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

SEO Tips for Car Dealers Looking Ahead

Google+ has been promoted lately by many in the SEO industry as a “must-do” for local businesses to help their search engine optimization efforts.  While an important tool for SEO moving forward, there are other areas your dealership can utilize to keep your search engine optimization on the cutting edge.

 

Here are a couple of additional things your car dealership should be keeping an eye on to keep your SEO efforts top-notch as the search landscape continues to change:

Monitor Your Best Referral Sites: Check your Google Analytics for the third party sites that are sending quality traffic to your site.  This means it is traffic that converts into leads, and eventually sales.  It could be local sites, social media portals, or even your third party lead providers.  Keep track of this information and nurture those sites (and your relationship with them).

Generate Quality Content: Good content is good content, regardless of which platform you put it on.  That means it’s important to make the content your dealership produces “shareable” to other platforms.  One way this can be done is to make sure you have social media sharing buttons on your blog.  Also, create content with your SEO keywords in mind in case they do get shared and spread through the Internet.

Mobile Technology: Mobile is big and getting bigger!  Its roughly 20% of a typical dealer’s traffic right now, and growing every month!  Find out what your consumers want by taking every opportunity to survey them — ask for suggestions in your newsletters, converse with them via social media, and track the existing mobile traffic to your site through analytics.  Right now is the time to ensure your mobile site is properly search optimized so your dealership doesn’t get left behind in the future.

Google+ is just one of many SEO extras your dealership should be focusing on moving forward.  Once your car dealer website is properly optimized, make sure your dealership or SEO provider is engaging search engines through as many mediums as possible.

In Best Practices

Tips for Auto Dealership Email Marketing Campaigns

While some dealerships are successful with their email marketing campaigns, it is a task that can easily fall to the back burner or be neglected.  When done correctly, email marketing is an effective way to stay in touch with existing customers, and build a relationship with potential car buyers.

 

If your dealership has let your email marketing efforts go in recent years, here are some tips to refresh your campaigns and help keep them successful:

Add a Human Element: Make sure you email sounds as though an actual person wrote it.  Email users get so many automated messages as it is; put a personal touch and tone in yours to connect with your past, current, and future customers.

Send Often, but Make It Relevant: If your dealership has relevant, quality information you want to get out to your customers, send it!  Worry less about frequency, and more about quality.

Design Matters: When was the last time you took a look at the design of your outgoing email marketing?  Is it branded well?  Pleasing to look at?  Devote some resources to making sure your email template matches your other branding for a consistent message, and that it looks good.

Essentially, put some effort in, and it will show.  Make your emails worthwhile to read, sound as though they were actually written by a person, and are pleasing to the eye.   If you’re going to use email marketing, integrate it into your car dealer online marketing plan. Remember, the goal of email marketing is to establish, develop, or maintain relationships, so send emails (and give it the time and effort) that reflect that goal.

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?

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