need to build on your presence through your personality. I will go into further detail about this in the next post in this series.

Getting the right personality in place is one of the keys to success in 2013. Most dealers have been pushing forward and having successes and failures online with their advertising and marketing. For 2013, let's eliminate the failures and improve on the successes. It starts right here.

After the whole Digg incident when its original founders disregarded its users and changed its platform to highlight businesses, one would think that other social networks would learn how to treat its users, especially since it was the downfall of the original Digg (which has since been bought and taken over). The lesson was that no matter how influential you are to businesses, how credible you are for Search Engine Optimization or how many pageviews you can bring from a single popular post, users reign on Social Networks.

The latest Instagram debacle over its possible changes to its Terms of Service in which the legal terminology had its users up in arms last week that the social image sharing site would be able to sell photos of its users to advertisers without credit or compensation certainly had users worry and Instagram felt the impact by losing a quarter of their active users in a one week span. Yet another example of how quickly a social network can see its downfall by not putting your users first, regardless of your social sites popularity or that it is owned by the largest social networking site to have ever existed, Facebook, you are not exempted if you do not always put your users before the business.

Sure it is hard to balance the swinging pendulum of being a business and a social site, but a social site cannot become a profitable business without its users to make it social. The truth is, businesses need to make money, we all get that, but when your entire business is reliant on the activities of others, you need to carefully choose just how you are going to make that money. Some sites think that catering to other businesses would help make them more money (which we saw the demise of the original Digg over that decision) and like Instagram, others try and make money off of their users. However a site thinks it is going to make its money there is always one thing a social site needs to ask itself, “Will these changes destroy trust?”

Any social network that can make it as a business is fooling themselves if they think that trust is not the biggest concern they should worry about, it is, since if people lose trust in their ability to use a social site with confidence that they are not going to be duped or mistreated than you may not have a business you can profit from, not just a little, try not at all.

Losing 25% of their active users is most definitely the second red flag that users have sent as a message back regarding the Terms of Service changes that Instagram was going to initially make come early January, the first red flag was the sheer outrage that flooded social streams everywhere and made headline news on various news sources. The disappointment from users were heard loud and clear from Instagram as they responded with reviewing their legal jargon and that instead of issuing an apology they ultimately pointed the blame at user confusion ( tsk, tsk). Though the initial move in responding is always the correct way in handling negative sentiment, not issuing an apology and blaming users for not understanding is the wrong way in trying to gain or maintain already frustrated users.

Regardless, the trust was broken, people closed their accounts, are now pickier in what they share as they remain on the site, and some have even added copyright stamps on the images they do share. In other words, Instagram is failing because it flopped to think of users first; instead they put the business aspect ahead of its users and as a result are now paying the ultimate price of losing users that make up their business. This is a lesson for any social network or startup, or any other site that is user based. If you cannot keep the trust of users than you are sinking your own ship, there is no immunity, you can cease to exist in seconds, therefore ALWAYS think about the reaction and the trust you have built when making any changes to your community.

One of the keys to being a true dealership partner amongst a sea of vendors is having the willingness to “share the playbook” with our clients and prospects. This is much more important today than ever before in the world of automotive internet marketing because the changes are happening too rapidly. Marketing professionals and companies must stay on top of these changes from day to day and adjust accordingly, something that the vast majority of dealers simply do not have time to do.

Search engine marketing has been in a state of constant flux for nearly a year now. It has always been a challenge keeping up with the changes, but today the changes are coming at us so rapidly that we have to stay tuned in at all times. This is good for those who truly do stay on top; dealers and vendors who have the right plans up front but who also keep them fluid enough to change on the fly are the ones that will have the most success in 2013.

Thankfully, there are certain rock solid activities that have staying power. Google and Bing love quality, so understanding the activities that will work today and that will continue to work tomorrow act as a wonderful hedge against the nuanced changes that happen constantly. Minor course corrections on a solid strategy is the key to sustained success (for us and for dealers).

Here are some of the things that we know work today and that will continue to work in the foreseeable future. There are risky moves that make rankings go up quickly and watch them fall even faster, then there are safe bets that play the SEO market with a steady hand. These are some of those things. The best part – you don’t need a vendor to make these things happen for you. The power is well within your grasp. Pick any one of these activities and do it right now. Bookmark this page and come back to it in a couple of days, a week, or whenever you have time to push forward. Search rankings move with or without your input. Take more control of the outcome by doing these simple tasks regularly.

1. Build a Content Page – I’ve harped on this point many times but it will never get old. Assuming you have a proper CMS that allows for it, you should build a content page. This isn’t a conversion page. It’s not a page that will compel visitors to buy a car. It’s a page with interesting content that only you can supply that supports your conversion pages. By bringing value to the table, you’ll be able to give Google and Bing what they want: quality. For example, you can build a page that lists five key components the 2013 Toyota Camry has that other makes and models do not have. Of course, you’ll be sure to add contextual links to conversion pages such as inventory search pages for the Camry, specials, or anything else that this page can support.
2. Get Social Signals to your Pages – This is much quicker than you might think as far as activities go. People at your dealership are on Facebook, Twitter, or Google+ right now. Take a stroll around the dealership with a particular important URL or two in mind and ask them to share the page on their social profiles. Some will not want to “pollute” their feed with what they may consider workplace spam, but this is another reason why you will want to have strong content pages (see tip #1) handy. They might not want to share the inventory pages directly, but who wouldn’t want to share an interesting piece of content such as this?
3. Write a Guest Post – You or someone at your dealership has expertise in cars and the ability to write about it. Find this person. Send out an email to the company and ask if anyone is interested in doing some writing on the side for the dealership. You don’t need much – a couple of pieces of content a month will suffice for now. Once you have some story ideas, pitch them to appropriate blogs and local websites. Some will not be responsive. Others welcome the opportunity to get fresh, unique content for free. This one actually requires a much longer article to describe in detail, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get started today.

Content, social signals, and links. These are the three key components to search engine optimization that are within your power even if you’re not a website developer. Remember to hold quality at the highest level when planning your strategies. A focus on quality over quantity is what has helped us stay on top of the game for so long. Tricks come and go. Quality optimization principles have staying power. Use them.

The other day I was in a meeting with a potential client. We were discussing automotive SEO best practices and the way that the search engines are changing the way they rank. We talked about the best ways a dealer can stay ahead of their competition for their current keywords while moving up in the competitive keywords in the area.

It was then that he made an interesting observation:

“I know that you keep on top of this stuff from a theoretical level, but I want to hear from the guy in the trenches that is actually doing the SEO for dealers.”

It was a great point. I’ve personally worked on the optimization for a couple dozen of our clients, but I’m not the guy that works on hundreds of dealers at a time. That guy is Ron Fortier, our SEO manager, so I posed the question to him. Here is what he put down as best practices for dealers, straight from the mouth of the guy leading the team that’s doing the work successfully…

Develop or Buy Tools that Help You Make Keyword Decisions Monthly

Priorities for your dealership change based on time of year, inventory levels, competition and conquest strategies. We are all resource constrained whether it be time or money, so we need tools that help us to make the best use of our investment in time. You need to have a tool or process that allows you to identify the most important keywords to work based on your monthly priorities.

Looking for more overall visitors? Your priority would be on keywords with larger impression counts. Looking to convert more of your visitors? Your priority would be on keywords that have high PPC costs and competition. Looking to conquest local dealers or make-model combinations? Your priority would be to view your rankings relative to your competitors. Want a great mix of all of the above? That is typically where we end up. Having a tool that helps you identify the best keywords to work based on your priorities allows you to spend 100% of your content and SEO efforts on tasks that are in line with your stores most immediate priorities.

Beware of Thin Content

Google rewards effort, plain and simple. Google’s quality rating guidelines are filled with how to identify low quality, useless content. Their best definition of spam is when you remove all of the template and spam elements from the page, there is nothing of any value remaining. If you are copying content from other sites, or slightly modifying keywords and thinking that you’re fooling Google, you’re not. Google rewards effort. Google rewards typing and content.

Low keyword counts may win here or there in the short run, but every change Google has made over the last 18 months has been an effort to remove thin, low quality pages from its index. Take the time to create content that is of value to a consumer when they get to a page and you won’t have to worry about the next animal-based update released from Google. Content is king and quality, useful content for consumers wins every time.

SEO Works Best in a Holistic Approach

Now that you’ve decided what to work with your time, be sure that all of your SEO efforts work in concert.

What content are you going to add to your site that works the keywords you’ve identified? What modifications will you be making to your website’s architecture and internal linking structure that signals to Google the significance of your content change? How will you support your keywords through offsite content and linking? What is your strategy to getting the content crawled and indexed quickly? If you only use one technique then you won’t be working all of the SEO signals and the effectiveness will be lessened. Does your content say one thing and your links another?

Sending mixed messages will also inhibit the effectiveness of your work. Take the time to ensure that all of your monthly SEO efforts are working in concert for maximum effectiveness.

Low Sales Funnel Keywords are Big though Small

Everyone wants to find that hidden keyword that will get them a thousand new visitors. We understand and often join the pursuit, but we also chase the keyword combos that will get you 5 visits a month. Insanity? No!

Many of these keywords are very low funnel or “right next to the money” as we like to say internally. Think of someone on a Friday night at 6:00 on Yelp searching restaurants. That search is right next to the money. That individual will eat tonight; they are just deciding where. The same thought applies to many keywords we go after. Consider a year make model search. They know what they’re going to buy. The only question is where and when. Don’t be afraid to mix in the low funnel keywords even though you know that they will be statistically insignificant in overall traffic volumes. That five visitor a month keyword could be the goose that lays the golden egg for years to come.