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Knowledge, news, and more about Automotive SEO, SEM, and dealership websites
In Search Engine Marketing (PPC)

Change to Google’s Quality Score Algorithm Affects Car Dealers

For those out that use Google AdWords for your auto dealer website, this is big news.  After some testing in foreign markets, Google has announced that they are changing the algorithm used to determine the Quality Score of PPC ads to give landing page quality more weight.

According to Jonathan Alferness, director of product management on Google’s ad quality team, Google wants their advertisers to focus on relevance and “choose a landing page…that is both relevant to the keywords that you’re targeting and also a good experience for end users.”

This algorithm change will “result in better quality experience for the users” and those ads with a high quality, relevant landing page will get a “strong boost” upward in the auction.

Now more than ever, your dealership can’t afford to ignore where you’re sending your PPC traffic.  Having a webpage that uses relevant keywords and gives users the content and experience that they are expecting from clicking on your ad will reduce the cost per click your dealership is paying.

Do you know where you’re sending your PPC traffic?

In Mobile

A Different Take on Call Tracking

I recently wrote about how important it is to keep the NAP (name, address, phone number) the same across all local listing sites.  Typically this isn’t a problem, but if your dealership wants to use tracking numbers for auto dealer website, you usually won’t be able to keep your NAP the same across the board.

Luckily, a call measurement firm, Telmetrics, has a solution that can help with that, especially for mobile users.  Their product, m.Call, uses an icon or button to track the call, instead of a separate phone number.  Essentially, users will click or touch the icon or button which initiates the tracking process and calls your dealership.

Since m.Call doesn’t involve adding/buying/renting additional phone numbers, the cost for this type of call tracking is less expensive than most.  Also, the company uses a pay for performance pricing model, so instead of a fixed fee, your dealership only pays each time someone clicks the icon.

While this product is probably more effective for mobile devices (I haven’t seen the actual numbers), I see this growing.  With the increase in tablet computers, laptops with microphones, and even desktop computers having touch screen technology, I think people will embrace the “touch to call” more and more.

Is anyone using something like this?  What about traditional call tracking for your local listings?

In Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Setting Up Local Listings in Search Engines (Besides Google)

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).

In Best Practices

Protect Your Dealership from Being Marked “Closed” on Google Places

What is designed to be a way for users to let Google know when a business has been closed is, in some cases, being abused by local competitors.  Since it is so easy to mark a business closed in Google Places, some business are being tagged as closed when they aren’t.  When enough people mark a business as closed, Google will review whether or not this is true, though their review process isn’t public.

Google seems to be doing what they can to address the issue.  In the past, an interim notification would appear on the Google Places page, “Reported to Be Closed”, which users could mark as “Not True”.  However, imagine if someone came looking for your dealership online and was greeted with that message.  The chances of them investigating whether or not that was actually true are slim–they would just head to the next dealership.  Luckily, Google no longer shows this interim message, and will only show a business as closed once reviewed.

To help protect your business from having this happen, make sure your dealership follows Google Local Places best practices like:

Claim Your Google Places Page: This ensures your dealership has control over their own listing.  If you haven’t, go to your Places Page, and in the top right corner you’ll see a link that says “business owner?”.  Follow the steps to claim your page.

Check the Email Listed: Google will attempt to verify with the email address listed with the Places Page when a business is marked as closed.  If you don’t respond, you may just be out of luck.

Update Your Listing Often: The more often you’re adding reviews, keeping products and hours up to date, etc, the less likely someone will be able to get away with marking your business as closed without it looking suspicious.

Has anyone had trouble with your dealership being marked as closed?  What did you do to fix the issue?

In Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Site Not Ranking as Well as You’d Like? Check With Google

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?

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