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Knowledge, news, and more about Automotive SEO, SEM, and dealership websites
In Mobile

More Reasons Your Car Dealership NEEDS an Optimized Mobile Website

While at NADA, I heard quite a bit of buzz about mobile websites. Does my dealership need one?  If I already have one, do I need to actually optimize it?  Is mobile traffic really growing as rapidly as everyone says it is?  Should I be making my car dealership’s mobile website a priority to sell more cars?

The answer to all four of those questions is absolutely, unequivocally–YES.

Some stats:

  • The number of mobile searches has grown 400% in the last year
  • 1 in 3 mobile searches is related to local search
  • 79% of smartphone owners use their phones to help with shopping (compare prices, find product info, locate a retailer, etc)
  • 28% of those that see a mobile ad take action
  • 59% of users visit an online store after looking it up online

In short, mobile traffic is growing extremely quickly, and is expected to be the predominant mode of searching online for local content by 2013.  If your dealership is neglecting your mobile websites, you’ll be behind the curve as time goes on.

Your car dealership mobile website optimization efforts should focus on two things: earning top rankings in the mobile SERPs and making the site’s layout mobile friendly.

You can use this tool to test how your mobile site looks on an iPhone, or use Google’s GoMo to preview your mobile site and find resources to help if your site isn’t as quality as you’d like it to be.  Make sure you talk to your mobile website provider to ensure they are optimizing your mobile site and helping your dealership achieve your mobile optimization goals.

In

How Your Dealership Can Use Google+ To Increase Local SEO

A few weeks ago I wrote about how Google was going to include items from Google+ in their regular search results when users were signed in, calling it “Search Plus Your World”. Now that users have had some time to get accustomed to it, I wanted to touch on how this new way of searching could benefit your car dealership’s local search optimization efforts.

>This combination of social media and search allows your dealership to do the same–combine your social media efforts with your search engine optimization efforts on Google.  Some searches actually result in recommended “People and Pages on Google+”, and I would imagine this is only going to grow.  Imagine if someone searched for a car dealership in your area, and your dealership was recommended!

Step 1 – Create a Google+ business page if you haven’t already.  While Google is working on having the ability to create admins and having multiple emails tied to each account, this functionality doesn’t exist yet.  Make sure you use a Gmail account that multiple people can have access to, not someone’s personal email account.  The next few steps are similar to those for creating a Facebook page.

Step 2 – Choose a category, fill in your dealership name, and dealership URL.

Step 3 – Add a tagline (a short description of your dealership) and your logo.

Step 4 – Add some content.  You may want to wait to start promoting it until you have some content to share.  Update your Google+ page with relevant information, deals, and inventory.  Make sure you use keywords that people may be searching for; otherwise your Google+ page may not show up in search results.

Step 5 – Promote it!  Put it on your dealership site, blog, and in your emails.  Encourage customers to follow your Google+ account just as you would your Twitter and Facebook.

Is your car dealership using Google+?  Have you seen any results?

In Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

What Can You Do With Great Rankings, But Low Website Traffic?

Many dealerships focus their search engine optimization reporting on how well they are ranking for certain terms.  As long as they show up on Page 1 of Google’s search results, they are happy.  While search engine page ranking is an important part of every dealership’s online marketing efforts, what happens if your auto dealer website is showing up on page 1 for every keyword, but you aren’t seeing any traffic?

If you are seeing this happening at your dealership, here are some potential causes:

Optimizing for the Wrong Keywords: Your dealership can rank first for “blue widgets”, but that probably won’t help you with leads and sales for the cars on your lot.  Make sure you, your website provider, and your SEO provider are all on the same page when it comes to ranking for effective, relevant keywords.

Double Check Your SERP Listing: Your organic listing should have an informative title tag and meta-tag to help entice searchers to click onto your website.

The only way your dealership will know how much traffic, leads, and sales you are getting from your high ranking keywords is by tracking all of these metrics.  Make sure your website provider and/or SEO providers are measuring all of these stats and that you are double checking them with Google Analytics.

In Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Google Changes Algorithm; Affects Top-Heavy Ad Pages

While (I hope) most dealership websites won’t be affected by this, Google has recently announced they will begin penalizing websites that have too many ads at the top.  It’s being called the “page layout algorithm” and affects sites that “don’t have much content ‘above-the-fold'”, according to Google’s Inside Search blog.

We’ve all clicked onto a site only to have to scroll down through the ads to actually find the content we are looking for.  This algorithm change will penalize sites with little or no “non-ad” content visible above the scroll line, so that they appear less frequently and with less prominence in Google’s search results.

So how does Google tell what is an ad and what isn’t?  They have a “variety of signals that algorithmically determine what type of ad or content appears above the fold, but no further details to share.  It is completely algorithmic in its detection…”.  Not surprisingly, Google isn’t giving many details.

Double check your landing pages, micro-sites, and any sites your auto dealer website links out to, to ensure that none are so ad-heavy that users have to scroll down to see any content.  Keep in mind that the screen may appear smaller to those on an iPad or other tablet computer.

Google recommends using their Browser Size tool to see how much content and ads are visible under various screen resolutions.

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