All Posts By

Acacia Grant

acacia.grant@dealeron.com'
In

Google Pagerank Incorporates Twitter Presence

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.

acacia.grant@dealeron.com'
In DealerOn

Happy New Year 2010

Happy New Year from DealerOn!

On behalf of everyone that works at DealerOn, I’d like to give a sincere thank you to all of our auto dealer website customers and online interactive marketing partners.  Our business is only successful when yours is, and working together is the only way we can both achieve our goals.

2009 has been a difficult year for most in the auto industry, but DealerOn has remained dedicated to helping our auto dealership website customers remain successful and profitable.  We have done this by improving our website technology, customer support, and industry knowledge.

With the loss of our CEO and dear friend, Navid Azadi, DealerOn has had a difficult year as well.  This sudden and sad loss has made the entire DealerOn staff even more focused on making DealerOn the success we, and Navid, knew it could be, and that means a focus on technology and you, our auto dealer website customers.

Again, have a wonderful New Year’s celebration this weekend.  We look forward to continuing to earn your business in 2010.

acacia.grant@dealeron.com'
In Dealership Websites

Dealer Website Page Load Time

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.

acacia.grant@dealeron.com'
In Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Google Local Business Best Practices

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:

1)      The business name on Google Maps must be your full legal business name.

2)      PO Boxes do not count as physical locations.

3)      If multiple users will be updating your business listing, use a shared, business email account.

4)      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.

acacia.grant@dealeron.com'
In Search Engine Marketing (PPC)

Trust with PPC Advertising

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.

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