Car Dealer SEO Online - Local Business in Trouble
The Online Car Dealership is in trouble.
Many of the same warnings made here to Car Dealers, go double for local business owners who frequently invest even LESS than car dealerships in their local internet presence.
Car Dealers are losing trust online and freely handing it over to Third Party companies such as "Edmunds, Autotrader, Autobytel and more".
These companies take the moral high ground in the battle for the Shopper confidence by making the individual Car Dealership look like the bad guy.
These websites feed into the negative history of car dealers, and promote "Insider Tips" on how to beat the Car Dealer at his own game.
Car Dealerships ares put into a situation where the very same websites they pay for listings, are slamming them, capturing the car dealers traffic, and then reselling the car dealer the information..
These websites have become so popular that in many cases, when someone uses a search engine to find a specific car dealership, they are instead greeted by information from Edmunds, Autotrader, , or another third party site.
As mentioned before, these third party websites, acting on the "moral high ground" against car dealerships, then turn around and sell customer information in the form of "leads".
The Online Car Dealership is in serious trouble.
These companies are ranking very well on YOUR keywords. Those are the keywords that people use on search engines to find your dealership or its vehicles.
When other companies are able to inject themselves above you on the search engines, stealing customers who were initially looking for you, and then CHARGING YOU to contact them, you need to take action.
Automotive SEO sets a clear path to do so. With an effective car dealer SEO campaign, it's possible to dislodge these third party websites and to surpass your local competition.
Note: While this article is geared towards Car Dealerships and Automotive SEO - Local Business Owners should take notice as many of the same things occurring to Car Dealers Online is happening to Restaurants, Stores and Local Contractors.
Today, the modern car dealership is in serious peril. They are in danger of becoming obsolete online. SEO for Automotive websites is almost unheard of at the dealership level.
Car dealerships have stopped building THEIR BRAND and NAME online, and have left this to tech savvy interlopers. Having a Managed SEO solution to build a car dealerships brand online is vital, but few car dealers are doing it.
You might wonder why, but there are several reasons there is resistance to Car Dealer SEO in the Automotive industry.
(1) Competition is overwhelming!
For any car dealership, this is a defeatist attitude. This type of thinking would never be allowed in any other medium outside the Internet.
The truth is, it is competitve because you are viewing the Automotive SEO across the entire internet and search engines instead of locally.
People don't just search for "new hyundai", or "new volkswagen" they search for "hyundai cincinnati ", or "volkswagen dealership orlando". The trick with Automotive SEO is to find as many of these localized searches, and target them directly. A search term used in a general fashion will be way more competetive than a locally targeted keyword.
(2) It's Too Expensive
While a lot of this should be considered in terms of ROI, admittedly it can seem like a big expenditure for something someone is not familiar with. A several thousand dollars is not something every dealer can afford it justify for Car Dealership SEO. That's why the majority of traditional SEO companies ignore Automotive dealer SEO.
As a Car Dealership Try to imagine it this way....
How much do you think it would cost to run one commercial on cable.
A couple thousand at least to just make the commercial, much less to make it TV quality and pay for the air-time.
Then, you need to ensure that the people watching your cable commercial at that perfect moment, are actually the customers you need to sell to. You can use this same analogy for Radio advertisements as well.
Mailers are a little cheaper, but how many people
even read the advertisements sent to them in the mail? The return on a mailer is far below 1%. On the other hand, when someone searches, they are already seeking out information to make a purchase.
Our Monthly Automotive SEO has a lower cost relative to other forms of advertising, while also yielding a greater ROI.
(3) We've already had our website optimized
Years ago the accepted practice in traditional SEO was to heavily optimize a website during
the design phase or immediately after launch. There was a time when this was enough,
this is no longer true.
Here are reasons why our Managed SEO campaign is better:
Your website has changed. Unless you have never made a change on your webpage:
(which is a disaster in itself since we know that search engines add weight to websites that
are fresh and offer new content on a regular basis) then the optimizations previously made have lost effect.
Perhaps your website has changed direction, or you have added new custom content. All of these factors cause your past optimizations to lose strength. On a web site that is sales related, that offers fresh
content on a regular basis, constant monitoring and refinement is a must.
Worse, if there is a major overhaul or changed needed to your website, your are held captive
by your past SEO or risk losing it's already declining benefits if you want to keep rank
Your competition isn't standing still. The websites that succeed and lock in top positions
on the search engines make SEO and achieving higher rankings a priority. They offer up a great
deal of fresh, optimized content, and more importantly they are able to react and initiate changes.
Anyone in business knows that to succeed, you must take an aggressive, pro-active approach.
So why then do so many websites sit back after a single optimization and expect to stay competitive. If it doesn't work in the brick and mortar world, what would lead one to believe
it works online? It doesn't...
Search engines evolve, and change on a rapid basis. Search Engines use complex algorithms to
determine if a website is truly relevant to its keyword search terms. A website that does not
keep up with these new technologies will quickly slip off the front pages to websites that do
keep up.
(4) We have managed SEO through, Insert "dealer solutions provider here."
Most dealers use companies that coin the term "Dealer Solutions Provider", (aka vendors) who sell
them a long list of products. This is especially true of Internet services. They provide internet
web site hosting, vehicle management software, email programs with customer tracking,
custom web design, search engine marketing, do-it-yourself web design tools that are so easy
even a child could use them..... the list goes on and on...
Oh, of course.. some of them also provide SEO.
Most of these vendors, started using SEO as a very high profit upsell, or they will bundle it
with their web hosting packages to make them seem more attractive.
With the exception of a handful few these providers are overwhelmed with car dealerships, frequently offering SEO services to Dealerships competing in the same market.
Another possible issue is that
much of the content offered by these providers with few exceptions, are based on template designs, which means they are very cookie-cutter in appearance... so much so that many dealer websites
using default content, have the EXACT same text as their competitors.
These companies do not focus on SEO as their primary service. They will sell a website to every dealer in the area, with
nearly identical sales and SEO content. In fact, they would happily sell a web solution to every dealer
in the world if they could, and there's nothing wrong with that.. expect that they are not invested in a dealers success.... so long as their competitors keep paying as well.
We focus entirely on Managed Monthly SEO and content management. We don't provide hosting, web design, or any
of the other 30 or 40 services these companies try to juggle. They are a jack of all trades,
but we are master of one.
We put your website out in front, and build bridges so that people looking for your services and products, can find you.
Running an SEO campaign is like running a war with the Internet as the battleground. How can you
trust a company doing SEO to have your best interests in mind, if they are aiding your competitors
as well?
(5) We tried it with another company in the past and it didn't work
Search engine optimization absolutely works. BUT, it's not easy at all. In most cases, it requires a professional with many years of experience to get the job done.
The automotive industry is worse.
The reason most dealers don't know about Automotive SEO, is because many traditional SEO firms who might otherwise be marketing to them don't! Why don't they approach dealership's? Automotive SEO is HARD for SEO Companies! Automotive SEO is unlike nearly all other industries online.
Search Engine Optimization firms do not approach car dealerships for SEO Because they use strategies for optimization that DONT WORK FOR CAR DEALERS!
This is important so it bears Repeating! - Car dealer websites are unlike ANY other website on the Internet. Automotive SEO is difficult to those without an Automotive & SEO background.
(6) The Real Challenges of Automotive SEO for Car Dealers
CHANGE-
They have a high frequency of change because of the rapid pace in the sales schedule of a car dealership. Car Dealer websites feature a series of constant specials and promotions that rotate on a weekly or daily basis!
Hence the traditional model of "a single optimization" quickly loses effect - up to 50 times faster than a regular non-automotive website.
This will causes extremely disappointing results.
BRUTAL HONESTY
The fact is this: People don't like car dealers.
People DO NOT like Car Dealerships, they have a bad reputation associated with them even though 99% of them don't deserve it.
Because of this, people on the Internet that own websites don't want to associate with them. - Many traditional firms rely on 'link building' to help websites get indexed and increase their rankings.
This is extremely difficult with car dealers, because... well frankly, most website owners don't see any value in being associated with a car dealership.
Even using strategies such as blog posts, social networking sites, social bookmarking, all of these stratgies are difficult to execute with a localized car dealership.
Car dealers serve their local communities - A handful of dealers sell cars across the country, others sell regionally, a few more will sell statewide, but the vast majority, will sell cars to their local immediate area.
Plus remember that even those dealers that do sell nationally, the majority of their advertising is focused on the local market.
Most SEO providers are themselves web businesses that have sprouted into something more.
The majority of their business and marketing is geared towards online businesses like themselves, not
local brick and mortar stores with actual physical locations.
Since car dealers serve their local communities, SEO must be done for the car dealerships to reflect that.
(7) Car Dealer SEO has a simple Goal.
To attract local customers, and the customers of surrounding cities.
Getting listed in surrounding cities means that they have an opportunity to sell customers they otherwise not could not.
A Dealer who has had poor experiences with SEO in the past, probably had a traditional firm or
someone who was not familiar with Automotive SEO.
The flipside is that they signed on with a "dealer solutions provider" that used cookie cutter tactics, and pitted them against their own customers in a conflict of interest.
Automotive SEO is necessary if car dealerships want to reassert themselves and take control of their future in these difficult times.
Currently there better way of improving your visibility, brand identity, or website traffic at such a low cost then having a Monthly SEO solution.
For Car Dealers, it's Automotive SEO or bust.
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