Archive for the ‘Car Dealer Search Engine Optimization (SEO)’ Category

How Google Will Rank Tweets for Car Dealers

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

Not all auto dealers use Twitter as part of their online marketing campaigns.   For those that do or those that are considering it, it’s important to know what criteria Google uses when ranking tweets now that the search engine giant is beginning to integrate real-time search results.

According to Amit Singhal, a Google “Fellow,” Google will take into consideration not only the number of followers the person tweeting has, but will also look at how reputable those followers are.  This means that a person’s followers will be like an inbound link to your dealership website.  While having a lot can help your search engine ranking, the quality is more important than the quantity.

Singhal confirms this by saying, “One user following another in social media is analogous to one page linking to another on the Web…as established users follow another user, the quality of the followed user goes up as well.”  Singhal also recommends using hashtags sparingly, since that is a common practice of spammers on Twitter.

Google undoubtedly uses other factors when determining which tweets to show in their real-time search results, but having some information is better than none.  Contact your auto dealer online marketing provider if your dealership isn’t using Twitter and would like to, or is and would like to see better results.

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More Keyword Tools for Auto Dealers

Thursday, January 14th, 2010

While using Google’s AdWords Keyword tool is a good place to start when you are trying to come up with a keyword list for your dealership online marketing, a lot of people start there, which means your competitors could have a very similar keyword list as your dealership.  To help you stay a step ahead, I want to highlight some of the alternative keyword tools I’ve found.

Facebook has Lexicon, released in April of 2008.  When you enter a keyword or phrase, the tool will count “occurrences of words and phrases” on the Walls of their users.  This can be a great tool to track the trending of keywords your dealership is interested in, but it doesn’t show an actual total.  You need a Facebook login to use the tool, and it appears they are working on a new Lexicon tool in Beta.

Another tool for keyword list generation is Google’s Wonder Wheel search feature.  After conducting a regular Google search for a potential keyword, click on “More Options”, then “Wonder wheel”.  Google will then show you a diagram with related keywords as spokes around your original search.  Click on any of the spokes to expand the diagram, showing related keywords to the spoke you clicked on.

While Google’s AdWords Keyword tool is more in depth than the two tools I’ve talked about here, using alternative keyword list generation tools could possibly expose your dealership to new keywords to use while promoting your auto dealer website.

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How Real Time Search Changes Dealership SEO

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

Google has been playing with real time search for a couple of years, but it appears as though it’s finally showing up on most Google search result pages.  This means that Twitter, Facebook, and news stories will start showing higher on Google result pages, leaving less room for traditional, car dealership search engine optimized (SEO) results.

How can your dealership tweak your SEO efforts to stay on top of Google’s search result pages?

Make sure you are running an effective car dealer pay-per-click campaign.  Since paid ads will continue to show at the top and the side of the search results page, your auto dealership will have more control over where and when your dealership ads will be shown.

It’s more important now than ever that everything you post online is optimized for search engines.  This means everything dealership related: Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, blog posts, website content.  Use keywords in the titles, content, and URLs.  With the spots on Google’s search engine results pages limited, search engine optimization is all the more important.

If your dealership needs help or has any questions about Google’s real time search results, pay per click advertising, or search engine optimization, contact your car dealer online marketing partner.

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Optimizing Video for Your Auto Dealership Website

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

Video is everywhere these days, and when used properly, can make for a great addition to your car dealer website.  Video helps keep web visitors on your site for longer, keeps them more engaged in your dealership content, and can help your auto dealer website rank better in the search engine result pages.  If you are using video on your dealership website, here are some tips on making sure you are getting as much search engine exposure as possible.

Use your Keywords: Use the keywords you are trying to rank well for in the URL, the file name of the video, the title of the video, etc.  The more information you give to search engines about what the video is about, the higher they will be able to rank you.

Use Links: Link to your video the same way you would website content.  Add links to your video on other pages on your car dealer website, as well as on other relevant websites.  Videos benefit from internal and external links just as other website content does.

One per Page: Having only one video per URL will help with SEO.  With only one video on a page, your website URL, when optimized properly, will tell search engines what the video is about.

If your auto dealership needs help making sure your online videos are properly optimized for SEO, talk to your car dealer website provider.  They should be able to answer any question you have about adding video to your auto dealership website.

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Car Dealers That Blog Earn Search Engine Benefits

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009

Blogging is often dismissed by car dealers, thinking that there is nothing to write about, too much time taken up, or that no one will read a car dealership blog.  While some of these misgivings may be true (to a certain extent), blogging on your car dealership website is important to your search engine optimization (SEO), now and in the future.

Even if no one is reading your blog at the beginning, you are adding valuable content to your car dealership website. If your dealership starts by writing just one post a week, you’ll have over 20 posts within 6 months.  That is a ton of valuable SEO content.

Having a dealership blog allows you to have control over the text used to link back to your dealership website, a huge portion of Google’s search ranking algorithm.  If you continually (where appropriate) link back to your dealership website using search terms you want to rank for (for example, Baltimore Nissan dealer), Google will have a better idea what your dealership site is about.

Having a dealer blog on your car dealership website will help your dealer website rank better in search engines, both now, and in the future.  Contact your car dealer website provider to find out if they can help you set up, and even help write your dealer blog.

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Auto Dealer Website SEO Must Haves

Tuesday, 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.

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Auto Dealer Websites, Backlinks, and SEO

Friday, 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.

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Auto Dealership Website Content Tips

Tuesday, October 6th, 2009

It’s fairly standard knowledge that having quality, keyword rich content on your auto dealer website can help your car dealership rank well in search engines.  The trick is knowing what type of content to create.  When creating content for your dealership website, keep the following tips in mind.  They can help your dealer website attract the most in-market shoppers through search engine optimization (SEO).

Having a web page dedicated to answering frequently asked questions (FAQ Page) is one way to use your dealership website content to rank well in search engines while providing value to actual consumers.  Use social media and sales person interactions to help determine which questions are asked most often.  Make sure this text uses keywords your customers are searching for to help your car dealer websites rank well in the search engines.  Your car dealership can also use search engine keyword tools to tell which words to use while answering the questions.

Use local content in your website copy.  This means using your city name, as well as any neighboring cities that you may be able to draw sales and dealership website traffic from.  Any major metro areas should be included in this, as well as your state name, and the name of your neighborhood if applicable.  As always, use this in moderation and only where appropriate.  An auto dealer website blog is great for this purpose because you can use it to write about local events, using the keywords and locations for which you want to rank well.

When creating this content for your dealership website, it’s important to not overuse these keywords.  This is called “keyword stuffing” and can lead your car dealership site to be penalized by search engines.  A good rule of thumb is to make sure your content makes sense to anyone who reads it and keywords are used in logical sentences.

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More on Image Alt Tags for Car Dealers

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009

I last wrote about ways your auto dealership can optimize the images on your website in order to rank well in search engines.  One of the best practices I touched on was using alt tags for your website images.  After reading an interview with Peter Linsley, a Google engineer, about that very topic, I thought it was important to share more information on alt tags.

According to Linsley, alt tags are important for a couple of reasons.  First, for those with slow Internet connections, the alt tags will load more quickly than the actual images.  This means that web users will be able to see what images are on your site while waiting for it to load, making them more likely to stay on your dealership website.

Also, Google likes alt tags because it helps them provide the best search results for their web users.  Linsley recommends being as descriptive as possible when writing the alt tags for the images on your website.  A good rule of thumb is to have the alt tag say “here is what’s in the image, and then you can put a title, caption, and description elsewhere on the page.”

Linsley also makes it clear that the overall text on the page helps optimize images.  That means that the text surrounding the image should be related, and use some of the same keywords if at all possible.  This not only helps Google properly rank your website, but will also help your dealer website viewers feel as though they are in the right place when they click onto your site.

Click here to read the entire interview.  It has a lot of good information about optimizing your dealer website alt tags, and ranking well for image search results.

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Image Optimization for Car Dealers

Thursday, September 17th, 2009

The release of Bing’s new Image Search is just going to speed up the rate at which web users search for images.  This is great news for your auto dealer website.  People often use the image search of a search engine to find pictures of a new or used vehicle they are interested in.  If you don’t tell the search engines what the image is, they’ll have a hard time accurately putting it in the search results.  Follow these tips to help your dealership’s inventory pictures appear for image searches:

Name the File Correctly: Make sure the name of the image file describes what is showing in the picture.  For example, instead of interior1.jpg, name the file Nissan-Maxima-Dashboard.jpg.  Try to use keywords that your customers may search for in the file names.

Use HTML Alt Tags: Alt tags are the text that shows when someone hovers a mouse over an image.  When creating these, be as descriptive as possible.  When showing the exterior or interior shots, make sure you use a color in the description.  Think about the terms someone searching for this picture would use, and then add them to your alt tags.  This information is what tells search engines what your picture is about.

Use the Nearby Web Copy: Make sure the text on the page supports the images.  This might be hard on an inventory page where you have a lot of images, but it’s important to ensure any text on the page (especially the words directly next to an image) is relevant.  If you can use the same words as your alt tag, do.

Image search can be difficult to rank well for, but when you tell search engines what your images are of, it is extremely helpful.  If you have any questions about whether or not your images are properly optimized, contact your auto dealer website provider.

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