Archive for the 'SEO Tips' Category

Understanding Your Dealership’s Bounce Rate

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dlux
on December 24, 2008
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Website Bounce Rate ExplainedBounce rate is a significant concern for many car dealers, and rightfully so. It plays a significantly part in indicating your website’s ability to satisfy the needs of it’s users, and to some degree could even affect rankings. But in many cases, what may be considered a troublesome bounce rate could indicate that your website is actually driving leads.

Bounce is the percentage of visitors that visit a page of your website for only a few seconds before immediately leaving. The bounce rate of visitors from both organic and paid search can help to measure the quality of traffic your website or marketing efforts are bringing in. High quality traffic, such as those who are actively looking for a nearby car dealership, are less likely to bounce than someone who lives two states away that accidentally clicked on your ad or organic listing.

Ideally, the lower the bounce rate the better. As mentioned above, it means more qualified traffic is being sent to your site. But a low bounce rate is also an indicator of the quality of content you provide on your site. For example, if you were searching for used cars Nashville, you most likely would want to see a page with used car inventory, rather than a page about financing or some other unrelated topic.

Google defines bounce rate as follows from the Google Analytics product documentation:

Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits (i.e. visits in which the person left your site from the entrance page). Bounce rate is a measure of visit quality and a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance (landing) pages aren’t relevant to your visitors.

While there are numerous rankings factors taken into account both on-site and off-site, it’s also likely that ranking factors are also present from within the SERPs. Google is able to assess data from within their own results, and it’s likely that this includes bounce rate. Bounce rate can also easily be assessed from Google’s popular products, such as the Google toolbar or Google Analytics. This metric can also be measured by how many times the same user visits the search engine.

How can my dealership’s bounce rate be lowered?

As already mentioned, a high bounce rate is generally a sign of two things. First, the quality of the webpage may be low, meaning the usability is poor or there’s simply a lack of quality, engaging content. Secondly, bounce rate may be a sign of unqualified traffic being delivered to the site, such as from a PPC campaign that needs more refined targeting.

Tailoring landing pages to a specific purpose or keyword will also be crucial for reducing bounce rate and improving conversion. For example, if someone is searching for new floor mats for their Toyota Tundra, why not send them to a designated Toyota accessories webpage rather than a generic Service page?

Refining your content and landing pages will not only reduce bounce rate in most cases, but you can also expect more organic search traffic, especially for low-volume, high-converting long-tail search terms.

Although bounce rate may play a very minor role in rankings, and generally can indicate low user engagement, the metric can often be misleading. While quality content remains crucial for any website, a car dealer’s website serves a very utilitarian purpose. To that effect, many bounces can result from users immediately finding your dealership’s phone number to schedule a service appointment. Others may perform a search for Detroit Chevrolet dealers simply to get the address of the nearest Chevy dealer in order to check out their new car inventory in person. Although those two scenarios may result in bounces in your statistics, those users may have converted and become customers anyway.

While bounce rate is an important metric, it can often be perceived as a bigger red flag than it should be as a certain amount of bounces are simply inevitable. When it comes to the car business, leads and sales are everything, and sometimes having what looks to be a high bounce rate may be an indication of your website doing exactly what it’s supposed to be doing - driving people to your dealership. Continue reading ‘Understanding Your Dealership’s Bounce Rate’

Deconstructing Your SEO

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dlux
on December 23, 2008
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Take Apart Your Current SEO EffortsTaking an audit of your website’s SEO performance is a good measure of determining where you stand and where you can expect to go. Many SEO companies offer website audits, and many perform continual website audits to benchmark and gauge ongoing SEO efforts. But what exactly should be included within a website audit?

A checkup of your website’s SEO can certainly help build an idea of how your SEO efforts are working. Just as routine maintenance and checkups are required on a car, doing an audit of your website can easily give insight into what needs to be done and perhaps what needs a little more attention. As an SEO strategy is usually a long-term commitment, an audit can help you see where you stand in search rankings, how you stack up against competitors, and what direction you should be taking with your keyword targeting and continuing goals.

There are valuable questions that you should be asking to help identify which direction your website performance is heading. Which keywords are you ranking well for, which keywords you aren’t ranking for, which competitors are ranking more aggressively than you, which competitors are dominating within your local region? These are just some of the questions that should be asked.

Taking a look at how your car dealership is ranking is valuable for a number of reasons. First, you may be completely new to the world of SEO and you may want to evaluate if it’s something that’s right for your marketing mix. Maybe you’ve already started an SEO campaign, but need a little more intelligence to guide your decision making. Another possibility is that you want to evaluate where your next steps should be. Lastly, an SEO audit can also give you peace of mind, and let you know what opportunities lay in front of you.

Deconstructing your current SEO efforts, or lack thereof, can be helpful in shedding a little light on your existing online presence. You certainly don’t need an audit to tell you what you already know. But if your dealership is new to search, or perhaps if it has been a while since you last addressed your SEO standings, you may find out that an audit can identify whether you’re rock solid in the SERPs or whether you’re on shaky ground. Continue reading ‘Deconstructing Your SEO’

SEO Remains Synonymous With Change

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dlux
on December 22, 2008
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One of the most exciting parts of working in the field of search engine optimization is that search is constantly changing, and there are always new tools, tactics, and developments to keep abreast of. Among the latest of these changes is Google’s new SearchWiki product. In a nutshell, SearchWiki lets users customize their personal search queries by giving them the ability either promote sites they like and find valuable, or remove sites that they don’t find particularly useful or relevant.

Google's New SearchWiki

This is a big change to how users interact with Google results. Although this product is for personal use only, and does not impact global rankings, the notion that SearchWiki will someday be used to influence rankings is not completely outside the realm of possibility. As such, plenty of search marketers have voiced concern about the impact this will have on SEO campaigns.

Google and the other engines have introduced plenty of changes over the years that have been perceived to dramatically affect SEO’s, such as the infamous Florida update. Despite all of these changes, including SearchWiki, the foundation of SEO has remained relatively stable.

Websites still need to have optimal accessibility for spiders, they still need to have pages that are geared towards important keywords that searchers will be using, they still need quality content that will provide users with value, and inbound links still are used as indicators of what other people, and other websites, think about your website. These are all ranking factors that have remained relatively constant in the ever-changing world of SEO. Because these factors have managed to stick around and maintain their weight on rankings, it’s important that they shouldn’t be overlooked amid new buzz-worthy tactics. Although new tactics, tools, and methodologies will continue to transform SEO and related Internet marketing disciplines, it’s crucial not to overlook the simple things. Continue reading ‘SEO Remains Synonymous With Change’

Internet Marketing Still Works in a Bad Economy

Published
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dlux
on October 10, 2008
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Few businesses have felt the effects of the current economic slowdown like car dealers. The reason is obvious since car dealers rely on credit to run their business, and the credit crisis is putting increasing strain on their operations. In addition to problems in the credit industry, auto sales are down across the board, and specific segments such as the truck and SUV categories are hit the hardest due to rising gas prices, among other constraints.

Stalled Truck Inventory The National Automobile Dealers Association has also made the prediction that hundreds of dealerships will go out of business by the end of the year, prompting many local dealerships to remain unenthusiastic about the current economic environment.

With everything happening in regards to consumer spending and the economy, not to mention failing banks, high jobless rates, and federal and state budget problems, there remain factors to remain optimistic about.

Innovating internet marketing still provides a solid foundation for a dealership to promote itself and drive leads. Online marketing also provides a foundation for networking, branding, communicating with your community in a cost effective manner. In addition, internet strategies are more trackable and measurable than traditional media tactics.

There are endless reasons to still consider boosting your internet marketing efforts in the slowdown:

Be found where car buyers are searching. This is perhaps the best reason for boosting search visibility, whether it’s via paid or organic listings. If buyers in your area are actively looking for what you offer, there’s no reason you should be ignoring that opportunity.

Save money and boost ROI. Internet marketing is the best marketing tactic in the economic slowdown because it’s extremely cost effective. Traditional marketing and advertising is expensive, and perhaps more so recently as traditional media outlets are hurting financially in the slowdown as well. Internet marketing may require more time and maintenance than other forms of marketing, but it certainly is less expensive.

Test, Measure, then test again. Internet technologies enable marketers and dealerships to test and measure their efforts. Whether you’re launching an SEO campaign, a PPC campaign, or you simply want to measure a specific metric that’s important to your dealership, you can gain insights unlike any other form of media.

Don’t take your eyes off the competition. If you’re considering allocating more resources to online media, consider what your competition is doing. Chances are, they’ve already begun boosting their online marketing efforts! This will give them the advantage of greater visibility among potential customers that are actively searching for your dealership.

Flexibility like no other. Internet marketing enables businesses to shift gears quickly and be nimble in a dynamic economic atmosphere. Switching keywords or changing the profit center that you would like to promote the hardest can usually be done on the fly, which is rarely possible with traditional marketing.

Marketing dollars are tight for many dealers, which is precisely why dealers need to spend considerable time in evaluating which strategies are the best to pursue. Rather than cutting budgets across the board and running the risk of potentially reducing the number of leads further, dealers may want to think about where they should be investing their money to deliver the greatest opportunities and ROI. Simply put, don’t take a step backwards in response to economic hardships - instead, take a step forward.

Continue reading ‘Internet Marketing Still Works in a Bad Economy’

How to be More Than a Blog: New Media Integration

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dlux
on September 22, 2008
in Blog World and SEO Tips
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Blogs are becoming a necessity for many businesses, including car dealers. But many car dealers aren’t taking advantage of new technologies available to them. In most cases, new media integration is far easier than many car dealer bloggers may think.

Integrating new media into your blog is essential for engagement. Aside from copy, video, audio, and images also count towards the quality of your blog’s overall content. By providing a greater variety of content and content types, you’ll likely aid user engagement and readers will become more likely to stay on your blog and return to it again in the future.

Photos are perhaps the easiest method to add visually interesting content to your blog. If you have photos that you want to add to your blog, there are plenty of ways to host the photos, edit and resize them, and then apply them to your blog. Flickr, Photobucket, and Picnik are great tools to check out for photo hosting, sharing, and manipulation. By sharing them elsewhere, or resizing them, you can potentially reduce strain on bandwidth and ensure that your blog’s load time isn’t reduced. In addition, most blogging platforms make adding photos and other media very simple.

While the photos are the easiest and most accessible type of media to upload, there’s a huge opportunity for dealers to take advantage of video. Just as images can easily be uploaded to any blog, video can also be added with relative ease. For example, a dealership television commercial can gain greater exposure online by uploading it to YouTube, such as this one for Richmond used cars. Each video on YouTube enables bloggers to grab the code for the video and embed it into a blog post. And, since the video is hosted on YouTube and not your blog directly, it shouldn’t drain bandwidth.

New tools are also available to help save time when writing and publishing a blog. As Tris Hussey pointed out, there’s plenty of desktop publishing and blogging tools that can make posting quicker and easier. Among these tools is Windows Live Writer, a free Microsoft product that’s currently available in beta. Tools such as this enable car dealers to blog stories quickly from their desktop, without even having to login to their blog’s admin panel. Another tool used by panelist David Peralty was Cover it Live, which enables users to easily blog about live events, such as an auto show or dealer trade show.

There’s plenty of other ways to add new media panache to any car dealer’s blog. Blog Talk Radio is one way to add quality audio to a blog as it enables anyone to host their own Internet-based talk radio show. Best of all, the feed can be added to a blog for your reader’s enjoyment.

The last tool covered is the addition of slides to a blog. Car dealers can make slide presentations and use tools such as Google Docs or SlideShare to publish them online, and then integrate them into a blog post.

There are ample opportunities for car dealers to get creative when it comes to communicating to their existing and potential customers, and with their entire community as well. If you have something to say about your dealership and about the community in which you operate in, there are many tools available to make your blog the perfect platform to broadcast what you have to say. As in our example with Used Cars Richmond, many dealers already have the content to power their blogs, but it’s often a matter of taking the first step into blogging that can be the most difficult step of all.

Continue reading ‘How to be More Than a Blog: New Media Integration’

State of the Blogosphere 2008

Published
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dlux
on September 22, 2008
in Blog World and SEO Tips
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As mentioned previously, Richard Jalichandra from Technorati had promised to release valuable data concerning the blogosphere. The “State of the Blogosphere” report has finally been released this afternoon, and over the next five days, additional data will be released from Technorati to provide insight into who’s active in the blogosphere.

This study has been published each year since 2004. This year Technorati will delve deeper, beyond the numbers to offer valuable insights and analysis. The analysis should include information on the role  blogging plays in the lives of bloggers; tools, time and resources used for their blogs; and how blogging has impacted them personally, professionally and financially.

Blogs have been a global phenomenon that has penetrating the mainstream. The new data from Technorati will provide greater insights into the size and influence of the blogosphere, and shows how websites such as TechCrunch and other blogs have grown to take on characteristics of mainstream websites.

The Active Blososphere as defined by Technorati, is the ecosystem of interconnected communities of bloggers and readers at the convergence of journalism and conversation.

Check out the data over the next few days to find additional insights into what’s happening in the world of blogging.

Monday: Overview, and Who are the Bloggers?
Tuesday: The What and Why of Blogging
Wednesday: The How of Blogging
Thursday: Blogging for profit
Friday: Brands in the blogosphere

Continue reading ‘State of the Blogosphere 2008′

The Best Kept Search Secrets - SES San Jose Day 4

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dlux
on August 26, 2008
in SEO Tips
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Towards the end of this year’s SES San Jose conference, one most the most popular secessions was The Best Kept Secrets to Search, an interactive session covering favorite tactics and secrets learned by veteran search marketers.

Katee Crawford, Online and E-Mail Marketing Specialist of the California Chamber of Commerce, was the first to speak on search marketing secrets. Crawford was accompanied by Jamie Smith of Engine Ready, who helped the California Chamber of Commerce achieve their search marketing goals. The first tips the duo addressed focused on pay-per-click management. First, they recommend resisting the need to change your bids multiple times within a 24 hour period, as it makes it nearly impossible to determine which bid worked and which bid cost your dealership money. In addition, ad copy testing is crucial, but testing new characters in your copy may yield added benefits. For example, adding a ‘TM’ or ‘®’ may add visual appeal or credibility that could boost click-through rates. Utilizing phone numbers in PPC ad copy may also be beneficial, and Engine Ready specifically noticed conversion rates increase significantly after experimenting with 800 numbers. Even from natural search listings this is crucial for car dealers who want to capitalize on potential leads. If you’re a searcher in Louisiana looking for a Shreveport bad credit car loan, you want to come to a site that will provide genuine help in securing a loan, and in this example, there’s plenty of ways to contact the dealership, including a bold Credit Hotline phone number that can’t be missed.

Natural search was the focus of panelist Eric Enge from Stone Temple Consulting. One potential pitfall that many marketers may have come across is misspelled inbound links. Links coming from an external website that are misspelled may be impossible to repair. However, Enge has a method of grabbing that link juice. Simply purchase that misspelled URL and have it redirect to where you want to link juice to flow! If it’s a relevant, high traffic website, the trouble of getting a redirecting URL may easily be worth it. As found with other panelists, Enge also recommended the use of MSN’s Search Funnels to refine keyword research and determine searcher intent.

The last presenter was Richard Zwicky from Enquisite, a search analytics company. Taking the opportunity to seize on presenting true “search secrets,” Zwicky opened up a light-hearted discussion on some rather “black hat SEO” tactics to reinforce your brand and maintain aggressive rankings in the SERPs. Although no one condoned anything other than white hat SEO, including Zwicky, it was a humorous end to an interesting panel of veteran search marketers.

Continue reading ‘The Best Kept Search Secrets - SES San Jose Day 4′

Fast, Free & Easy SEO Tools to Get You Going - SES San Jose Day 4

Published
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dlux
on August 25, 2008
in SEO Tips
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There are plenty of businesses that can benefit from as many tools as possible when it comes to executing and monitoring their SEO efforts. But not all businesses, including car dealers, can afford some of the expensive tools that agencies and larger organizations can afford. Luckily, there are plenty of tools available that are fast, free, and easy to use, without costly subscriptions or investments.

Jennifer Laycock, the Editor-in-Chief of Search Engine Guide, moderated this packed session of largely do-it-yourself Web marketers. First up on the panel was Matt McGee of Key Relevance, who introduced a number of cost effective tools. The first was which was the SearchStatus extension for the Firefox browser. This free tool provides useful data, including a webpage’s Google Page Rank, Google Category, Alexa popularity rating, Compete.com ranking, Alexa incoming links, and Alexa related links and backward links from the top three search engines. One of McGee’s choices for keyword research is Keyword Discovery, which also offers a free trial. In addition, tools from the engines themselves, including Yahoo’s Site Explorer and MSN’s Webmaster Center, can provide advanced information about your website and its rankings. Another tool to explore the backlinks to your competitors is Link Diagnosis, helpful for finding places that you can also gain valuable inbound links! SEO-Browser.com can also be helpful to diagnosis any content issues you may have, as it looks at your website much like a search engine sees it.

Next up on the panel was Scott Allen from Hybrid6 Studios. For competitive research, Allen recommended using Compete.com as a resource as finding what works or doesn’t work in your competitor’s search strategy can easily open up opportunities for your own website. In addition, PPC Spyfu is a powerful resource for pay-per-click marketers. Although it’s still officially in Beta testing, Allen also recommended using Competitious for creating an informative matrix of your competitors.

Last but not least in this panel was Joe Abraham from Sage Rock. One of his favorite free resources is MSN’s AdLab, featuring a wide range of tools, from keyword research to demographic research. In addition, Crazy Egg was another suggestion that enables users to visualize traffic patterns on a website. This tool can supplement existing analytics to see exactly what’s happening on your website.

Quality SEO tools and research are more easily within reach than you might think. Car dealers may not have the budget for robust tools to diagnosis, track, and perform research online, but there’s plenty of tools to utilize online that are fast, free, and super easy to use.

Continue reading ‘Fast, Free & Easy SEO Tools to Get You Going - SES San Jose Day 4′