What can we say? We love Tampa. Last week, our DealerOn Event Series rolled through sunny Florida and rocked out at the Topgolf Tampa. Not to take anything away from our other stops, but the dealers attending last week were fantastic. They were super engaged, really got involved with each of the presenters and, man, they could really swing a golf club!
What did you do last week? Well, we were at the DrivingSales Executive Summit for a few days of serious learning. While the event included lots of speakers, we had the privilege of sending The Beard (Greg Gifford) and The Hair (Shaun Raines) to Las Vegas to do a dual-panel presentation. We saw familiar faces there, like Jessie Hochhalter of Google and Brent Wees of NextUp, and even met a few new folks.
The event was packed with lots of knowledge about digital marketing and automotive sales, and it got pretty high-tech when Ben Anderson from AutoMotion talked about RFID technology and geofencing. We’ve enjoyed a long relationship with DrivingSales, so it was great to have DealerOn make an impression with such Greg and Shaun.
They took the stage by storm, of course, and did a series of questions answers (game show style!) over SEO and SEM. Shaun brought everyone up to speed with what’s happening in the Google AdWords world, and he even talked a little bit on using your digital ad spend wisely and the pros & cons of using SKAG (Single Keyword Ad Groups). Everyone was duly impressed.
Greg, never one to disappoint, peppered his SEO Q&A’s with a ton of tips & tricks on local SEO. While traditional SEO is still important, you’ve gotta have strong local SEO signals, or your dealership isn’t going to be relevant in local searches. He’s talked about this before, of course.
He also made sure everyone was up to date on the recent Penguin and Possum updates that Google threw at the world only weeks ago. If you want to brush up on some of that, watch this clever little video.
Arguably, one of the main events of DSES was, without a doubt, the “Joe and Shaun Karaokethon” hosted by DealerOn! It happened on Monday night, Oct. 24, at Dino’s in Las Vegas. Joe Webb of DealerKnows and Shaun Raines have been serenading the auto industry with their singing skills for the past several years. But recently, DealerOn has gotten in on the action by sponsoring this night of fun, and this year’s Karaokethon was no disappointment.
Joe and Shaun rocked faces off and those brave enough took the mic and tried their hand at matching the likes of Joan Jett and Freddie Mercury. Seriously, we can’t wait to do this again.
If anyone else has some DSES stories they’d like to share, then let us know. And if you think Joe or Shaun got the lyrics wrong to your favorite song, well, maybe they’ll do better next time.
To watch the slides from Shaun & Greg’s presentation at DSES, click here.
Do you “click” to buy things online? Or do you physically go to a “brick”-and-mortar store to do your shopping?
There’s no denying that e-commerce has been gaining momentum over the years, and in some areas, it’s completely eclipsed traditional storefront sales. GameStop is one of the largest video gaming retailers in the industry, and they’ve had to deal with the rise of digital technology in a unique way (think online gaming). But instead of putting up a white flag and shuttering their stores, GameStop did a full-court press and figured out how to loop their physical storefronts in on the digital revenue they were seeing. Essentially, they started selling access to online gaming in their stores.
That’s because the “Click or brick?” question is a little too simplistic for most retailers, automotive dealers included.
Not everyone is quite ready to buy cars online exclusively yet, and that’s okay. To be honest, it’d be a little strange to buy such a big-ticket item without at least looking at it in person. But, it’s been done before by online retail giant, Amazon. What most retailers don’t realize, though, is that digital technology doesn’t necessarily compete with in-store shopping. That is, just because Bed, Bath & Beyond sells candles online doesn’t mean people won’t still go to the store to sniff out the best one.
And car dealers ought to know this better than anyone. Digital technology probably isn’t stealing any business from your dealership’s lot (phew) in the same way it keeps people from going to the mall, because most everyone wants to at least drive their car before they buy it. At the same time, a recent survey from DealerSocket showed that 33% of people said they’d prefer an online-only car buying experience. However, those people tended to be in higher income brackets. Since most median-income customers are looking for decent prices and a dealership they can trust, it’s time to look at how the digital world can help here.
Because there’s no question that the new Internet age does influence the buyer’s journey. In fact, digital technology and smart devices have taken what used to be a linear, predictable buyer’s journey and broken it into tiny, tiny little “micro-moments” that are driven by your customers’ needs and desires. They have the means available to them, so they can answer their questions and research whatever and whenever they wish.
So your customers will always come to the lot to test drive that new Honda Civic, but they can research the specs & mileage on their phone. That’s what Google is for, and that’s why it’s more important than ever to have a strong presence online.
How do you apply what you’ve learned? Well, look at GameStop again. They took something potentially devastating to their storefronts and found a way to boost digital sales in their brick-and-mortar stores. So, it’s wasn’t really “click or brick” with GameStop, it was more like “click and brick.” Make the digital version of your dealership work towards pushing customers to your physical location.
That means focusing on things like website optimization (including mobile), Google AdWords campaigns, boosting your SEO signals, and even looking at metrics like page views, click-through-rates, and unique site visitors.
Your dealership isn’t going fully digital, at least not yet, and most of your customers still want come visit you. Only trouble is, your dealership needs to be able to reach your customers on their terms, using their smart devices and computers. How do we know all this? Well, we are wizards at digital advertising & marketing, after all.
We are curious, though, has anyone actually sold a car online yet, from start to finish? Let us know in the comments!
We’ve got another helpful article to send your way! The SEO industry is full of changes, and what worked 5 years ago doesn’t necessarily work today. Heck, 2015’s best practices have even changed in 2016, just take a look at the recent Possum, & Penguin updates. Greg Gifford, our Director of Search and Social, has some more tips and best practices for you when it comes to your content: focus on being local, not just unique.
This post was written by our Search and Social Team Manager, Steve Shackelford. To hear his recent webinar, “SEO for Noobs,” click this link.
So, you’ve decided to start building local links. Welcome to the wide, wonderful world of competitive link building. The good news: your dealership is probably already doing a lot of great things that are helping your link signals, but we want to start building up more relevant links. So let’s get started.
Before we get to the easy ways to grab more links, you need to identify your existing links. I recommend using Moz’s Open Site Explorer, Majestic, or Ahrefs to export your links. Each site will pull slightly different results, so if you have a subscription to all three, use them all.
After you export your links, just drop them all into an Excel spreadsheet and remove any duplicate linking domains. Now, you have a pretty good idea of all the sites linking back to your dealership.
You know which sites are linking to yours, which is great, but now you can start looking at which sites are linking to all your competitors. Pull your competitors’ links and then start evaluating. Here’s what to look for:
The low-hanging fruit links are easy, just go get them! For the patterns you’ve identified, get your wheels turning and move on to the next section for advice on how to acquire those links.
The links in your competitors’ link profiles were full of juicy golf tournaments, school carnivals, churches, food banks, car clubs, and pet adoption websites — so how do you get them? Easy. All you have to do is figure out where you can provide value.
Here are a couple of quick ideas:
Now, comes the time-consuming part: you have to go make sure that all the organizations you work with are actually linking back to you. You’d be amazed how many times an organization just drops the name of a dealership or a logo on a page without a link — or they just don’t mention you at all!
Simply refer back to your existing link profile. Compare your link profile to your dealership’s list of partner organizations, then look for any organizations that don’t show up in your link exports. Once you know which ones aren’t linking back to you, reach out to your contact at the organization and see what you need to do to remedy the situation.
Remember, you’re not selling them anything, you already work with these organizations to provide value, so link acquisition is not the sole purpose of the partnership — you just want a little link love!
You see, that wasn’t so hard at all. Now, go get some links!
While my post here is most certainly focused on the automotive vertical, it’s certainly applicable to all kinds of businesses. Every website can benefit from having quality local links pointing back at them because it’s an essential part of your SEO strategy.
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