BLOG

Knowledge, news, and more about Automotive SEO, SEM, and dealership websites
In Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

How Last Week’s Google Update Impacts Your Dealership

In an effort to further optimize local search results, Google has begun rolling out a new tweak to its algorithm that some in the SEO community have tentatively labeled Pigeon. Dealer’s need to be aware of these changes because the Pigeon update is designed to improve local search listings for businesses (like car dealers).

According to Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Land, Google told them that “the new local search algorithm ties deeper into their web search capabilities, including the hundreds of ranking signals they use in web search along with search features such as Knowledge Graph, spelling correction, synonyms and more”. In addition, Google said that this new algorithm “improves their distance and location ranking parameters.”

It is not clear exactly how all of these changes will impact each dealer, so you should probably Google some of your top traffic-driving organic search keywords, and check the customer experience for anyone searching with local terms like “Toyota dealers near me” or “Ford dealers in Baltimore, MD”.

You should also check your Google Analytics account and compare this last week’s Organic Search Traffic vs. your prior Organic Search traffic levels, so you can determine the impact on your traffic and leads. If you would like any help doing this for your dealership’s Google Analytics account, whether or not you’re a DealerOn customer, just submit your contact information on our site or email me back, and include a comment “Google Analytics Help”.

Many Google users have reported seeing more listings from local directories when making searches – for example, searching for a restaurant name is now more likely to give you results from Yelp, Urbanspoon, OpenTable, and TripAdvisor. This increased focus on aggregate sites may make local search that much more difficult for your dealership website if it carries over into the automotive vertical.

These changes mean it is even more important than ever to ensure your dealership’s business information is the same (and accurate) across the Internet. Google looks for the NAP (name, address, phone number) of local businesses across the Internet, and is more likely to serve up your listing if it is consistent across all sites. Are you using a consistent business name (CDJR vs. Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram)? Is your dealership using the same address across all local platforms? Your dealership website should be the main source for this type of information, so whatever you are using on your site (name, address, phone number) should be reflected throughout the Internet.

If your dealership is confused about where your business information is listed, consider using a tool like Yext. Yext scans local directories to identify and claim existing listings and reports your standings across hundreds of platforms. From there, you can manage your listings, correcting any errors you may find and help ensure that your dealership’s information is accurate where it matters most.

Need or want some assistance making sure your local directory listings are in order? Please contact me or DealerOn and we can help you through the process. It’s something our team routinely does as a part of our Client Results program, and would be more than happy to help your dealership stay on top of Google’s algorithm adjustments like the Pigeon update.

In Responsive Website Design

The Responsive Experience: What Car Buyers Really Want

Much of what has been published over the last couple of years about responsive website design has surrounded its effect on search rankings. Google has made it very clear that they want, at a minimum, a uniform URL structure that presents the same basic information to people regardless of device. That is at the low end of what they deem as acceptable, and it’s in place to prevent rankings from dropping based upon inconsistencies between devices.

On the high end, Google wants websites that are built on responsive technology that present nearly the exact same page and information, formatted appropriately to the size of the screen and functionality of the device. Many in the SEO world believe that responsive website design will someday aid in improved organic rankings. Some believe that it’s already happening today.

One reason that Google recommends Responsive Design vs. Adaptive Design is the customer experience. Adaptive design websites rely on “user agent detection”. Adaptive websites use this user agent detection code to read which kind of device (phone, tablet, phablet, desktop, laptop, wearable) is visiting the site and then serve a version of the site for that device type. Google has expressly stated that it has found that user agent detection is error-prone and can result in adaptive sites serving the desktop version of the site to mobile devices and vice versa.

What has been lost in the mix is the experience itself. Google and other technology companies don’t just look at whether or not images resize or if text is big enough to read on the small screen. They’re pushing for responsive because, when done right, it can offer a unified experience. There is no other industry where this can be more important than the automotive industry.

The reason is based upon the depth of research. It’s not like buying something off of Amazon. Car buying is normally an extended set of steps that begins with different degrees of research and ends when the decision has been made to seek out an individual car or vehicle type. As a result, car buyers will often visit the same sites or pages over and over again during the process. In North America, it is common for these multiple visits to happen on different devices.

The uniform nature of responsive website design (RWD) makes it ideal for enhancing the car shopping experience online. With RWD, the images, buttons, videos, and text on a page are mostly the same from device to device but presented in a way that makes the most sense. For example, a vehicle details page may have the contact form on the right sidebar when viewed on a desktop, but that contact form can fall in line with the images and information about the vehicle when seen on a mobile device, all aligned within the same column.

With proper RWD, the individual pages can be enhanced for each device and screen size. A perfect example of this would be the addition of a Click-to-Call button that appears on the inventory when the screen is small. Since the small screen usually indicates a smartphone, having that Click-to-Call button makes sense to be available on mobile while it doesn’t make sense to have it present when the page is viewed on a 17” monitor.

Shoppers will often allow gaps between the different phases of their research. By presenting them a responsive experience on your website, you’ll allow for the triggers to remain in place that made them interested in a particular vehicle in the first place. This seamless type of experience enables car buyers to pick up where they left off rather than having to figure out how they got to a particular place on the website the last time they visited.

As you explore your website options and consider the different types of mobile websites available, look deeper into the numbers behind the equation. At the end of the day, a website should encourage lead forms, phone calls, and showroom visits. Adaptive or mobile-only websites might seem to offer a similar experience to the preferred responsive experience, but they do not. Even within the realm of RWD itself, there are good variations and bad variations. As with nearly all things, quality matters. Just because a company slaps an RWD badge on a website does not mean that it’s optimized to bring the proper shopper experience that your customers desire.

Look closely. Let the numbers guide you. Test how each website option operates on multiple devices. Your customers are not limited in the devices that they can use to explore your website. Make sure that you are aware of what they’re seeing and that it puts your dealership’s internet technology in a positive light.

In Lead Conversion

How Expedia’s A/B Test Could Increase Your Leads by 25%

I think that everyone in a dealer’s internet department would agree that their most important digital asset is their website, and the most important factor in their website’s success is its ability to convert visitors to leads.

When I saw that Expedia had published an A/B test in which they dramatically increased conversion rate using the same principals and best practices I’ve been advocating in the automotive industry for years, I was excited to share it.

I am a firm believer that the forms on your dealership website should only ask for the basic information you need to schedule an appointment. Once you bring them into your dealership, where you can actually sell them a car, it becomes worthwhile to ask for more information, like their home address. Any unnecessary information that you request (even if you explicitly mark the fields as “optional”) on a website lead form, simply limits the number of opportunities your sales team has to set appointments and sell cars.

As a part of the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) mentality in website design, asking for (even if not requiring) unnecessary information can deter the potential customer from supplying any information to your dealership and lowering your lead volume.

Here are the A and B versions of Expedia’s form from their A/B test. They removed “Company Name”, a field they weren’t requiring, from the billing section of a form:

Apparently, this field may have been confusing visitors who began entering their bank name and address, instead of their billing address. It definitely generated a higher bounce rate than the shortened form on the right. Simply removing a field THAT THEY WEREN’T EVEN REQUIRING, increased their site’s annual profit by $12 million!

So, let’s apply this learning to our industry. Take your dealership’s online credit application, for example. Two reasons that most online credit apps aren’t completed are: 1) the length of the form and 2) the detail of the questions. If a customer doesn’t readily know even one piece of information, or is reluctant to share it, they’ll abandon the process and you won’t have any of their information. Try streamlining this form to only require data that is absolutely necessary to begin the finance application process and start a dialogue with the customer.

What about vehicle lead forms? Below is an example of a typical dealership website lead form. Even though many of the fields in this lead form below are actually “optional” (note that they don’t have an “*”, so they aren’t required), they also complicate the form, distract the user, and lower conversion rate. So as we consider this form we want to ask ourselves – “Are any of these “optional” fields are going to help us sell a car?” Clearly, we’re better off getting many more leads than knowing each customer’s zip code.

Your lead forms simply need to capture a name, phone number, and email address. The rest of these fields only limit the number of leads your site produces. That’s why so many websites in our industry under-perform – the dealers expect that their providers are delivering high-quality, optimized sites, but their vendors may not be any savvier about website optimization than they are.

We’ve repeated this experiment dozens of times on our platform, and I can tell you that every time we streamline a form, our dealer’s conversion rates increase. So, over the next few days, I suggest that you audit your website and identify any fields that aren’t necessary on any form on your site. Send these examples to your website provider and see if they can help you increase your conversion rate. If you can’t get your provider to do this, give me a call. I’ll see what we can work out.

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

Google’s Panda Update Hits Press Release Effectiveness

Many small businesses, including car dealerships, use press releases as a way to add to their search engine optimization. In fact, 3 years ago, DealerOn even recommended dealerships use a press release strategy. However, with Google’s recent algorithm changes, press release sites no longer have the search engine benefits they once did, unless and until they are able to fix some pretty big flaws in their design.

press releaseDuring Google’s Panda update, the search engine giant used human reviewers to determine the quality of a set of websites. They took that data, plugged it into their patented machine learning technology, and used that to update their algorithm. Google provided these examples of questions their testers were answering about websites:

  • Would you trust the information presented in this article?
  • Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?
  • Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
  • Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?
  • Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
  • Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?
  • Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
  • Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
  • How much quality control is done on content?
  • Does the article describe both sides of a story?
  • Is the site a recognized authority on its topic?
  • Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care?
  • Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
  • For a health related query, would you trust information from this site?
  • Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?
  • Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
  • Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
  • Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
  • Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?
  • Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?
  • Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?
  • Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail?
  • Would users complain when they see pages from this site?

So how does this impact press release publishing sites? Search Engine Land and Seer Interactive both conducted studies showing major press release sites have seen a major dip in traffic following Panda. Moz.com recently dove into a couple of the biggest issues PR aggregators could be having with the “test” questions above:

Does This Site Contain Insightful Analytics?
Typically, users don’t go to a press release website to find information. Often times, press releases are considered a necessary evil for SEO purposes, so the content isn’t thoughtful or insightful. PR websites may struggle to combat this issue as part of their appeal is lack of editorial edits to content.

Do You Consider This Site an Authority?
Because PR aggregators have a lot of information about a lot of different things, it’s difficult for them to rank high for this question.

Would you Share or Bookmark This Site?
Chances are, unless your press release is exceptionally newsworthy, it’s unlikely to be shared or bookmarked. Consider the amount of non-newsworthy press releases gathered on PR portal sites, and you can see why they may not rank well for this question.

If your dealership or SEO agency continues to use press releases as a part of your SEO strategy, consider adding graphs, charts, and images to help increase the “insightfulness” of your content. Release information when it’s truly newsworthy, and provide information that people may want to share with their friends and colleagues. Also, industry specific press release portals may have less of a chance of being affected by this Panda update, and thus giving your content a better chance of ranking well on Google’s SERP.

Take a look through the questions provided by Google. How would your car dealership website do? Use these as a guideline to providing quality content to search engine users. This is the direction Google is headed.

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

Google Helps Your Dealership “Settle the (Quality) Score”

Google Adwords is probably one of your dealership’s biggest and most important online marketing investments. Even if your dealership has hired an agency to manage your investment, you should spend 15 minutes to read the information Google just put out on Quality Score.

Quality Score (QS) can be one of the more confusing aspects of Google’s Adwords algorithm, but its critical to optimizing your dealership’s Adwords account. As a part of their AdWords Best Practices Series, Google released “Settling the (Quality) Score” white paper to help small businesses understand QS.

Google repeatedly states that the Quality Score number that appears in your Adwords account is not actually used in the real-time ad quality calculations. The Quality Score figure is a simplified representation of three factors: 1) ad relevance, 2) expected Click-Through-Rate (CTR) and 3) landing page experience, that Google does use in its calculation. According to Google, the Quality score is the “warning lights in a car: something that alerts you to potential problems.”

Anyone who is familiar with Adwords already knows that for every Keyword in your account, Google provides ratings (Above Average, Average, and Below Average) for each of these 3 elements. Ideally your keywords will be “Above Average” for all of them. In the Quality Score White Paper, Google even provides specific actions you can take to improve your score for any of these three factors.

Another interesting part of this whitepaper discusses a few things that DO MATTER and those that DON’T MATTER when it comes to Quality Score.

DOES MATTER:

  1. The User’s Device – it matters to Google that you are giving users a good experience, and that includes catering to the device they are using to view your ads. Make sure your website is optimized for mobile users. Try separate ads and pages for mobile visitors.
  2. Relevance to a User’s Intentions – Google believes this is the “heart of ads quality.” “Focus on delivering relevant ads” instead of trying to game the system for a higher QS.
  3. For Newly-Launched Keywords, Performance on Related Keywords – Google will see how well the ads and pages are performing on related keywords if you’re starting out with new keywords. This prevents them from having to measure from scratch, and gives you an opportunity to start off on a good foot.

DOESN’T MATTER

  1. How You Structure Your Account – Your AdWords account should be structured in a way that makes sense for you and your dealership. Outside of that, moving a keyword into a new ad group or campaign (without changing the ad text or destination URL) will not have an impact on your Quality Score.
  2. Running Your Ads in Other Networks – Using the Google Display network or other Google search partners won’t affect the quality of your ads on Google.com.
  3. Your Ad’s Placement on the Page – Having your ad in a high position on the page is great, but it doesn’t increase the expected Click-Through-Rate of your ads. The expected CTR shown is normalized for your actual position.

This white paper is a great resource for those dealerships that manage their own PPC accounts, and even for those trying to understand how their vendor is earning their ROI. I highly recommend reading through the ten page document when you have time. The biggest takeaway? “Give your users what they need, and a great Quality Score should follow.”

Call support
(877) 543-4200
Call Sales
(877) 543-6321