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

Test Your Mobile Website with Google’s GoMo

Google, in an effort to help small businesses ensure they have effective mobile websites, has launched “GoMo”.  This website (https://www.howtogomo.com) lets users learn about why having a quality mobile site is important, test how your site looks in its mobile version, and find resources to help if your mobile site isn’t quite up to par.

I really like the option to see how your current site looks in mobile.  From the homepage, click “See How Your Current Site Looks in Mobile”, then “Test Your Site”.  Enter the URL of your dealership website to see how mobile users will see it.  After answering a couple of questions about what you see, you’ll get a report card of sorts that focuses on four potential mobile website hangups: Loading Speed, Images, Text, and Navigation.

The DealerOn auto dealer website I tested scored a 4 out of 4.  According to the site, the site I tested showed:

  • Loading Speed:  0.404 seconds.  The recommended loading time is 5 seconds.
  • Images: Images appeared properly
  • Text: Text is visible without pinching or zooming on the phone screen
  • Navigation: All links and buttons are thumb friendly

Check your dealership website to see how well it scores.  If you’re not getting a Pass in each category, you need to talk to your mobile website provider to find out what can be done.

In Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Google: SEO is Not Spam

For the most part, search engine optimization (SEO) is a recognized necessity of running a successful auto dealer website.  Not just in the auto industry, but there are still some hold-outs that think building websites and content to be found by search engines is a little spammy.

According to Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s web spam fighting team, his company does not consider SEO to be spam.  “We don’t consider SEO to be spam,” and SEO is a “valid way to help people find what they’re looking for via search engines”.  While he does denounce black hat SEO tactics, Cutts emphasizes that Google’s goal is to return the best possible search results they can, and sites with quality SEO help them achieve that goal.

So the next time someone tries to tell you that SEO is spammy, direct them to this video, and then hopefully to your search engine optimized auto dealership website at the top of Google page 1.

In

Social Media Must-Do’s for Auto Dealers

The amount of “best practices” and “tips” involved with social media marketing can be overwhelming to say the least (and yes, I’m guilty of sharing my own).  In the last couple months, I’ve received emails with “99 Tools for Social Media Marketing”, “5 Top Tips For Successful Social Media Marketing”, “8 Hot Social Media Tips From Eight Industry Experts”, and “20 Ways to Improve Your Google+ Knowledge.”  There are more tips, tricks, hints, and best practices than anyone can consume.  In the spirit of KISS (Keep it Simple, Stupid), here is a short list of Must-Do’s for dealerships using social media as a part of their online marketing efforts:

Have a Plan: Before starting any marketing campaign, your dealership should have a plan.  When it comes to social media, make sure you consider (and answer) things like:

  • What is your goal?
  • Why are we investing time and resources into this particular social media effort?
  • Who are we trying to reach with this campaign?

Optimize: As with your auto dealer website, your social media efforts should have search engine optimization as a focus.  This not only means the content you post, but also your profiles.  Use keywords that your customers are using to search for your dealership online in your summary, incorporate those keywords in the backlinks to your website, and make sure your contact information is accurate across all platforms.

Measure Everything You Can: At the very least, use Google Analytics to measure your efforts.  Your dealership should investigate the free and paid tools that are out there as well.  Some things you should be keeping track of:

  • Engagement-How many people are interacting or sharing your content
  • Conversions-You’ll have to determine what this mean for your dealership; for example, is it clicks, shares, or comments?  Once you’ve established that, you can measure it.
In Video

Why Your Dealership Should Have a YouTube Channel

Having videos on your auto dealer website has been shown to increase website leads, and when done with video search engine optimization (VSEO), helping your site climb the search engine result pages.  If your dealership has videos on your website, you should have those videos uploaded to your own dealership YouTube channel.

Here’s why:

Popularity: YouTube is the world’s largest video search engine (and the second largest search engine) and growing every single day.  People all over the world use it to find videos, so if someone searches for a vehicle that your dealership sells, don’t you want a video from your dealership to show up?

Timing: Like most search engines, YouTube tends to give older entries a little extra edge when returning search results.  The sooner you create your channel and upload videos, the better.

Cost: YouTube is free.  Aside from the time cost of uploading (though it’s possible your auto dealer website or video provider will do this for you), YouTube has no financial cost.  This means you get all of this exposure without an additional marketing cost.

Blended Search: Google, Bing and Yahoo are integrating mixed media (images, news, videos, etc) into their search engine result pages, so having your VSEO dealership videos on a separate domain can provide an additional link on Google’s results page for any search relevant to your dealership brand or your inventory.

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