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.
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