Dealer Rating Site CoolAid

Car dealers are being force fed participation at dealer rating sites.  Many are even paying to be represented there.  As an automotive SEO consultant I advise clients to own all of the first 10 positions in the search engine results pages for their names and not to let properties they do not control to enter that space.

After seeing the presentation at the Drivingsales Executive Summit by Joe Orr touting his success using dealer rating sites there has been some coverage in the blogosphere about it.  Brina Pasch did an article about Dick Hanna Honda and touched on their success of receiving 189 calls from these rating site properties.  In my opinion it would be better for dealers to control all of the first page of google for their name.

I will be doing another post soon about different ways for dealers to control these listings, one thing that they can do is set up a blog like we have done for Doug Henry Chevrolet.

Technorati Tags: dealership blogs, search engine reputation management

Are vendors missing it in the Blosphere

I have only witnessed a few good blogs from vendors in the automotive industry.  Major institutions are missing it bad. (Article I did about this).

Here is a list of important blogs in my opinion:

• Our website is set up on a blog platform and concentrates on automotive seo strategies.   We provide tactical information without a pitch.  Of course I would include it in this list.
  
• Activengage's blog that discusses many things not just dealer chat.
• Many of the participants on the Drivingsales Blog there is a good mix of content like this story about paid dealer reviews, while at the same time many who contribute still write a whole lot of nothing.
• Jeff Kershner's Dealerrefresh is not vendor created but is supported by vendor advertisers.  Lots of good information there too and should not be left out.

Please comment and leave your suggestions as well.

Supporting Sites - Testing Technology for Used Car Marketing

Everybody has heard of social bookmarking that has spent more than a week trying to market products and services online.  It is a well know fact that bookmarking expirable links may have some negative implications with some of the larger sites like digg.com.  A good friend of ours who is well known in social media is completely against any form of automation and we tend to agree however we could not resist to run the test anyway.

We created a site that imports feeds of used cars and republishes links in a bookmarked fashion and another that focuses on any type of automotive news and direct auto auctions.  They appear to be sending a decent amount of traffic to the places we chose to send it while others have been slow to index.  They are slow to index because they are not on a well known cms, however we have enough link equity to push around from our automotive seo properties it should work out ok.

Practice What We Preach - Own Our Terms in the Search Engines

Our goal for our automotive seo clients is to own the first page of google for their important money terms. One of ours happens to be the term automotive seo and right now the competiton is fierce for that search engine entry. Two of our competitors, who happen to also be allies, pretty much have the from page of google for the term with us only having one entry.

While owning this obscure search engine term, automotive seo, is nothing more than bragging rights because it is a very low volume search query. Bragging rights are good though. We will create other pieces of marketing collateral to help us convert what traffic does come in on that term, using a variety of different technologies.

We will outline how this unfolds on this blog as well as discuss other things that as they apply to dealer marketing and marketing to car dealers across the country.

Technorati Tags: automotive seo, dealer marketing