Google +1: Now in PPC Ads and Affecting Search Engine Ranking

I’ve been seeing the Google +1 button appearing on more and more websites since it was released a few months ago.  Recently, I’ve even seen it as an option for paid search ads.

If I perform a search while signed into my Google account, the +1 button appears as a part of the actual PPC ad.

This seems to be the exact same thing as giving users the ability to “Like” an ad in Facebook.  However, Facebook is built around the idea of social sharing.  You would “Like” an ad because of the brand or product it represents, knowing that your friends will see that you are a fan.  It seems like a shortcut of sorts for Facebook users wanting to share that they “like” something without having to leave the page they are on and track down the actual business page.

I’m not sure if many people use Google’s search engine in the same way.  Personally, I use it to find information, not to recommend a company/brand/product to my social circle.  If I were to click the +1 next to a PPC ad, my Google contacts would see that notation if they performed a similar search while also signed in.  Also, Google will show the +1 when the clickthrough URL for the ad matches a website that one of your friends has “+1”’ed.

Google makes it clear that the +1 button does have an impact on your organic rankings, regardless of whether they come from a PPC ad or your organic listing.  As long as the URL of your PPC ad matches the URL of the organic listing, +1’s will show on both results.  The company also notes that while +1’s will affect your organic search ranking, they will not change Quality Score or ad ranking.  However, the most important component of Quality Score is Click-Through Rate (CTR) and I suspect that the primary reason that Google is testing this functionality in PPC ads is that they believe (as I do) that when a user sees a +1 from a trusted source, they will be more likely to click on the ad—increasing CTR, Quality Score, and Google’s ad revenue.

What do you think?  Is Google trying to make +1 just like the Facebook Like button, or is there real value/usage for people clicking the +1 button on a PPC ad?

Keep Your Dealer Site on the Top of Google’s SERP

There are many reasons why your search engine rankings can drop, and unfortunately, many times car dealers are at the mercy of Google and the other search engines.  Google is earnest in their mission to provide the most relevant content to  their customers, so they provide tips and suggestions for how content providers can rank highly for their relevant terms.  Below are some things that could cause your car dealership website to be penalized or ranked lower by Google.  One incredibly valuable resource to keep tabs on your site’s Google performance and any Google-related website problems is Google’s Webmaster Tools.

Paid Links: While you can sometimes get away with buying back links to your site, it’s generally frowned upon.  Buying in bulk and paying for a link from a website with a high Page Rank will make you more likely to get caught and penalized by Google.

Back Links: While back links are a big part of SEO, they can also lead to penalties.  For example, having multiple links on your site in the wrong language, hiding links, and adding a large amount of back links to your site in a short period of time will all alert Google that perhaps these aren’t legitimate links.

Content: Google’s Panda update to their algorithm put additional focus on having quality, relevant content on your website.  This should be the goal of every site looking to achieve a high ranking.  Things like having low quality content, content pulled from other sites (duplicate content) and content that can’t be easily read by humans can lead to Google ranking penalties.  I have seen some of our customers’ competitors apparently get either temporarily black-listed or harshly penalized for having text hidden in an expandable text box.

Website Issues: If you block search engines robots from reading your site, you won’t get ranked.  Also, if many pages on your site have duplicate page titles and descriptions (for instance if each vehicle in your inventory doesn’t have its own unique page with unique title tag, URL, description, and content) Google won’t be able to rank each one individually.  Best practices are to have a dynamic XML Sitemap that reflects the content on your site.  Use Google’s Webmaster Tools to check that Google is downloading your Sitemap without issue.

Can Knowing Google’s Market Share Help With Your Dealership Marketing Plan?

Google seems to be everywhere lately, especially with their introduction of +1 and Google Plus.  Many people have so many different aspects of their life integrated into the search engine (email, social network, search engine, calendar, document management, etc) that sometimes it is hard to remember how we ever got along without it.

Most estimates put Google’s search market share between 65% and 70%, but I have seen estimates as high as 80-90%, which is closer to where it is in other countries.  Knowing the market share of different search engines can be helpful when planning your marketing strategies.  For example, with the recent changes Google has made to their review pages, knowing the percentage of market share Google has could help your dealership decide how to adjust your review strategy.  Based on the data I’ve seen, there is Google, and then everyone else is perhaps 20-25% of the market.  Therefore, any search engine marketing strategy has to revolve around Google to make it worth your while.

Judging by your sites’ search engine traffic data (Google vs. Yahoo vs. Bing vs. others), what would your estimate be of Google’s search market share?  How have you used the amount of market share Google has to determine your dealership’s marketing plans?

Google Is Putting PPC Ads on the Bottom of SERP Pages

One of the SEO sites that I frequently read (www.searchengineland.com) has a VERY interesting post by a  reader, LebSEO Design’s Wissam Dandan.  He has found examples of Google Adwords ads appearing at the bottom of the page for some searches.

No one on our search team at DealerOn has come across these examples yet, and  judging by the information I’ve seen on other SEO industry blogs, it’s a fairly limited test, since not many searchers are.

This could have interesting implications to PPC buys if Google decides to keep this test as a permanent feature.  I haven’t seen anything about how Google would report on the placement for ads that run at the bottom of a results page.

This could be a positive for dealers using PPC as a marketing strategy. If your ads were previously being pushed to page 2, they may now be on the bottom of page 1.

I wonder how Google will incorporate these ad positions into their “Position Preference” targeting.    It is entirely possible that ads would be more effective on a Cost-Per-Acquisition (CPA) basis when they’re at the bottom of the page.  Potentially you could target your campaigns to reach users that had scrolled through the organic results to the bottom of the page, most likely not finding what they were looking for.  This could be very interesting and a huge campaign management changer for PPC providers.

What are your thoughts on how this might impact your Google Adwords campaigns?

Is Your Dealership Taking Advantage of Google’s Mobile Ads?

It is almost hard to comprehend how fast mobile Internet usage is growing.  According to Google, more smartphones were sold last year than PCs.  It’s predicted that 50% of Americans will have a smartphone by the end of the year and that there will be 10 billion mobile Internet devices in 2012, up from the 2 billion that are activated today.  A child is more likely to own a cell phone than a book!

How is that going to impact the car buying experience and your online strategy?  With 51% of mobile car shoppers using search engines to research their next vehicle purchase, it’s extremely important that your dealership has a well-optimized mobile site and a well thought-out mobile marketing strategy.  One tactic your dealership may want to consider is using Google Mobile Ads to target mobile web users with pay per click (PPC) ads.

In addition to the regular PPC ads that you’re running (which can be viewed by mobile users on full-browser devices), you can use the Google Mobile Ads to target mobile phone customers who don’t have full-browsers on their smartphones.  Google has reported that advertisers using a mobile-only AdWords campaign, designed to target mobile customers who don’t have full-browser devices, can increase click-through rates by 11.5%.

Mobile Ads also allow you to have a separate keyword list than your normal AdWords campaigns, so you can tailor your keyword lists to the shorter keywords this type of mobile web searchers tend to use.  Remember that if you’re going to run mobile ads on Google, you have to use a mobile website landing page—it’s not just a best practice, it’s a requirement.

Has anyone adopted any mobile strategies that they’ve found to be particularly effective or any that have proven not to be?

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