Google Will Consider Car Dealer Website Load Time

November 17th, 2009

Most auto dealerships have already realized that when their car dealer website takes too long to load, a lot of web users will click off and find what they are looking for on a different car dealership’s website.

Just in case the potential loss in sales hasn’t been incentive enough to ensure your dealer site loads quickly, Matt Cutts of Google has announced that Google is going to start taking the load time of a website as a factor in their search engine rankings algorithm, beginning sometime in 2010.

Aim for your each page to load in less than 10 seconds, maximum--the quicker the better. This means you may have to limit the amount of flash you use on your site (flash also doesn’t rank as well in search engines), keep big files like images, auto-play videos, and sounds to a minimum, and use a car dealer website provider that builds fast loading sites.

The longer your site takes to load, the more web visitors will click off, the more conversions you will miss out on, and ultimately, the less cars your dealership will sell. And starting soon, the lower you could rank in Google.

Tags: auto dealer website, Google, search engine optimization
Posted in Auto Dealership ISM Resources | No Comments »

How Auto Dealers Can Earn Customer’s Trust

November 12th, 2009

I recently found an interesting, informal study about search engine advertising (PPC) done by a self-proclaimed "marketing technologist" and wanted to share some of the results with you. The entire study is available by clicking here.

What really caught my notice was the question:

"When you avoid the ads for a particular search, what are the reasons why?"

Over 40% of non-marketers (and almost 50% of those in the marketing industry) responded that it was because they didn't trust the advertisers.

When searchers do click onto your pay-per-click search engine ads, increase their trust by showing them that they have reached the right place--use landing pages as a part of your PPC campaigns. If someone searches for "Baltimore Nissan" and are then shown your dealership's home page, they may not instantly recognize they are in the right place and could click off. If you show them a page dedicated to finding a Nissan in Baltimore, they will trust your dealership more because they were given exactly what they asked the search engines for.

If your dealership's pay-per-click (PPC) ad campaign doesn't include landing pages, contact your search engine marketing provider to find out how to make sure it does. Start building trust from the beginning by using landing pages and showing your future car buying customers exactly what they are looking.

Tags: auto buyers, landing page, pay per click
Posted in Auto Dealership ISM Resources | No Comments »

Goals for Your Auto Dealership Website Sales Funnel

November 11th, 2009

One of the things we hear from a lot of the auto dealers we talk to is that they are struggling to find the right auto dealership analytics to measure their success. How does your auto dealership really know if you are doing as well as you could be? Could you be converting more traffic, making more appointments, or selling more cars? Here are some reachable goals for your lead to sales funnel, gathered from some of the results we've seen at DealerOn:

Website Conversion Ratio -- 10%
Lead to Appointment Ratio -- 70%
Appointment to Show Ratio -- 50%
Show to Sale Ratio -- 50%

These percentages can be a little hard to understand in this form, so let's work with real numbers. Say your dealership’s website brings in 1,000 visits a month. According to the sales funnel numbers above, these 1,000 visits should yield 100 leads. In turn, these 100 leads should lead to 70 appointments.

Of these 70 appointments, your dealership should see about 35 of them actually keep their appointment, and your dealership staff should make it their goal to sell cars to half of them. So for every 1,000 visits your car dealership website receives, your dealership should be selling 17.5 cars.

If your car dealership isn't reaching these numbers, keep working to improve your sales process. A few tweaks here and there in your online marketing strategy and auto dealer website can make all the difference. Contact DealerOn for tips and ideas on how to increase your web traffic, leads, and car sales.

Tags: auto dealer website, best practices, conversion rate, web analytics
Posted in Car Dealer Websites | No Comments »

Google Updates Local Business Listing Guidelines

November 5th, 2009

Google has recently updated their Local Business listings guidelines in their efforts to further discourage any spam or inappropriate use of their Local Business listing service. The new guidelines are listed here.

If your car dealer website provider or your Internet department has already listed your dealer website in the Google local listings, then you should probably double check to make sure that they adhere to these new rules, including:

The business name on Google Maps must be your full legal business name.
PO Boxes do not count as physical locations.
If multiple users will be updating your business listing, use a shared, business email account.
If possible, use an email account with a domain that matches your business URL. For example, if your business website is www.dealership.com, a matching email address would be you@dealership.com.

Google is always trying to refine the algorithms that they use to produce the most relevant, useful search results they can. Either your Internet manager or your car dealer SEO consultants need to stay on top of Google’s ongoing changes and updates to make sure your dealership doesn’t get left behind.

Tags: Google, local marketing
Posted in Auto Dealership ISM Resources | No Comments »

Ways Auto Dealers Can Better See Their Conversion Rate

November 4th, 2009

Looking at web analytics can often be confusing purely because of the amount of information that is thrown at auto dealers at once. By drilling down into the information given (either manually or by looking at the reports provided by your dealer website analytics provider), your car dealership can better understand how to increase your dealer website conversion.

Segment by Location: When you take into consideration web visits from around the world, your conversion rate may not look very good. When you drill down your reports to only view the locations that matter (local cities, state, market area), your dealership can see a much clearer picture of your website's conversion rate.

Segment by Keywords: I've written about this before, but if your auto dealership is using pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, it's imperative that you be able to see which keywords are converting, and which aren't. This will reduce the amount your dealership has to spend to get the best conversion rate possible. Also, look for keywords that don’t produce results, so that you can potentially “negative” match these keywords (so your ad is not shown for these keywords) to increase your ROI.

Segment by Traffic Source: Your conversion rate may be less than optimal from one source, and very high from another. Unless your dealership looks at each source's conversion rate individually your dealer staff won't know which traffic sources deserve more money and effort, and which aren't helping your dealership's bottom line.

The analytics for your auto dealer website can be extremely helpful for your car dealership, especially if you know how to read them correctly. Try using these tips to more accurately see your website conversion rate.

Tags: conversion rate, web analytics
Posted in Car Dealership Website Analytics | No Comments »

Newspaper Circulation Continues to Decline

October 29th, 2009

It's not shocking to most people that newspaper circulation continues to decline. More and more readers are going online to find the information that used to only be in the daily newspaper, and this online access is typically free.

Here are some examples of the percentage of decline from the same six-month period last year:

USA Today -17.15%
New York Post -18.77%
The Boston Globe -18.48%
San Francisco Chronicle -25.82%

These are some of the biggest newspapers in the country, and even they are seeing huge declines in circulation (Click here for the full list of the Top 25 newspapers in the country).

This means that when your auto dealership spends money on newspaper ads, they are being seen by less and less people each year. That means that the amount of leads and sales (and essentially, ROI) that you receive from your dealership's newspaper ad spend is decreasing year after year.

Meanwhile, people are going online to get their news, mostly for free. Your car dealership needs to shift your marketing and advertising spend to reach consumers where they are...on the Internet. Not only are your future customers online, but Internet marketing allows your dealership to spend less, earn more, and be able to track each and every ad campaign better than in traditional marketing.

Tags: dealership marketing
Posted in Auto Dealership ISM Resources | No Comments »

Auto Dealer Website SEO Must Haves

October 27th, 2009

When choosing a search engine optimization (SEO) vendor for your auto dealer website (whether it be a third party or your car dealership website provider), there are a few things that your dealership should be on the lookout for. While these things don't necessarily indicate a poor SEO company, they may be red flags.

Only Talk About Rankings: While ranking high is important, it's the web visits, conversions and sales that are really what matters. Typically, ranking high on a search engine result page leads to those things, so it's a matter of focus. Some SEO companies can get your dealership to rank high for meaningless, non-converting search terms. Make sure they know the difference.

Don't Explain their SEO Strategy: If your dealership is paying an SEO vendor, they should be able to explain what steps they are taking to better optimize your dealership site, in terms that you understand.

Stop Working: Search engine optimization is a job that is never over. Just because your car dealership website reaches the top doesn't mean your SEO vendor should stop working on your dealer site. The minute they do, your site will be replaced on the top of the search engines.

Can’t Show You Numbers: SEO vendors need to (at a minimum) be able to show your dealership the number of leads, web visits, and profit that their efforts are bringing to you dealer website. A good rule of thumb for SEO vendors is 1 lead per $30 spent…at a minimum. If your auto dealership isn’t earning this many leads, you may not be getting the value you could be.

Search engine optimization is an integral part of your auto dealership website. Make sure you find a vendor that works with your dealership to have the greatest SEO success.

Tags: best practices, search engine optimization
Posted in Car Dealer Search Engine Optimization (SEO) | 1 Comment »

Auto Dealer Websites, Backlinks, and SEO

October 23rd, 2009

One of the things that Google takes into consideration when determining the quality of your website (which can affect your ranking) is the quality of the websites that link to yours. These are called "backlinks". Unfortunately, it can be hard to control what sites link to your auto dealership website, so your dealer site may end up with some poor quality backlinks.

According to Google's blog, your dealership doesn't need to worry if some poor quality or irrelevant websites link to your site. Google’s algorithm tends to favor websites which have links from reputable, relevant sites, as opposed to penalizing sites with “bad links”. Although the quality of your backlinks does affect how high you rank, it is only one of many factors.

So what matters the most? Google says that it's "having something that people want to look at or use--unique, engaging content, or useful tools and services." Basically, make sure your dealer website gives your dealership customers real information that they can use, has contact forms that are easy to find and fill out, and that your web users can navigate your dealer site easily.

Google is going to rank real sites, with real information, that provide real value to the people that are using their search engine. By worrying about the things you can control (instead of poor quality backlinks that you can't), your car dealership website is more likely to be ranked higher on the search engine result pages.

Tags: inbound links, search engine optimization
Posted in Car Dealer Search Engine Optimization (SEO) | 1 Comment »

Car Dealer Blogging Tips

October 22nd, 2009

Adding a blog to your car dealership website can be a great tool for increasing your dealer site's search engine ranking. This is because your dealership will be updating content often, meaning the search engine bots will visit your dealer website more often. Also, your auto dealer staff will be able to optimize for the keywords that matter to your dealership. When your dealership website has a blog integrated, you are able to have control over your website content and search engine rankings.

This is, of course, when it is managed properly. I found this list of blogging best practices for businesses, and I've changed it to fit your dealership.

Let Multiple People Blog: While one person should be managing the blog, it can help to have multiple bloggers at your dealership. This way, it's not a huge increase in workload for one person. Also, different people will use different industry terminology, so the words that you rank can also increase. Have the person in charge create a blogging schedule so that everyone knows when and what they should be writing about.

Let Your Bloggers Write What They Love: Different people have different interests, even within the same industry and the same dealership. Let your bloggers write about their interests, whether it is used vehicles, new cars, service specials, etc. It will help keep your dealership bloggers interested in their writing, and their passion will shine through to your readers.

By following these two tips for corporate blogging, your dealership blog can help increase the search engine optimization ranking of your auto dealer website.

Tags: best practices, blogs
Posted in Auto Dealership ISM Resources | No Comments »