PUREDEALER | Automotive Internet Marketing | SEO | PPC | Custom Dealer Websites

Craigslist Automotive Advertising

Putting your vehicles online is worthwhile for just about any business and very little risk involved when you post your advertisement on Craigslist. With the exception of job postings and housing postings in specific markets, there’s no money involved when advertising on Craigslist. Whether your products or services are offered through ecommerce websites or physical stores, you could see financial gains through advertising on Craigslist. Since it’s free to advertise your business on Craigslist, there are no worries of not having any sales generated from the advertisement but having being able to sell will give you the 100% profits. Craigslist can also be a good place to test your copywriting. Another advantage of having an advertisement post on Craigslist is that your advertisement will get indexed by major search engines such as Google, making even more opportunities to get customers outside of Craigslist network.

Reaching Potential Customers On Craigslist

About 10 million people from various countries are using Craigslist to search for information and receive approximately 4 billion page views each month. From this statistics it is obvious that your products or services have the opportunity of reaching large potential customers. If you have the ability to write a good persuasive ad copy, the possibility of having your products or services being sold are limitless. However Craigslist can’t guarantee that you will for sure to make a sale but having an intriguing advertisement read by millions of people, you should be able to make at least some sales from your potential customers.

Finding Your Target Audience On Craigslist

The key to having your products or services sold is to make your advertisement aimed at reaching your target audience. As we have already discussed about the number of visitors Craigslist gets it is much more worthwhile to reach a small audience of those with a keen interest in your products or services than to reach a much larger audience of those who are not interested.

Craigslist has specific sections for you to advertise your products or services and this section is broken down into a number of categories. So the key to find your target audience is to place your advertisement in the most appropriate category which is related to your products or services. For instance if you are dealing in computer repairs, it is wise to place your advertisement in the computer section as opposed to the automotive section because for those who are looking for computer help will naturally migrate to the computer section. It may sometimes be appropriate to place an advertisement in more than one category. This is acceptable as long as it does not cross the line to spamming the section.

If any of the categories available are not matching to your products or services, you may suggest the addition of a new category by contacting Craigslist and might willing to accept if they believe that your suggestion warrants the addition.

Spamming On Craigslist

As you have already know that the key to have your product sold is to place your advertisement in an appropriate category, however placing the same advertisement to different geographical regions even though having in the appropriate category is considered spam. Even if you try the system will not approve your advertisement. If Craigslist detects the practice of spamming, all of your postings will be deleted and you could be ban from using Craigslist. Furthermore if the readers see the spamming techniques they will be less inclined to see what you have to offer and have your advertisement reported as spam.

As there are many regions available in Craigslist for you to place your advertisement, it will be better to choose only a few to make things easier for you and recommended to choose a smaller city where your advertisement will not get squash like the bigger city gets.

Email marketing solutions can help your car dealership enhance the number of vehicles that come in for service. Keeping consistent numbers is all well and good, but everyone knows having increasing monthly numbers is better. Email marketing solutions track the campaigns you send out so that you get real time data on the customers who are interested in the promotions you offer them regarding your service centre.

By reminding your customer to bring their cars in for service, you have the opportunity to multiply the amount of vehicles coming in for service. More vehicles for service means higher numbers in sales.

So, how do email marketing solutions help you bring more cars to your service center? Simple, all your customers really need is a reminder: “Hey you know that asset of yours that you paid thousands of dollars for? You need to make sure it’s in tip top shape, and it will only cost you $50.”

Your DMS most likely lists all of your clients’ contact information, such as how many times they have visited, and when their vehicle is due for service. This is vital information for you to use when creating a campaign through automotive email marketing solutions.

You can also use the “number of visits” and the “vehicles due for service” categories, to help you segment your email marketing solutions campaigns into frequent users, sometime users, and seldom users.

Now you are ready to create three different marketing campaigns, for three different target customer groups, while reminding them all how important their investment is to them.

Once you have created your campaigns, the magic happens. Email marketing solutions are equipped to track how many people have opened your email, if they have clicked on the promotions, or if they have sent your email on to friends or family.

The data gets even more in depth than that. You can know exactly who opened the email you sent, who clicked on each link within the email, on what day, and at what time. These insights can help you further segment your email marketing solutions campaign. As an example, let’s say that you are tracking those that “frequently” bring their cars in to your service center: 50% are clicking on their “$10 off preferred customer” promotion on the weekends; and the other 50% are opening and clicking on their emails from Monday to Friday.

You now have two more customer groups to better target your audience: weekend readers and weekday readers. You can then split your future email marketing campaigns into 2, so that your emails arrive into your customers’ inboxes exactly when they’re most likely to read it.

You will also be able to grow your list with a “forward to friends” button that is available on most email marketing solutions. For those customers that are constantly forwarding your email (we love these guys) you can show your appreciation by segmenting yet again.

You can offer them a special promotion for forwarding your email. This will keep them in the business of continuing to spread the good word about your service center.

It’s really easy to take “tracked” information and turn it into another campaign. Email marketing solutions are very user-friendly, so the tracking feature of most email marketing solutions gives you the option to export the data found within any given field.

Email marketing solutions will bring more people to your automotive dealership service center by providing you with the information you need to segment and target your customers. Catering to your audience’s exact needs will bring more of them to your service center and provide you with a better opportunity to grow your sales per month.

The following is a great article by Grant Cardone that holds a lot of truth for automotive marketers and car dealers.

Economies do not exist until somebody BUYS something! And economies cease to exist when a sale is not made.  Management then decides “customers aren’t buying anything so let’s just cut heads, slash budgets, hunker down and shrink our way to  greatness!”

Prospecting, Interviewing customers to properly identify problems and opportunities and then collaborating with  them to find appropriate solutions seems to be a skill set lost to an entire generation.   How did this happen?

Two major shifts drove this change. In the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s, virtually every company had a sales force that were required and depended on things like; prospecting- the creation of customers, product knowledge, application knowledge and selling skills.  Great companies were built on great sales teams who were responsible for creating opportunities not for just selling them. The sales team was the engine, leading the  charge, driving the revenues of the company!  In the 90’s sales teams were deemed to expensive to maintain, inefficient, difficult to manage and the responsibility for driving revenues shifted to the marketing department.  The theory was that the company could create demand for products and services through advertising, promotion and gimmicks then the company could merely harvest the flood of incoming  orders with call centers or order desks. The second major shift currently taking place is from traditional marketing to internet marketing.

But, what happens when customers stop looking and searching the net and the phone stops ringing?  Because selling is a lost art the solutions are limited to- increase the advertising, make even bigger claims of the importance of customer satisfaction, lower prices (again) and increase gimmicks like no money down, rebates, zero percent interest and free trips.  Companies started spending more money on ad campaigns and google search then the entire sales force makes in salaries and commissions.  While these marketing shifts created breakthroughs in the ability to reach greater numbers of potential customers, the fact is it failed!  You don’t have to look far to see the corpses of companies who relied on marketing and disregarded the sales team;  Circuit City, Heard Automotive, Dilliards, Sears, Washington Mutual, Wachovia and Merrill Lynch.   These companies failed because of their dependence upon their marketing campaigns and their inability to sell their products!  Marketing without a trained sales team is a “one  way” vehicle, causing the company to only activate at the point of marketing and then become passive at the point of creating an opportunity or even closing on those created.

These marketing methods virtually eliminated management’s expectation of the sales team and their abilities. This is a critical problem in a recession, maybe event the cause of it, whereby the customers stop looking for new products and services, and therefore are immune to the wiles of marketing and promotion. The consumers’ focus in now also on cutting expenses and unless your product or service can help them save money without any investment, they simply won’t pay attention. Search engine optimization is useless when potential customers stop searching.

Companies must return to the creation of true sales skills and sales teams because without them nothing happens!  Management, marketing and customer satisfaction does not sell product.  Sales people sell products and you must have effectively trained salespeople that can (1) generate a prospect and (2) know how to determine what is needed, (3) how your product or service can satisfy that need and (4) how to justify a purchase decision. The lost art of real salesmanship must be restored in order to create the revenue a company desires.

A well trained sales team, not management, not the internet, not customer satisfaction and not marketing is the only thing that can cost effectively create customers in this economy.  Economies exist only when someone finds a prospect and then sells that prospect a product or service at which point they exchange money with your company.  Sales people drive entire economies and without them we have no economy.

Grant Cardone, Author of Sell to Survive

10 Worst AdWords Campaign Management Mistakes

On today’s highly competitive Google AdWords pay per click (PPC) search engine, it is now more important than ever to ensure that your PPC campaigns are optimized to their utmost potential. You should be achieving maximum return on investment (ROI) for the keywords or phrases that are most relevant to your business and are most likely to provide you with targeted traffic to your website. With ever growing cost-per-click (CPC) prices throughout the various PPC search engines it is essential that you avoid certain mistakes that will undoubtedly result in poorly performing PPC campaigns.

The Mistakes to Avoid

• Long list of less than targeted keywords

• Not identifying unique aspects of your product or service

• Lack of keywords in your ad text

• Directing users solely to your home page

• Creation of single Ad Groups

• Utilizing single campaigns

• Using broad match only

• Failure to optimize Ad Serving for your ads

• Not tracking results

• Entering the content network without modifying bids

Long List of Less Than Targeted Keywords

When you first set out to create your AdWords campaign it is of utmost importance that you do not go “keyword crazy”, what this means is that you must not create long lists of irrelevant and generic keywords. For example if you were an automotive dealership then it would not be in your best interest to target the keyword “truck”. The reason being is that the cost per click (CPC) for such a generic keyword would be incredibly high when compared to a more descriptive relevant keyword such as “Chevrolet Silverado Extended Cab”. An example of an irrelevant keyword which would not produce conversions if you strictly conducted automotive sales would be “tail light covers” the phrase may bring visitors to your website but if they do not find what they are looking for when they get there they will be gone just as quickly as they arrived.

Not Identifying Unique Aspects of Your Product or Service

Before implementing your AdWords campaign you must first understand exactly what it is that makes you stand out from your competition. By identifying your unique products or services you will have a lot more clarity on how to rise above your competitors and zone in on the keywords or phrases that are unique to your business. I would recommend that you perform an analysis of your competition, have a look and see what they are doing and which phrases they are using. After conducting a competition analysis and after understanding what makes your products or services unique you will be able to come up with a strategy that will topple your competitors.

Lack of Keywords in Your Ad Text

When creating your descriptive ad copy it is imperative that you find a means to inject your keywords in to your title and description while maintaining the delicate balance of clarity and relevance. Your ad copy should be tailored in such a way that when read by a visitor they know exactly what they are getting in to when they click on your ad, which brings me to my next point.

Directing Users Solely to Your Home Page

Taking the time to decide on which destination URL should be designated to which ad instead of pointing all ads in a campaign to your homepage is an oversight that I come across far too often. When you finish with compiling your list of relevant keywords that describe unique products or services of your business, why on earth would you then send everyone to your homepage and let them navigate through your site in hopes of finding what it is that they are looking for. Instead why not send them straight to the page that contains exactly what was described to them within your ad copy. As an example if you were an automotive dealership and your ad contains the keyword “Chevrolet Silverado” instead of sending them to www.auto-motive-dealership.com send them to www.auto-motive-dealership.com/silverado

Creation of Single Ad Groups

By categorizing ads that are targeting related keywords into a common ad-group will create a much higher level of control that you have over your entire campaign. Let’s say that you were selling marketing Honda Civics. Start by grouping all ads targeted towards Honda Civics into a single Ad Group. You would then create another ad-group which could be targeting trim levels and another containing used Civics and so on. By organizing your ad-group structure in this manner gives you the ability to create in-depth reports on the performance of each ad-group.

Utilizing Single Campaigns

Once you have your Ad Groups sorted out into easy to identify categories you may then move on to the next step of creating relevant campaigns. From the example above you have created Ad Groups containing Honda Civics. Now it is time to create a container for all of the Ad Groups into one campaign entitled “Honda Models”. You would then repeat the process creating Ad Groups for Accords, Pilots, etc (you get the picture) one group for Civics one for Accords etc and then once again you drop them all into a single campaign entitle “Honda Models”. Having highly organized campaigns is the key to determine which ads are creating the optimal conversions.

Using Broad Match Only

When you do not take advantage of the phrase matching options that are available to you chances are you are missing out on potential customers and creating a higher CPC. Broad matches are usually less targeted than exact and phrase matching. Broad matching is the default option your ads will appear for expanded matches such as plurals or relevant keyword variations. When utilizing phrase match your ad will appear for search terms in the order that you specify and sometimes for other terms. Exact matching is by far the most targeted option to use. You will appear for the exact keyword specified. Negative keyword is also a fantastic option to utilize in order to specify which keywords you do not want to appear for.

Broad match

Default option:

• blue widget

Phrase match

Surround the keyword in quotes:

• “blue widget”

Exact match

Surround the keyword in square brackets:

• [blue widget]

Negative match

Place a negative character before the keyword:

• -blue widget

Failure To Optimize Ad Serving For Your Ads

When you take advantage of AdWords Ad Serving service basically what you will be doing is showing your most popular ads more often. The AdWords platform will give weight to ads with the highest click through rates (CTRs) and display them more often then keywords with lower (CTRs) within the same ad-group.

Not Tracking Results

In order to have any idea on your AdWords campaign performance you must be able to see the keywords that work as well as those that do not. Google AdWords supplies a vast array of very useful tracking tools. Google has also built in to the user interface Google Analytics which is a marvellous web analytics tool that provides you with in-depth reporting on all aspects of your campaign performance. I can not stress enough the importance of creating goals for your AdWords campaign to measure your success by.

Entering The Content Network Without Modifying Bids

Within the AdWords platform you have recently been given the ability to set different bids for the content network compared to that of the search network. If you do not set different bids on the content network for certain keywords, you will be paying more per click than you should be. After lowering the prices on certain keywords you will notice that the amount of click throughs that you will be attaining will remain the same as they were at the higher bid.

Conclusion

The purpose for this article was to create awareness for common mistakes and to eliminate frustrations that may emerge when managing Google AdWords campaigns. The points mentioned above are compiled from management mistakes that I have stumbled upon time and time again in hopes to assist you in creating a marketing campaign that will generate dramatic increases to the profits of your business. Many automotive pay per click vendors make these exact mistakes, and you could be a victim of poorly spent budget.

One of the newest ways to market a business opportunity, and one of the best of the new business opportunities on the market today is automotive text messaging, mobile or cell phone marketing and SMS texting.

Especially if your audience is ages 18-35 mobile advertising or some sort of mobile promotion product or marketing will get their attention perhaps as much as or more than an Internet campaign. People are using cell phones, blackberries and other smart phone products in ever increasing numbers, and broadcast companies, newspapers and other media are teaming up with them to help promote their own products. Short Messaging Service (SMS) is a great way to bring younger consumers to your firm, either to buy your product or service, or to become part of your business opportunity team.

According to Pyramid Research, the global mobile market has grown to over $667 billion US dollars since 2001. This represents a 15 percent increase in subscribers and an 18 percent increase in revenue. The market, Pyramid suggests, is wide open for those who want to create an alternative wireless offering as a business opportunity. The researchers determined that the increase in national wireless carriers in every country had increased considerably over the past five years, while market search decreased.

Many businesses now offer email delivery to a user’s cell phone. For those who don’t already have this smart phone capability, vendors offer a wide range of inexpensive monthly agreements, and on the minimum number of messages the user would like to receive each month.

Mobile seems to be an excellent opportunity to deliver a business message to a young, or young-at-heart, consumer mark

It is now time to work on link popularity!

Why bother with link popularity? Link popularity is important because every major search engine considers them as a part of their ranking algorithms. You must build links if you want to rank well with the competitive keywords.

If your dealership web pages include all the important criteria, it’s time to focus on your links. You need good inbound links to move your page up the ranking ladder and get new entry points to your site, but how do you get those inbound links in the first place?

Let’s make sure you understand what link popularity is. Link popularity is the measure of inbound links to your web site. Link analysis evaluates which sites are linking to you and the link text itself.

Fortunately for you, there are a lot of ways to improve your link quality and popularity. Here are some ideas to help you set up your own link popularity campaign:

1) Get your site in shape. You must first make sure your site is in shape. Your site should look professional, have good content and be easy to navigate. Validate your HTML code and check your links with a tool like HTML Toolbox. If there are broken pages or links in your site, it is not likely you will get linkbacks.

Directories have gone on record saying they may exclude sites with broken links and page errors. Directories want only professional looking sites in their databases, so proof your site before you start promoting it.

2) Make time for link building. You can’t grow your link popularity overnight. Set aside time every week to work on link building. If you force yourself to spend a couple hours a week on link building, it will become part of your routine. If you don’t make it a priority, it won’t get done.

It will take time for you to notice results, but, over time, those one or two new links start adding up until they are hundreds or even thousands of links.

3) Set realistic goals for yourself. Don’t expect to see instant results. Link building is taxing, frustrating and time-consuming. Convincing another web site to link to you can be very difficult. If you get one good quality link a month, you’re doing good.

Patience is the key to link building. It is important to keep track of who you have asked, since it could be embarrassing to ask a site for a link if they’ve already given you one.

If someone declines, wait and ask again later. Their company may have changed their focus, or there may be someone else reviewing the links. A “no” today doesn’t necessarily mean “never”.

4) Educate your employees about link building. If you’re link building in-house, educate your company’s internal management about the benefits of link building.

Link popularity is unique to the search engine industry. Sit down with your management and explain the concept behind link building. Don’t assume your management knows what it is, because most won’t have a clue what you’re talking about.

Explain link building by describing the relationship of link building and increased revenue, this will usually get management’s attention. You will need management’s support to provide the time and money you need to get into search engines or directories, so their understanding is important.

5) Quality above quantity. Be selective. Search engines use sophisticated rules when judging link importance, and the popularity of the site is also important. One link from CNet is worth far more than a link from a personal web site.

Stay away from link farms, which are sites that exist only to link to other websites. Search engines take a very dim view of link farms. Google has been known to ban sites found using these link farms. Many current “automotive seo experts” are creating their own link farms by registering many seo-related domain names, hosting them at different locations, and using them to link to each other. It may work now, but that is not a long term solution.

Try to stick to sites that are in the same field as your site, but not competing. Links that are in your same field will carry more weight than a link from a quilting site if you are a site for certified Hondas. This does not mean you should always refuse if the site isn’t in your field, just limit the amount of the non related sites that you accept. Links from within your own field are strong endorsements and will go a long way to increasing your link popularity.

6) Get to know the website you are requesting a link to. Establish yourself as a real human first, then when you ask for a link, they are less likely to refuse.

Broadcast emails are a bad idea, sure it is easier, but they are considered spam and will only make the company mad at you. Spam link requests waste everyone’s time and don’t work.

7) Give them your exact HTML link code. When you send them what you want in the link and suggest which page you want it on, it makes their job easier. This also makes sure the right words are used in the link and reduces the burden in setting up the link. Everybody is pressed for time, and, if you make it “drop-in simple”, you will be making it irresistible. The easier it is for them, the more successful you will be in convincing them to use your link.

Get listed on as many directories as you can. This is important if your site is new or you do not have any inbound links. Another reason this is important is that, without inbound links, your site is at a disadvantage with most search engine rankings.

The way to overcome this is to get a few quality links. The way to start is to get listed in as many directories as you can. There are many directories out there, and the more you can get into, the better.

Here are some directories to choose from: Open Directory, Yahoo, DMOZ, LookSmart and Zeal.com, just to name a few.

Most directories worth linking to require you to pay for a listing. Most of the time, it is worth the expense.

9) Be prepared to give something for a link. Try to have something to offer in return for a link. Create a page that allows you to have a place from which you can easily link to them.

You can offer to work a barter arrangement with them. If your site is popular or is within their market, they might consider advertisements in exchange.

10) Consider outsourcing your link popularity work. Link building is a time-consuming part of search engine optimization, so you may find it is not cost effective to do it in-house. This means you might want to hire someone else to do it for you.

Many top SEO firms have turned to outsourcing this function. Outsourcing could be an efficient way for you to get links for your site as long as you use a reputable link building firm.

If you decide to outsource, be sure the firm you hire follows good link building practices. Ask them how they plan to get the job done. Make sure they use a personalized approach, just like you would do if you were doing it yourself. You need to make sure that the method they use would not be considered spam.

If they refuse to discuss their methods with you, then you can assume they use impersonal methods such as widespread e-mail drops or link farms - this is considered spam. They may call it something else, but, if their process involves sending out large numbers of form emails, it’s still spam. If they do it the impersonal way, it will only set you back and injure your company’s professional reputation. Saving time at the expense of hurting your reputation isn’t worth it. Go look for a different company, or develop your links yourself.

Think of link building as an investment in your site.

The link building process needs to be one of your top priorities. Search engines have found link building to be resistant to manipulation, and they use it to measure the importance of a site. Since link building takes time, the sooner you start, the better.

Think of link building as a long-term investment in your site. The time you put in now to improve your linking today will insure a good search engine ranking in the future.

Every time we turn on our television sets or computers, we are barraged with an endless stream of automotive commercials or advertisements from an auto dealership online marketing campaign. What many of us don’t realize is that while they are selling the same product the means in which they do so are completely different. Were you aware that there is a difference between automotive advertising and auto dealers marketing?

The majority of auto dealers make the mistake of confusing the two without even realizing they are doing so. Little do they understand of the complexities involved with auto dealership online marketing versus their advertising. Now, think about all of the many billions of dollars they waste every year in automotive advertising and car dealer internet marketing due to their ignorance. The automotive business accounts for the largest spending on local newspapers and local radio stations, for example.

Let me begin with going over the formal definitions of each with a quick explanation of how auto dealership marketing and automotive advertising vary from one another:

Automotive Advertising - Different from car dealership internet marketing in that this is usually defined as a paid, public, and non-personal announcement of some type of persuasive message from a particular sponsor, in this case the car dealership. Automotive advertising tends to be a non-personal presentation or promotion of its products to existing and, more importantly, new potential customers.

Auto Dealership Marketing - Any type of effort that involves the systematic planning, implementation and control of business activities intended to bring together buyers and sellers such as auto dealership online marketing. Auto dealers marketing must be equally advantageous to both parties in regards to the exchange or transfer of products.

As you can see it is easy to confuse advertising as a car dealership internet marketing campaign. The difference can be confusing to the point that people think of them as one-in-the same, so let me break it down a little more for you.

The best way to distinguish the two is to imagine marketing as a pie, inside there is advertising, car dealership internet marketing, market research, auto dealership marketing, media planning, product pricing, distribution, customer support, and sales strategy. Advertising is only one piece of the entire in the marketing strategy as is car dealer internet marketing.

All of these elements not only work independently, such as an auto dealership online marketing campaign, but also together towards a larger and more comprehensive goal. Think of marketing as a process which takes time, often involving many, many hours of research for that marketing plan to be effective. Marketing is everything a business does to assist sales between the business and consumer.

Auto Dealers are having trouble with sales in this economy. Many dealerships are closing their doors. But it’s not all doom and gloom. There are some savvy Internet sales managers taking advantage of the downtime to create Video SEO campaigns that they hope will pay off big when the economy rebounds. Early indications show that they are on to something.

One example of an automotive dealer that is excelling with the use of Internet video is Mtn View Auto Group in Chattanooga Tennessee. The Auto Group is currently running video marketing campaigns for both their Ford and Chevrolet stores. Mtn. View has embraced Internet Video Marketing and they are dominating the local car market Online. By utilizing as many as 10 different video sharing sites, and embedding their videos on a separate blog, tried-tested-marketing-strategies Don is able to make sure that their videos are getting maximum exposure, and targeting their local auto enthusiasts and car buyers through as many channels as possible. Running a variety of campaigns allows them to provide more content to their viewers, and highlight specific vehicles that need to be moved off the lot.

Don’s team runs separate campaigns to target different vehicle buyers - one campaign spotlights used vehicles, another campaign focuses on trade-ins and yet a third is composed of new vehicle walk-around’s. By using separate campaigns, they have been able to target specific vehicle niches, and the buyers associated with those markets. www.tube-pros-espects.com Their videos show up in the search results for keywords related to that subject - I.E. someone searches for the term “Chattanooga Corvette” they will find Don Erwin’s video of a 2009 Corvette Z06 in the top 3 results - which means that the viewer of the video fits their target audience from a needs standpoint, as well as geographically, and in most cases this means that they are in the buying phase and looking for the local dealer.

Not only does this strategy lead to ranking for highly targeted search terms, but it drives more traffic to their website, and takes up more positions in the Search Engine Results Pages (Serp’s). The benefits of owning more spots in the SERP’s is that you create a larger online presence, you have more control over what is being said about you online, and you are able to push your competition down in the results.

By strategically targeting customers through online video, Mtn. View Auto Group has increased their overall Internet sales, gained a larger share of the online market, and reached more customers than ever before. As they continue to work with online video, they are honing their processes and improving their effectiveness, and their reach begins to grow as well. They are gaining valuable knowledge and experience, not to mention market share, and when video marketing online begins to hit it’s prime, they will be well positioned to dominate, and take their sales to a new level.

While there aren’t a lot of businesses that are embracing Internet Video Marketing with the same vigor as Mtn. View Auto, this model can be adapted for almost any business, and now is the time to get in, while errors will be forgiven, there are fewer competitors, and the market is not yet saturated.

Any predictions about the full scope of online video in the future are pure speculation at this point, but the potential implications for business are huge, and when Google purchased YouTube for $1.65 Billion in October of 2006, it was a pretty good indication that the world’s leading search engine has plans to make it big. Bundle that with the introduction of Universal Search, and it’s easy to see that online video marketing has a bright future.

There is a huge opportunity for those businesses that are early adopters of this increasingly powerful advertising medium. Starting an Internet Video Marketing campaign now will pay off big dividends down the line. Get in now or get left behind! See some sample websites using video at http://www.mainlinehonda.com or http://www.cmcbenz.com

Choosing a reputable SEO Firm can be daunting, with so little knowledge available on what to look for. So the goal of this article is to give you the four key scams to watch out for, when searching for a reputable SEO Firm:SEO WANNA-BE’S

Search engine optimization is one of those unknown fields that has no established standards. Anyone can say they are an SEO or can do SEO work, but that does not mean they have the talent, time or tools to produce any results. There are also programs that claim to help search engine ranking. They do not work either. Period.

An easy way to spot an unknowledgeable SEO or a web designer who poses as an SEO is to ask them if they optimized your site when they designed it. They will answer, “Oh yeah, I optimized it.”

That is equivalent to saying, “Oh yeah, I’ve been working out.” Working out and SEO are never one time events. They are always on-going projects.

SEO SUBMISSION SCAMS

A lot of companies will also call people and tell them that they will submit their sites to 2000 directories, which will build their search engine ranking. It is a form of link campaigning–albeit lopsided and one-dimensional. The problem with these “auto-submissions” is that the directories to which they are submitting have safe-guards in place to reject these kinds of mass submissions. Now, here is the scam: the company has technically done what they promised they would do, SUBMIT your site, even though 99% of those submissions will be rejected and thus be of no use to building a client’s search engine ranking.

SEO KEYWORD SCAMS

Another prevalent scam in the industry is for SEOs to try to gull you into letting them pick the phrases to dominate. For instance, say you are a car dealer and your website is: www. myhondadealer.com

A scam SEO will come to you and say, “We can get you a #1 ranking for ‘Honda Dealer selling used Hondas in small town Nebraska” They can probably do that for you. Unfortunately, none of your potential clients are going to Google and typing in that phrase.

More sophisticated SEOs will come to you and tell you, “I will try to get you the ranking ‘Honda Dealer New Jersey.’” That sounds like a wonderful phrase to dominate, but their data has told them that no legitimate SEOs are going after that phrase; because, again, while it might sound good, very few people are actually typing that in. People may actually ne using either ‘Big City Honda dealer” or ‘Big City, NJ Honda’

What a legitimate SEO will do (like we do here) is to show you the actual data. We will show you the exact numbers of how many people per month are searching for the product or services you offer and what exact keyphrases they are typing in. We won’t go after any of the silly phrases above. We will show you the data AND LET YOU CHOOSE!

BLACK HAT SEO

There are short cuts that can be used to quickly build a ranking. These shortcuts involve “spammy” techniques that are referred to as Black Hat SEO. One of these techniques includes overloading a website with keywords. This works temporarily, but once the Google algorithm figures out what the site is doing, they will banish the site to what is referred to as “the Google sandbox.” This simply means that the site is marked to never be allowed to have a good ranking in the system and you will need to get your shovel out and dig your way out.

SEOs will sometimes do this because it is the easier than doing the work the honest way. In the long run, the hard, honest way is more effective and far more safe, but it does take longer. A few years ago BMW of Germany hired an SEO firm. This SEO firm applied some black hat techniques and Google found out. BMW of Germany was banished by Google and the auto giant spent the next few years and millions of dollars wooing Google to allow them back in to the system. Google finally agreed, but unless you have millions of dollars and the power of a automotive giant, you have to be careful to choose a Reputable automotive SEO Firm.