How To Juice Up A Car Dealer Miscrosite
A dealer miscrosite is one of the most important strategies a car dealer can do to get more traffic. I call it my “lobster” theory. If you were a Lobsterman, how many lobster traps will you set? I hope your answer is more than just one.
The problem with a dealer microsite is you cannot simply launch one and expect immediate results. Any new website has to wait to be crawled and indexed by search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo.
The quickest way to get a new site indexed is to point a link from a relevant website, even if it’s from your main dealer website. Other than that, you will need more backlinks pointing to the website if you want results.
A good start is 2 powerful directories, the Yahoo Directory and Business.com. They each cost $300.00 a year, but the backlink they provide will be well worth the $600.00 a year charge. Both of these directories are human edited, so to be approved on these websites shows Google, Yahoo and Bing that you are a quality website. It also helps to prove you are not a spammer. Spammers will not spend $600.00 to get listed in these directories, and if they did they would be rejected anyway.
These directories will also reduce your sandbox period you will be subjected to. You know, the sandbox that Google denies they have. If you don’t know what the sandbox is click the link to read the Wiki Article.
To obtain more backlinks, find some car related blogs and make educated comments with a backlink to your microsite. Many of these will be nofollow, but it will still pass relevance. If you make one blog post a day, you will have over 300 backlinks in a year time.
Another good way to pass relevance is to create a link wheel using websites like squidoo.com and hubpages.com. Before you go any further, be sure to know what a link wheel is before you waste your time. There’s a right way and a wrong way.
Now back to the lobster trap theory. With our Showroom Logic System we provide to car dealers, these are the Lobster Traps we love:
- Showroom Logic Microsite
- Corporate Microsites
- Dealer Blog
- Facebook (personal and fan pages)
- Squidoo
Every one of those website will show up on searches. With some hard work, you can easily obtain a 50% traffic increase compared to your main dealer website. The traffic will also have more quality because of the keywords you will rank on.
If you look at your main dealer website stats, you will see the top 10 keywords will always include your dealer name. These are the people that already know about you, and they Googled you to find your website. That is not SEO. If you cannot rank your dealer name than you are in the wrong business!
Another factor with microsites. Don’t pay much attention to bounce rates because your microsite will never beat your main dealer website. The reason is simple, as I said above, your main keywords are you dealer name. These people search for you and find you. The search engine gave them exactly what they were looking for so they will not bounce.
One of our clients had a corporate website from Chrysler. It’s a Dealer.com website that they asked us to optimize. The page has links coming from Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep, so it’s an important website to have. Unfortunately those backlinks do no good at all for SEO because they’re usually written in javascript. Search engine spiders do not read Javascript.
I was relieved it was a Dealer.com website. They use Izmo Cars for their main website and I have never been a fan of them. If their Microsite was from Izmo or BZ Results I wouldn’t have touched it to avoid setting myself up for failure. Cobalt isn’t that much better, but if I had a choice I would go with a Dealer.com website.
The first thing I did to juice up this microsite was to build backlinks. I started the campaign in mid January, so if you look at the graph you will see the nice spike in traffic:
A Dealer Microsite Needs Backlinks
The microsites Showroom Logic supplies is the best lobster trap you can have, and we’ve proven it with our stats. Here is a snap shot of the other microsite we provide to the same client:
Their Showroom Logic Microsite Out Performs All Others
We believe in search engine saturation, and our method works. The car dealers that use our city packages respect us, and we’ve never lost a client.
I like to call it a “macrosite”, and it includes:
- Organic Miscrosite: New & Used Cars In Orlando
- Wordpress Blog (properly set-up and self hosted) Napleton Blog
- Twitter Automation: Automatically update your Twitter using Showroom Logic’s Twitter Application: Twitter Example
- Facebook Automation (Inventory and Blog Posts) Napleton Fans
Car dealers using our automation are still encouraged to manually update Facebook and Twitter. Blog posts are created by Showroom Logic, and we do this to obtain more traffic from search engines.
Showroom Logic can only service one dealer per city. Car dealer’s that utilize our city packages will be exclusive, and we will not service a neighboring car dealer.
To find out more about Showroom Logic’s service, contact mike@showroomlogic.com.
2010 NADA Convention In Orlando Florida Off To Slow Start
Brandon, Kris and myself have spent the last 2 days walking around the NADA Dealer Convention in Orlando Florida. We’ve had the opportunity to talk to some great people in the industry including dealers and vendors.
We met car dealers from Canada, Chile, Italy, Brazil, China and the Dominican Republic. The word was many dealers from the Northeast had canceled flight issues due to snow, so they will arrive tomorrow.
We even saw Mike Ditka cruising around on something similar to a Segway. I’m not sure what vendor hired him, but he was there for some reason.
Another vendor had a poker table set-up with Scotty Nguyen (5 time World Series Poker Winner). I’m not sure if anything was at stake, but there was a full table playing with a professional dealer.
We plan on heading back over there tomorrow, so if we see anything new we’ll let you know. So far it’s been the same old thing, with nothing ground breaking to report.
2010 NADA Convention in Orlando Florida
Big Money Is Spent For Booths
More vendors Walking Around Than Dealers
We also heard some horror stories about the rates at the Orlando Convention Center. Besides booth rentals, if you wanted a coffee urn at your station it’s $500.00…PER POT! You want to rent a cheap metal folding chair? $300.00 for 3 days! Can you believe that?
Search Engine Optimization VS Paid Clicks For Car Dealers
I have always been a huge fan of Search Engine Optimization for any website. I’ve been involved in selling products on the internet like seafood, printing and cars since 1995.
The word Search Engine Optimization didn’t even exist back in 1995, but I practiced it on a daily basis selling business cards online when I was in my late 20’s.
I went strong for many years, and eventually I got out of it. It was my father in law who talked me into helping him sell live lobsters and clams online up in Boston.
He invested some money to develop a shopping cart website and he put me in charge. Having built many websites back in the 90’s, I knew the most important thing was traffic and marketing.
Back in those days people were under the impression that when a website went live, millions of people would find their website because “everybody was online”. You know how many launch parties I attended back in the day?
Just about every business failed to meet their expectations. I was lucky enough to have the experience to manage our expectations. I warned him to be suprised if we had any orders in the next 60 days.
When the website went live we didn’t have a launch party, but we did eat good that week. We cooked and photographed everything we sold, including live lobster, fried clams, scallops, haddock, shrimp and steamers. When we were done taking pictures, we had a buffet of freshly cooked seafood.
Knowing it would take a while for our website to be crawled and indexed in search engines like Google and Yahoo, we kick started it with a Google Pay Per Click Campaign.
Once you start a campaign you realize how much other are bidding. This is when we realized how costly it would be. Does it make sense to pay $3.00 a click for the term “live lobster” when at the time the conversion rate for a performing website was about 3 or 4%?
Not really, considering you need to ship out many lobsters on a daily basis to turn a profit. The secret to pay per clicks has always been to find “long tail keywords” that nobody else is bidding on. This is where you can get clicks for as little as a dime. Phrases like “live lobster shipped from New England” and such.
So, what’s this have to do with the car business?
To avoid going into details with my other credentials since then, I will skip right to selling cars. I took a job at a car dealership in Central Florida a couple of years ago. I ran 3 rooftops that were all on the verge of going out of business.
They had a zero budget for me, so all the weight was on my shoulders to get all traffic for free. I was able to talk the owner into giving me a few thousand dollars to get a nice clean organic website going.
That’s when Patrick and I developed our first car microsite. To make a long story short, within 60 days this website was getting more quality traffic and leads than their BZ Results and Cobalt websites combined.
After seeing some stats from previous vendors they had used and the money spent, I realized how beneficial this could be.
A few months ago Patrick developed a Google Adwords tool that was automated with a dealers actual new and used car inventory. After our first campaign for Park Automall in Tampa Florida I realized that maybe SEO isn’t the greatest thing for car dealers.
The problem is not enough people search for terms like “used Mustang GT in Tampa Florida”. That’s a long tailed keyword that can and will get ranked for car dealer. Most of the people are searching for simply keywords, like “Mustang” or “Mustang GT”.
Not to rain on your parade, but a car dealer will never rank on the first page of any search engine for a term like this. This is where pay per click (Google Adwords) comes in.
Over 80% of internet users used Google for searches. In 30 days alone, we achieved over 2 million impressions and over 1,800 hundred clicks. The average cost per click was only $1.11.
One of our dealers in Orlando showed us a report that a marketing company in Chicago used to lure them into a contract. When I saw it, I new we had the gig. They were paying $2.71 a click, and the campaign only resulted in a little over 60,000 impressions during the same 30 days period as hours. You can see a post about these numbers here.
Why the difference?
Two simple reasons.
- Our software creates multiple campaigns for every new and used vehicle a dealer has in stock resulting in thousands of different keyword phrases.
- We obtain a better quality score. All of the links from our campaign go directly to each vehicle. That means Google gives us a higher quality score, which results in more impressions, a higher position and a lower cost per click.
This is why I now say that a proper Google Pay Per Click Campaign is the most important thing a dealer should do. There are people all over your area looking for each and every vehicle you have in stock. It’s up to you as a dealer to meet them half way.
If you have a Ford Mustang on your lot you need to tell the people you have one!
I recommend you watch this video to see this live and in action:
New: No Microsite Needed For Car Dealer Automated Google Adwords Campaigns
80% Of Internet Traffic Comes From Google
Showroom Logic has now simplified our Google Adwords Tool for New & Used Car Dealers. Many dealers are proud of their existing website, and would rather not have an additional microsite.
Using our Google Adwords Tool for Car Dealers, we can now automate your campaigns and send traffic directly to you dealer website. If you’re a car dealer using Dealer.com, Izmo Cars, Cobalt or the hundreds of other dealer websites available we can now have all of your traffic sent directly to these websites.
Our Google Adwords For Car Dealers Guarantee:
- Impressions: Some dealers manage their Google Adwords In-House, and some hire marketing companies. If Showroom Logic does not get you more impressions for the same budget as your existing campaigns we will not charge you until it does.
- Cost Per Click: Stop paying 2 or 3 dollars a click. Our software allows you to have a higher Google Quality Score, resulting in reduced click costs over 100%. Our current dealers used to pay over $3.00 per click. Showroom Logic can get your clicks for a little over $1.00. After 60 days, if you’re not paying less than you were before we will not charge you for the tool until it out-performs your previous Google Adwords Campaigns.
In case you’re not aware of our tool, I’ll keep it simple. We take a car dealer’s new and used car inventory and create a Google Adwords Campaign for every single vehicle you have in inventory.
As your new inventory rolls in, we create a new campaign. As each unit is sold, the campaign is removed.
As a car dealer you must understand that there are people searching for your inventory on a daily basis. Let’s sat you have a 2005 Ford Mustang in your used car inventory. Anyone who searches for “Ford Mustang”, “2005 Ford Mustang”, “Used Ford Mustang” and thousands of other keyword phrases your inventory will come up.
When clicked, the ad will bring the user directly to the actual vehicle page. This is how we get high quality scores, resulting in less money spent.
The clicks are also cheaper because chances are, there isn’t a car dealer in your city bidding on their inventory like that. Everyone bids on the same general keywords like “used car dealer”, “new car dealer”, Chevrolet Dealer etc…
So now you have 2 options. Get a microsite to get more organic or PPC Traffic or simply use out tool and have all traffic directed to your dealer website.
Claim your area. Target a 30 mile radius around your dealership or more. You can even target an entire state.
I’m sure you have some questions. Call Mike at 863-666-0130 or send me an email, mike@showroomlogic.com. Let us help you own and dominate your city. We already have dealers dominating Tampa and Orlando Florida. These are 2 of the hottest car related internet markets in the world. Now we can help you own your city!
Click here to see our Google Adwords stats compared to other marketing companies.
Google Adwords Vs Search Engine Optimization
It doesn’t matter how much money a car dealer pays a professional SEO Company. Your dealer website will never rank organically for search terms like Ford Mustang, Dodge Ram, Chevrolet Corvette and other vehicle types. As much as we love SEO, you have to accept the fact that the only way you’ll show is if the user puts in your city or state name. The fact is, they don’t!
Large Used Car Dealer Claims Pensacola Florida Area
Frontier Motors In Pensacola Florida
We are excited to launch a new city in Florida for Frontier Motor, Inc. They currently have 286 used cars and trucks in Pensacola.
They have claimed Pensacola Florida as their target city, which means Showroom Logic will not work with another car dealer in that city.
Today I spoke to Greg Hall, who is the internet director over there. I was excited to hear that he’s been involved in marketing for over 15 years. He’s not just your typical “car guy” who was promoted to internet sales manager. He understands how internet marketing works just like Dani Lunsford at Napleton and Dave Ingold over at Park Automall. That is why these car dealerships lead their markets in internet sales. They have the talent to identify what works, and what doesn’t.
If all goes smooth we should have his Pensacola Florida Microsite up and running by the end of the week. We’ll also be setting up there Twitter and Facebook Automation.
Car Dealer PPC Campaigns From Showroom Logic Over Shadow Big Firms
Two days ago, I was approached by a car dealer in Orlando Florida. They wanted me to stop by and show them our Google Pay Per Click Campaign stats.
The woman who called me mentioned that they had estimates and stats from 5 different marketing companies throughout the United States. I really wasn’t sure what to expect, so I gathered my stats and met with them yesterday.
When the 2 hour meeting started, the first thing they did was show me what the “best” of the 5 could do. As soon as I saw the report I knew the gig would be mine.
These are the numbers they showed me from the marketing company they were considering:
Pay Per Click Campaign Report For This Month (Competition)
When I produced our numbers, the sale was easy:
Showroom Logic PPC Report
It’s pretty obvious who wins this stats game, that’s why the meeting lasted for 2 hours. If I was to have stopped our campaign at 547 clicks, it would of only cost $607.17.
- Clicks: Our campaign netted $1,883 clicks. The “major marketing company” netted only 547 clicks.
- Impressions: Every time the ads displays somewhere counts as an impression. The great thing about impressions is that they’re free, Think of it as branding. The competition obtained 67,338 impressions for their client. Showroom Logic obtained an astounding 2,059,548 impressions. Basic math will tell you the difference.
- Click Through Ratio: Our ads don’t only show up in Google searches, they show up on car related news stories from websites like the New York Times and Motor Trend. The impressions are so high that this is what to expect for the click through ratio.
- Average Cost Per Click: The marketing company’s dealer paid an average of $2.71 per click made. Showroom Logic’s dealer only paid an average of $1.11 per click.
- Total Cost: Basically, the other dealer paid $1,482.48 for 67,338 impressions and 547 clicks to their website. Showroom Logic’s dealer paid $2,080.98 for over 2 millions impressions resulting in 1,883 clicks. All of our dealer’s traffic and impressions came from a 50 mile radius surrounding the dealership itself.
Showroom Logic only performs pay per click campaigns for car dealers. The reason our results are so impressive is the fact that we have our own software that makes this happen. Many marketing companies advertise that they are an “authorized reseller of Google Adwords“. We are not only because we do not resell the product. We set it up for our car dealers as their own account so they have full control over their campaign, including pausing it, changing bid prices and selecting different areas to target.
Showroom Logic’s services are so unique we can only offer these tools to one dealer per city to avoid a conflict of interest. For more information on our amazing software, call Mike at 863-666-0130 or email mike@showroomlogic.com.
We look forward to working with you. White Labeling is also available for marketing companies.
Showroom Logic Invited To Speak At SMX West Search Marketing Expo
Patrick Bennet To Speak At SMX
Patrick Bennet, co-founder of Showroom Logic has been invited to speak at this years SMX West Search Marketing Expo in Santa Clara California. This will be a three day event which will be held on March 2nd, 3rd and 4th 2010.
As far as we know he will be speaking on 3 different panels. When we get more information we will update this post.
This is no run of the mill seminar, it’s the king of all seminars with the whose who of the SEO Marketing Industry. Besides Patrick Bennett, the following high profile people will be attending and speaking:
- Steve Ballmer: CEO, Microsoft
- Jay Akkad: Product Manager, YouTube
- Larry Cornett: VP, Consumer Products, Yahoo! Search
- Matt Cutts: Software Engineer Google Inc.
- Vanessa Fox: Contributing Editor Search Engine Land,
- Eric Goldman: Professor, Santa Clara University School of Law
- Jennifer Laycock: Social Media Strategist & Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Guide
- Laura Lippay: Director of Technical Marketing, Yahoo!
- Carter Maslan: Director of Product Management, Google Inc.
- Matt McGee: Assignment Editor, Search Engine Land
- Maile Ohye: Senior Developer Programs Engineer Google Inc.
- Marshall Simmonds: CEO / Chief Search Strategist Define Search Strategies / New York Times
- Frederick Vallaeys: AdWords Evangelist, Google Inc.
- Tom Wailes: Senior Director Yahoo! Local
If you are in the car business as an internet sales manager or director, I highly advise you to attend this event. If you can’t make it, you will be able to read all about it on the internet.
Here is one of the two bio’s posted about Patrick Bennett:
I have been addicted to Web design and development for the last 9 years. My affair with this industry is continually renewed due to the continual spark of new ideas, and the excitement of creating successful solutions. Over the years I have learned how important developers are in the continual success of SEO marketing. This insight has driven me to master techniques and standards in order to become the important marketing asset every developer should be.
I spoke at last years SMX West, and have also spoken at BYU Hawaii during an internet business seminar. I have also been a guest blogger regarding development on sites such as Elance.com.
I think I have the most fun being a developmental-entrepreneur through two companies I Co-Founded. They act as my playgrounds for trying new things, without having to wait for corporate red tape or other slow downs. BLVD Status is a real-time analytics company focused on niche and custom reporting, and Showroom Logic helps auto dealerships rank organically for their inventory. Through these companies I have the ability to try, try, try without having to worry about deadlines or a pay-check, giving me an advantage to be flexible and open-minded to techniques and methods other desk-job developers don’t have.
Showroom Logic Launches Baltimore Maryland Used Cars Listings
Each Balloon Represents A Used Car Dealer In Maryland. Click Map To Interact
Last night Showroom Logic was busy launching another used car listing state, this time it was in Baltimore Maryland. We now have 15 more car dealers with a total of 683 different used cars and trucks in Baltimore alone.
Now we have some work cut out for us to get this website indexed in Google, Yahoo and Bing. This link alone should get it indexed relatively quickly.
Soon we will be working with each of these dealers to get their social accounts set up, so we can blast their inventory to Twitter & Facebook.
We also launched a used car website in Wyoming last night, which now brings us live in 6 states (Florida, Utah, California, Wisconsin, Wyoming & Maryland).
We now have 44 more states to go! We can launch anywhere, so if you need a state launched for your car dealership let’s do it!
The Main Reason Why Car Dealers Balk At Advertising On Google
This Dealer Received 1.5 Million Impressions In 3 Weeks From a 50 Mile Radius Of Their Dealership, resulting in a spike of an additional 30 sales
Many car dealers have a bad taste in their mouth when it comes to advertising on Google. The story usually is the same, they spent a lot of money without getting anything in return.
The problem with this is all about keywords, and choosing the right ones. Some car dealers have tried the campaign themselves, and some have hired specialty marketing companies to set up the Google Adwords Campaign.
Finding the right keywords to bid on is the challenge, and if you’re too vague then you will spend a ton of money with little results.
Remember, a car dealer sells cars. If you are a Chevy Dealer, forget about bidding on “Chevrolet Dealer”. That’s what Google Local listings are for, and they’re free. You need to focus on your inventory.
Let’s start with the Chevy Tahoe. It is now 2010, but I’m sure you have some 2009’s out there. You would want these keywords:
- 2009 Chevrolet Tahoe
- 2010 Chevrolet Tahoe
- 2009 Chevy Tahoe
- 2010 Chevy Tahoe
- 2009 Chevy Tahoe LS
- 2009 Chevy Tahoe LT
- 2009 Chevy Tahoe LTZ
- 2009 Chevrolet Tahoe LS
- 2009 Chevrolet Tahoe LT
OK, I think you can figure out the rest. You need to do this with all of your models. As you set up each campaign, be sure to create separate ones for each model. It’s important for the text to read “Chevy Tahoe”. Not only will you get more action, you will achieve a higher quality score from Google. The higher your quality score, the lower you will have to pay per click.
The screenshot above is what a proper campaign that performs will look like. I remember paying $1,200.00 for 50,000 impressions from a local newspaper website when I worked for a car dealership. Now I can get well over a million more for the same price.
Another important part is to link to the proper page. When you set up the Tahoe Campaign, be sure to link to your Chevy Tahoe Page on your website. Don’t just link to your main site and make the user have to go fishing, because they won’t. Having the link go to the proper place will also give you a better quality score.
It may take you a half a day to do this, but it’s well worth it.
Now, let’s focus on your used. Used cars will bring in more UPS than new vehicles. Let’s say you have 75 used cars, and we’ll start with the first one.
We have a 2006 Corvette. Lets create a separate campaign for Corvettes. We need these keywords:
- Used Corvette
- Used Chevy Corvette
- Used Chevrolet Corvette
- 2006 Corvette
- 2006 Chevy Corvette
- 2006 Chevrolet Corvette
- 2006 pre-owned Corvette
Be sure to stay on top of these campaign, and delete each as a vehicle is sold to avoid wasting your advertising dollars.
This can be tedious huh? What if I told you that Showroom Logic can automate the process? We can take every new and used vehicle you have and automatically create a campaign for each. As your new inventory rolls in we can set up each car automatically, and as each vehicle is sold we can delete each campaign.
The screenshot above is what a proper campaign that performs will look like. I remember paying $1,200.00 for 50,000 impressions from a local newspaper website when I worked for a car dealership.
This dealer received over 1 and a half millions impressions in three weeks, and paid only 1 cents for each. The bottom line is simple, most people go to Google to look for vehicles. Not third party companies, not Yahoo and certainly not Bing.
Car Dealers need to start fishing where the fish are when it comes to the internet. You have 200 cars on your lot, and their are people searching for each one of them on a daily basis.
If you want to learn more about our product, check out this video of our tool in action.
Toyota Tells Dealers No More Microsites and Surrender Your Domain Names
There is a rumor going around that Toyota is notifying all of it’s car dealers to surrender all domain names to Toyota with the word “Toyota” in it.
Apparently if it’s tied to a sole dealer website it will be ok, but they are telling dealers to have only one website, and no private blogs.
I can see where they’re going with this. They will encourage dealers to link to a Toyota blog, which will result in millions of backlinks. This will surely juice up their blogs, and it will have a dramatic increase on organic search listings from Google, Bing and Yahoo.
I’m not sure if Google will welcome this, and they may consider it a “black hat” method to obtain backlinks. Plus, all the domain names Toyota acquires will get 301′d to Toyota’s main website. Imagine all of the time and money these dealers used to acquire these backlinks to their microsites? I guess it’s a great idea in a Dr Evil kind of way.
On the other hand, this can be great news for any other brand of vehicle. The less Toyota websites that are out there, the more room their will be for Nissan, Honda, Chevy, etc…
This rumor still hasn’t been confirmed, but we will keep you posted.
If anyone has any additional information, please leave a comment below.