I made this entire blog last night. It took Me 3 Hours Total. I still kave to add content to it, but it's a good start. Click To See It Live

I am the internet director for a car dealership in Tampa Florida. We are proud to say that we are not vendor dependent, and we own the Tampa Bay area for car related internet searches. Here are some tips to get your car dealership in the right direction.

When setting up a new Wordpress Blog, the most important part of it is choosing the right plugins. There are some that you will actually need, and if you don’t you will have a blog with no traffic. It’s that simple.

Last night my boss asked me to set-up a new blog for his dealership, and I said no problem. Yes, I work for Park Automall in Pinellas Park Florida…so I did this an an employee.

When I started the project, I didn’t even have a domain name yet. The entire project took me 3 hours, and I’ll show you exactly what I did:

1) Domain Name:

Domain names are getting harder to buy because there are so many squatters that buy them with hopes of a resale for big dollars. After about 20 minutes, I found that tampacarblog.com was available., so I logged on to GoDaddy and purchased it for 3 years. The only thing I would recommend every buying from GoDaddy is a domain name. Never buy hosting or anything else, just say “no thanks” to all of the crap they try to sell you during the checkout process.

Now at this point I didn’t even have a hosting company yet, but I knew I was going with Bluehost. While I was still logged in to GoDaddy, I clicked “manage domains” and I changed my nameservers to ns1.bluehost.com and ns2.bluehost.com. This will make it easier when I set up my hosting account. That’s it, and I won’t have to log in to Go Daddy for three years.

2) Web Hosting

Bluehost.com offers hosting packages for less than $90.00 per year, and they have many great tools that makes life easier for us all. When signing up, the first thing they do is offer you a free domain name. Don’t even bother with that, because you will never own that domain name. Just tell them you already have one. When asked, put the domain name in the box when they asked you. Remember in the above step I changed my nameservers already? If I hadn’t, I would of had to log-in to Godaddy again and change them during this step. Why? Bluehost will verify that the domain is pointed to the right direction. A name server can be compared to a phone number. When someone calls your phone, your number will tell the phone where to ring to. the same goes to web hosting.

3) Setting Up Wordpress (You Won’t Believe How Easy This Is)

Now that you have your hosting account set up, it will take you about 30 seconds to set up Wordpress. Scroll down and find an icon called “Simple Scripts”. Click that and you will see a bunch of different software programs you can download and enable for free. Find the Wordpress Script and click it. The rest of the process is self explanatory. If you want to install it in a subfolder or subdomain you can with ease, but I would recommend not doing that. Just leave it as is and install.

4) Your Wordpress Blog Is Now Live

You now have a default installation of Wordpress installed. There are a few plugins and adjustments you should make now, not later. Let’s not be concerned with your template and content just yet. Check your email for a username and password that was emailed to you after you set it up. Click the link and log in to the backend of your Wordpress Blog.

5) Change your Permalink Setting

On your Wordpress back end, scroll down to the lower left and click “settings” then “permalinks”. This step will rewrite your url’s properly, and it will make your blog search engine friendly. Make yours look just like this:

Make your Permalink Settings Exactly Like This, Then Save

Now let’s install must have Plugins.

6) Enable Akismet

This is a spam comment fighter, and if you don’t enable this now you will get some serious comment spam. It will eventually light up your inbox. By default this should have came with your installation. Go to ‘Plugins”, then find Akismet and click enable. You may have to get a key if you don’t already have one. It’s free, so do it now so you don’t forget.

7) All In One SEO Pack

Go to the Plugin tab, then search for plugins by putting “All In One SEO Pack” in the search box. It should be the first one, just click it and install. If you want to play around with the settings, scroll down to the lower left. Click “Settings” then “All In One SEO Pack”. Don’t change a setting unless you know what you’re doing. If you want to learn, read the Wordpress Forums. Everything you’ve ever wanted to know about Wordpress is there, and if it’s not you can open up a new thread and ask a question. there are thousands of people that will help you for free.

Comment Luv

If you want more people to comment on your blogs, this plug in is the way to go. When somebody makes a comment that you approve, comment love will reward them with a keyword rich backlink to their website. If their blog or website has an RSS Feed, it will list their latest post as well.

9) Do Follow

This plugin will make all comment links dofollow, which will help you get more comments. It’s a perfect marriage with keywordluv. Be careful though, don’t just approve any comment. Be sure the website isn’t a “bad neighborhood” like porn or gambling. If you link to bad neighborhoods Google will hold it against you, and you can kiss your traffic goodbye.

The rest of the plugins available are luxuries, and by now you should be good at installing and activating plugins. Poke around and try some, but make sure you read the feedback first before you install any new plugin.

10) Choosing A Theme Template

There are thousands of free templates available out there, and most don’t have many options. Ever wonder why there are so many, and how the developers make their money? It’s simple, they put links in the footer of the blog, and sometimes 3 or 4. They make the templates for the SEO benefit of their own websites or a sponsor.

I would recommend buying a Premium Theme. I like Studio Press. For less than 200 bucks you can buy all of their templates, and you can remove any footer link with ease. Currently, I am using the Allure Theme for the blog I made last night.

If you’re a cheapskate, you can find free templates here. Remember though, these freebies don’t have many options. As Joe Dirt would say, “Maybe someday Unicef will get in the Free Worpress Template Business”.

Let’s Talk Widgets:

Proper widgets can make great call to actions. My philosophy for a blog is simple. Get traffic to the blog and funnel the viewer to your main website. Forget about purchasing inventory plugins for Wordpress, it’s a waste of time and money. We want these people off this blog and into our main website. This is where clickable call to action widgets come in. Here is a screenshot of what I did so far to the new blog I made last night:

So Far I Added 3 Widgets, and I'll explain what they are below. Click the photo to see the blog live in action.

The top widget is a simple html widget. I pasted my YouTube embed code in to a new text widget and changed the size in the code. If you look at the code, you will see a height and width number in pixels in 2 different spot. Simply change both to the size of your widget box. If you’re not sure about how to find out the width of your sidebar, check out this plugin from Firefox called MeasureIt.

The second widget is my favorite. It’s a Wowzio Widget, and you can read all about it and other cool Wordpress widgets here. All you need is an RSS Feed and you’re ready to go.

The Facebook Widget makes a create widget as well, and click the above link to learn more. When adding the code, you need to change the width number to whatever your widget width is. I think it’s 300 by default, and if you don’t make the change it will look funny.

Now that you set this blog up right, be sure to throw a link to it from another website with some authority. You want the search engines to find and index your new blog.

Don’t expect traffic overnight, and don’t forget about it either. Try to get some backlinks from blog commenting, Pligg Sites, etc. Facebook and Twitter won’t cut it. Those links are nofollow, and they will not pass any “link juice” to your website. It is also equally important to create a new blog post at least once a week. Finding content is easy for car dealers, just blog about one of your vehicles and link to it.

The term “build it and they will come” does not apply to websites or blogs. You must work hard for results.

Having your own car blog will not only help your dealership, it will help you. It’s no secret that an Internet Sales Manager position in the car business can be short lived. If you had your own blog you could bring it to your next job, and change everything to where you are.

Wordpress Blogs are free, and it takes about 60 days to start ranking. Do not get a “Free” hosted blog from Wordpress, spend the $90.00 a year and have it self hosted. You will get more traffic this way and you will own it.

Easily Make $300.00 A Month, and get your Dealership more leads at the same time.

Did you know once you get traffic you can sign up for Google Adsense? Currently car dealers and other third party companies pay over $3.00 a click. Google will pay you half of that. I have an old printing blog that I converted into car related keywords, and I make about $300.00 a month from Google.

I simply blog about once a week, and Google sends me a check every month. Yes, Google makes my car payment!

Here are the steps to get started:

1) Buy A Domain Name

Be sure to buy a domain name with keywords in it. If you live in Florida try to find a good one like floridacarblog.com, or carblogflorida.com. If you plan on staying in your current city, buy one with your city name in it. Be sure to buy it for at least 3 years! If you only buy it for one you will be a suspected spammer.

2) Get Hosting

I recommend Bluehost. I’ve been using them for years. They make it as easy as possible to setup your car blog using a program called Simplescripts. Check them out here.

3) Choose A Theme

Wordpress has thousands of free themes. Check them out here. Find a good one and install it. Don’t worry, you can easily change your theme as often as you’d like.

4) Set Up General Settings

Name your blog with keywords, and make sure everything looks right first. Now is the time to tinker around, because your blog is so new nobody will ever find it.

5) Start Blogging

Be sure to blog about your inventory, not what every other dealer blogs about. The idea is, you want to drive traffic to your dealer website. Blog about your inventory. Check out what we do for Napleton Jeep Chrysler Dodge: Orlando Florida Car Blog

6) Set Up Widgets

I hope you’re already on Facebook and Twitter. Check out these must have widgets for car dealers.

Showroom Logic offers SEO for Car Dealers, and this is one of the services we offer. If you think it’s out of your league, email mike@showroomlogic.com for more information.

Our dealer sell more cars every month from a 30% increase in daily internet traffic. There is only one way to get more leads, and that’s more traffic!

Car Dealers spend a lot of money on their existing websites, and they usually establish a relationship of trust with their provider. This is becoming a problem.

Two of my biggest clients were talked into a dealer blog from their website providers. The problem is the blogs provided to them are not real blogs, it’s just an extension of their websites.

I could write for days about what should be done, but I’ll keep it simple. If you have a dealer blog, go to your last blog post. Copy and paste the title into a Google Search. Then, go to “more” and “blogs” (on the top left). Now search again and if needed, sort the results by date on the upper right.

If you have a blog that is respected by Google, your post should be listed. A proper blog will “ping” Google every time a blog post is written, and within 5 minutes of publishing your blog post should be there.

A simple self hosted Wordpress blog will suffice for any car dealer, and the cost is minimal. You can get a Free Wordpress blog from Wordpress themselves, but I wouldn’t recommend that because you will never own it. Even Matt Cutts from Google recently commented about the power of a Wordpress blog.

This Dealer Utilizes A Blog with Every Widget You Can Imagine: Orlando Car Blog

Spend the $96.00 a year and get your own hosting. The hosting company I recommend has self installers. Once you sign up there is a program called “Simple Scripts” that will automatically install your blog (including a data base). The hosting company will even provide you with a free domain name. For info on how to sign up, visit this page.

After setting it up, you will have plenty of time to play around with it. Make some posts, delete some posts. Change templates and add widgets. Once you feel it’s ready, add a link to it from your current dealer website.

Within a day or 2 it will be crawled and indexed in search engines.

Now add some widgets to the sidebar. You can add your Twitter, Facebook, RSS feeds or whatever else you want.

Be sure to blog at least twice a week, and write unique content. Don’t be tempted to copy someone elses work, that’s known as “duplicate content” and the search engines hate that.

In time you will have a powerful blog and you can start asking for link exchanges with area auto bloggers. Give them a link from your blog for a link to your dealer website in return. Be sure to link to it from your site, or you will have a blog that will never be found organically.

One of my clients had 8 identical special edition Corvettes. There were only 500 made so they asked me if I could help them unload them. I did a carefully planned “keyword” blog post and within 2 days they actual ranked nationally on Google searches. When I see visits like this come in, it gives me satisfaction because this is why I do it.

For more information on setting up your own blog, read this article.