Tag Archives: search engine optimization
Expert SEO - How to Spot Reputable SEO Firms and Avoid the Scams
Posted on 25. Feb, 2009 by admin.
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.
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Automotive Website Link Building and SEO
Posted on 24. Feb, 2009 by admin.
Link building is related to SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Website Spiders crawl the looking for inventory, data, information, specials, and keywords. Search Engines like Google are looking for good unique content, and also websites that drive traffic to your dealership site or blog. The more links, and the more valuable links from important and highly creditble websites, the better the SEO rating for your site.
Link building is a fairly simple manner of getting your dealership’s name out there on the web, with links back to your important pages. There are many paid services who will submit your website’s URL to many different web directories or sites, but you must be careful not to spam Google or you could suffer some dire consequences
Contact us for more information or to learn how many links your dealership currently has, and how you can increase your dealerships Automotive SEO rankings.
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Think Small for your Automotive Marketing Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Posted on 31. Dec, 2008 by admin.
The big automotive marketing companies think big, act big, make big deals with the manufacturers. Major marketing contracts are negotiated on the manufacturers (dealership’s?) behalf and the best automotive website and marketing solutions are chosen based on some factors that occur behind closed doors without dealership involvement, intervention, or say in the matter.
However, when the big marketing company represents YOU and also ALL of your local competitors, who benefits the most? How does the Internet, Google, the manufacturer, and this big automotive internet marketing company decide who will rank #1 on Google for “Honda New Jersey” or “Houston Honda Dealer”? You paid your money just like the other 10 guys in your market, but why is the other guy beating you in the search results when you have made the same investment, paid the same bill, to the same manufacturer or vendor?
Who will get the #1 spot? Will it be the big Chevy dealer or the little Chevy dealer who wins in Google? Is money a factor, luck, favoritism? Is it first in first on top?
Well, some of these questions can be put aside because here are some good points to ask the “big web developers” or “largest automotive marketing firms” in the US when they ask for your business…
A few questions to ask the Large automotive marketing companies
1) How do you get me ranked higher than my competitor, when we both use the same exact site and SEO?
2) Am I allowed to choose the phrases I want to win in the search engines and if so what exactly will you do to ensure that I get there, and how much will it cost?
3) What comes for free and what is extra, regarding search engine optimization and SEO-based keywords?
4) What can I do, and what tools are at my disposal to self-manage my destiny on the Internet or has my fate already been decided when you signed the deal with automotive-marketing-company.com?
These are some tough questions that will make the big guys squirm because they really, truly have no alternative but to dodge the question or provide you with some lip service. “You’ve always been my favorite, you’re the best, we will get you #1 for what you need”, etc etc”. Just sign here on the dotted line… They are hoping you do not check, forget about it, or in a few months will let you know they are working on it, hoping to buy more time. Chances are good that your personal account rep will have left within 6 months anyway so all feelings of the sweet whisperings will slowly turn into a feeling of rage.
The Benefits of a smaller automotive marketing company are large:
1) We serve you, the client and do not have major conflicts of interest like the 500 pound gorillas do.
2) We can hand-craft a marketing plan that matches your exact needs to sell the cars you want to sell.
3) We move fast, have no red tape to cut through, and are on the forefront of the most current marketing techniques because we use them for ourselves. We talk the talk and walk the walk.
4) We do not have to cater to the manufacturers and limit your website, microsites, pay per click marketing, or automotive Search engine optimization to specific demands (unless co-op is involved of course)
Picture yourself for a moment inside a supermarket, in front of the ice cream freezer. There are 40 choices but the flavor is only vanilla. Who determines which vanilla ice cream container is placed in front? When you choose a major automotive web site marketer who also handles 39 other dealers in your DMA, what is the likelihood that you will be the ice cream in the front of the freezer?
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Automotive Internet Marketing with Bad Data
Posted on 13. Dec, 2008 by admin.
Last week we discovered that one of our automotive search marketing dealers was making decisions on how to spend their internet marketing money off of bad website Analytic data. We do not handle the website, but we help them review their analytics and uncover the piles of waste and reallocate that to the proper areas. After months of question and answer Pure dealer.com discovered that this major web company was counting all website management and setup time as part of the site visitation, page visit, bounce rate, and page views. This may sound like a small thing, but the data was off by nearly half since it accounted for the entire time that this developer spent setting up and configuring the website.
When you are trying to determine where you automotive marketing internet investment should go, you need to track it and rely on good data. The fact that the data was based off of a web providers “home grown” version of Google Analytics was enough for us to smell something fishy from day one.
This web provider also took credit for all automotive pay per click traffic we generated and renamed it “Organic” which is a very deceiving tactic, although they will not admit it. Requests for raw log files to analyze the data have gone unanswered. They also did not properly track the search engine optimization we did nor recognize the sources of traffic that we know were brought to specific pages on the dealer’s website.
It’s tough enough being a car dealer right now without having your automotive internet marketing arm fighting against your dealer website provider. Do yourself a favor and get an unbiased Analytic tool in your site like Google Analytics.
We have put this into dealer.com websites as well as bzresults websites, tkcarsites, and numerous others or have been given access to read what is already in some of these sites.
Take charge of your advertising budget and do not get bullied by providers that refuse to comply. We would be happy to give you free advise on your statistics and your marketing budget. Give us a call and bring your marketing and advertising to a new level.
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Automotive Search Optimization
Posted on 08. Dec, 2008 by admin.
Many Automotive Internet marketing companies have shown that Organic search engine optimization is far more reliable in long-term, whereas PPC is reliable for companies who want to achieve top rankings on the natural ranking of organic search engine optimization, which helps to generate more traffic, and more revenues from your dealership web page.
Automotive PPC is emerging as a powerful form of Internet Marketing as Search Engine Optimization can be achieved over a period of time. Search Engine Marketing is a paid service offered for short term solutions. Many successful Car dealers and other automotive Business services are becoming aware of the recent years, and rest are focusing on the long term benefits of going through Organic Search OR SEO.
Automotive Internet Marketing uses both the power of Search Engine Optimization, Search Marketing, and other tools to help get more automotive leads.
Studies have emerged, helping business owners to kickstart their business from Google, yahoo, and other search engines. Search engine optimization is emerging as a new era of Online Business science, which can generate 60% of your traffic alone from search engines like google, and is bound to increase in the coming few years.
In the broader perception it has helped to build several successful automotive business portals online including such Powerhouses as Autotrader or CarsDirect or cars.com.
Search engine optimization is farther categorized into other categories including organic search, blog marketing, and ePress releases. Some would say social networking is a form of Automotive SEO. Organic Search engine optimization depends on major search engines either and the labour of your efforts and automotive search optmization (SEO) experts.
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Automotive Search Engine Marketing - keep it simple
Posted on 04. Dec, 2008 by admin.
Automotive Search Engine Marketing is a complex concept for some, but can be simplified into various components to make it more easily digestible. Here are the two main categories of search engine marketing for automotive dealers. These are not all the variations of it and do not account for services such as automotive blogs, automotive epress releases, car dealer social networking or other automotive marketing ideas.
Automotive Search Marketing
This is also known as pay per click or in some cases Google Adwords. This is in nutshell, paying for placement or online advertising.
Automotive Search Engine Optimization
This is what many dealers call the “free Google listings” or what appears as the search results on a search engine. It is often called Automotive SEO or car dealer search engine placement, or you may ask Google to tell you some “car dealer search engine ideas“.
Marketing your dealership to the search engines is a very important concept but also, and often, involves a good dealer web site design to make sure that the automotive search traffic you receive will vonvert. Your goal is to become your own automotive lead provider through proper automotive search engine optimization and marketing.
If you want a Free Automotive Marketing Analysis contact us and we will review your site, your search optimization visibility and provide you with some great reporting at no charge.
cforms contact form by delicious:days
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Automotive search marketing domination simplified
Posted on 26. Sep, 2008 by admin.
Alright, you want to dominate automotive search marketing right? Yeah or course you do. Take a number and line up with the rest of the car dealers, manufacturers, lead providers, SEO companies, and every other small and large business in America.
The good news is, you can become a dominant search engine marketing expert (or at least hire an automotive seo company such as us). The bad news is, it will take a lot of work, effort, time, sweat, and tears.
As with all automotive advertising, it can be broken down into a few simple parts (yes, go ahead and grill me if I left one out).
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The message
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The media
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The market
Many dealers leave one part, or several parts of this message out. (ie: Let’s buy tons of radio ads and only radio ads!)
In the automotive search marketing space, dealers want it all. They want to win all keywords, on all search engines, with every possible phrase that they can think of at all times under all conditions. Organic listings, paid listings, maps, videos, you name it. If it lists on Google, or Yahoo, my dealership should be there.
Can this be done? Sure given enough of the aforementioned money, time, effort. In reality it is unlikely to win every keyword, on every square pixel of the Internet.
So let’s get back to the point.
The message: What is your ad? What are you selling? Is it compelling enough to get a customer to take action? Do you have a generic “Visit my dealer, lots on sale, click here” sort of ad or are you posting specific hot deals on cars in stock with actionable information? What “keywords” are part of this message? The message is automotive marketing in it’s essense. Without a good message or offer, you are almost dead in the water.
The media: What search engines/networks/social sites/blogs/press release organizations do you have to choose from, and which are most important? Do you know? Have you tested them with a good message? Do you track them? What is the conversion rate from each source? Bounce rate? Which brings more “new visitors” than the other source?
The market: Who are you marketing to? Are you a Florida auto dealer trying to sell new Chevy’s to California? (Yes, we’ve seen it) Are you selling to a male or female audience? What is their demographic? Are you going for your backyard or DMA or east of the Missisippi? Whether you choose organic or paid search marketing for your dealership does indeed have an impact on the market.
All of the above are important questions that need to me asked whether you are setting up an automotive marketing search campaign, ppc campaign, writing an electronic press release, or even updating meta tags on your website.
We have found a nice combination of message, market, and media that works for automotive search. Stay tuned for the “map” of how to tie it all together.
automotive marketing map
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What Makes a Good Car dealer website design?
Posted on 09. Sep, 2008 by admin.
What elements make a dealership website work?
Well this could be a huge list but let’s focus on a few things but start with the basics,
Very often, unless you are utilizing automotive landing pages, microsites, or squeeze pages, you are driving your Internet customers to your homepage. Of all pages on your site, which one needs to be the most convincing, the most compelling, with all the best deals, offers, and enticements that your dealership can offer? Yes, you guessed it right, the home page. Hook em on the homepage and they will move forward. The back button is only a half second away.
OK so what are the mandatory pieces of what should be on the homepage?
1) DEALS
2) PHONE NUMBER
3) INVENTORY
4) EASY NAVIGATION
This is in no particular order, but if you visit your website or any website for that matter, check to see if it has these basic elements.
Below is an example of a design that incorporates these pieces in a very clear manner.
dealer website designer
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Automotive Services
Posted on 02. Sep, 2008 by admin.
Click for Automotive Services Slideshow
Pure Dealer.com automotive marketing packages are all invclusive, not just pieces of a whole, and we offer not a byte more than you can eat. We drive the right traffic, at the right time, and make it convert into a lead. Then, we track it all to put a value on your investments and help you get the ROI you are seeking. It’s time to make a change. Click Next or jump directly to eMarketing, Dealer Websites, Accountability, or Contact Us. Below is a partial list of our automotive marketing services:
Automotive Search Engine Marketing (pay per click)
Automotive Organic Search Optimization (SEO)
Automotive Blog development (search optimized blogs)
electronic Press Release (ePR)
Dealer Website Optimization
Inventory Marketing on Craigslist and other Automotive marketing sites
eMail Marketing for Service, Acquisition customers
MicroSite Development
Landing Page Development
Custom Dealer Website development
Dealer Analysis and Analytics
Call Tracking Services
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Websites
Posted on 20. Aug, 2008 by admin.
Lead-harvesting Custom Dealer Web Sites
car dealer website designers
For nearly 10 years PureDealer has been developing the most retail-focused dealer websites. Our only goal is to turn every website visitor into a lead. Surprisingly, industry standards have an extremely low conversion ratio, which results in only a small fraction of customers giving up their contact information. PureDealer has tested hundreds of site configurations, designs, and tools to come up with our lead-harvesting custom car dealer websites. Contact us for pricing and options. We offer:
Custom automotive Designs including Multimedia sites
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- The nation’s fastest build-your-car
- More photos and better brochures for every vehicle including 360 degree photos of interior and exteriors standard
- Automatic site updates including rebates, incentives, inventory, specials
- CarMercials: Auto dealers first and only interactive car commercials on the web that drive ups to the showroom
Dealer websites that sell more cars
If you are tired of flash sites that do nothing but have a bunch of popping links, honking horns, flashing buttons, then ask us for a demo. Although we feel Flash is an important component of making an exciting dealer website, it is not a crutch to lean on. Put the deals, specials, and offers where your customers can see them, and sell more from your dealer site.
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