Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

For the most part, search engine optimization (SEO) is a recognized necessity of running a successful auto dealer website.  Not just in the auto industry, but there are still some hold-outs that think building websites and content to be found by search engines is a little spammy.

According to Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s web spam fighting team, his company does not consider SEO to be spam.  “We don’t consider SEO to be spam,” and SEO is a “valid way to help people find what they’re looking for via search engines”.  While he does denounce black hat SEO tactics, Cutts emphasizes that Google’s goal is to return the best possible search results they can, and sites with quality SEO help them achieve that goal.

So the next time someone tries to tell you that SEO is spammy, direct them to this video, and then hopefully to your search engine optimized auto dealership website at the top of Google page 1.

While many dealers see press releases as a marketing strategy for larger companies, it can be (and is) a valuable and worthwhile strategy for auto dealerships as well.  It’s a great way to get news about your company out both locally and nationally.  Press releases can make their way into both local and national news sources, helping your dealership brand itself within the community, as well as show up more often and higher on the search engine result pages.

Here are some ways your dealership can get the most out of each press release you create:

Put in on your dealership website.  If you have a blog, this is a great place to add dealership news in the form of a press release.

Link back to your auto dealer website when fitting.  Some press release sites use no-follow or don’t allow links, but most local new sites and your own site should definitely use keyword-optimized anchor text to link back to your website.

Don’t assume local news websites will pick up the press release on their own–send it to them.  Make sure that you’re only sending press releases about newsworthy items, though, or your contacts will learn to quickly dismiss your future press releases.  Also, put links on your social media sites.

Press releases can be a great tool for search engine optimization when done properly.  Does anyone use press releases as a tool in their dealership to get out news or add to your search engine results?

Most people tend to focus a lot of their local search engine marketing for their auto dealer website on Google Places.  While it’s true that a lot, if not most, of your search  traffic comes from Google, it’s still important to make sure your dealership is properly optimized for the other major players as well.

Here are directions to set up a free local business presence on both Yahoo and Bing:

Yahoo

Create a Yahoo account for your auto dealership.  While signed in, go to Yahoo Search Marketing and click “sign up”.  Make sure you enter all of your business information including name, address, phone number, and hours.  The preview page lets you edit or submit; click submit once all the information is accurate.

Bing

Click “get started now” in the Bing Business Portal.  You’ll have to check to make sure your business isn’t already listed, so enter your dealership’s information when asked.  If not already there, enter all business information, then verify your dealership.  Bing also allows you to add photos and deals (coupons) for free.

Make sure the details you enter into these and any other local search directory (Yellowpages, Yelp, etc) match those you have listed in Google Places.  The first rule of local directory consistency is to focus on NPA:

–Name – Your business name needs to EXACTLY match across all of these properties

–Phone – Your phone # (hopefully local phone number) should EXACTLY match across all of
these properties.

–Address – Your business address should EXACTLY match across all of these properties.

Having consistent dealership data across the Internet will help each rank higher than those dealerships that don’t.  Also, use related keywords as much as possible (as long as they are relevant).

If you aren’t happy with the way your dealership website is performing in terms of search engine results (and you aren’t violating Google’s webmaster guidelines), you can ask Google to “reconsider” your site.  Essentially, you can ask Google to take a look at your site to see if it was manually marked as spam.

Over the years, Google has improved this process to make it more transparent.  After submitting a site, Google will let the webmaster know that they received the request and when the request is processed.

Now, if your website has been found to be affected by a manual spam action, Google will let you know and whether or not they are able to revoke that action.  They will also let the webmaster know if the site is in violation of their guidelines.  If your website isn’t ranking poorly due to either of these two issues, Google may let you know.

If you have questions about why your dealership website isn’t ranking as well as you’d like, I suggest talking to your car dealership website provider before submitting your site to Google for review.  They should be able to help you decide if your site just has poor SEO, or if something more serious is going on.  Has anyone ever used this tool from Google?  If so, what were the results?

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.