My Opinion: Dealer.com Is The Best Website A Car Dealer Should Be Using

Showroom Logic does not build car dealer websites, so I am able to give my opinion openly about the best and the worst websites for car dealers. Although it may appear that we do, we simply don’t. We build microsites to work in conjunction with the main website a car dealer uses, and our microsites appear to be a simple classified listing. We do not brand the dealership at all, we brand their cars.

Showroom Logic is a consulting and a car dealer SEO Company, it’s that simple. When we sign up a dealer our results are so great that they call us back to see what else we can do.

I’ve been wanting to write this article for a while now, but this morning I saw a cool thing that Dealer.com does with their urls.

While servicing one of our newest car dealers, I was looking at my live stats to see how their microsite was doing. I noticed that we just got a visit from a VIN search.

I was suprise to even see that because we do not target VIN numbers for searches. Anyway, we came up second on a Google search (Car Fax was 1).

I noticed the third listing was a dealer website, and I could tell by looking at the url that it was an actual vehicle listing on a car dealer’s website. I went ahead an clicked it and POOF, I was redirected to the homepage of the dealership.

Do you know what a 301 redirect is?

Think about this. You have a car dealership that typically sells 100 cars a month. When those vehicles get sold, the listings are eventually deleted. You must realize that all of your inventory will be indexed in Google, Yahoo and Bing. Even if it only ranks on page 50, it’s still indexed. So what happens when the Google Bot or Yahoo Slurp comes back and spiders your website to find new listings to index?

I’ll tell you what happens. They find broken links and 404 errors. Search Engines hate that! Dealer.com appears to create a 301 redirect back to the homepage. Another words, when a user clicks the link that is no longer there, the 301 tells the search engines that “this vehicle moved here” and it redirects it.

We’ve been using this technology for a long time, but it’s cool to see someone else doing it (Especially a dealer website provider). We handle our redirects a bit differently, but I cannot say what we do because that’s out little secret.

There are other things a like about Dealer.com websites, but the one other thing worth mentioning is their automated Google Adwords tool. It’s great to see a dealer website provider offering this, and it can save you thousands of dollars a month from marketing company fees to manage and run these campaigns.

Showroom Logic has a tool like that, and we can use it with any dealer website, so if you are stuck in a contract with one of those other website providers you can contact us and we’ll set you up.

I wish there was another website provider that I could compare to Dealer.com, but there isn’t one. Here is my opinions on the others:

• Cobalt: They haven’t changed a thing in over 2 years. Same old templates, nothing new to mention. If you want to stay ahead in this business you need to constantly make changes and roll them out to everybody. One of the largest volume car dealerships in Florida uses Cobalt, and they are so naive they love it. I have been doing extensive keyword research in my area and they are nowhere to be found. I feel they could be selling another 50 – 75 cars a month if they tried something new. My dealer in Tampa Bay sold over 120 used cars alone in the Tampa Market, and I am proud to say that. If you are a Dealer.com rep in Central Florida, contact me and I’ll tell you who they are.
• Izmo Cars: They make great looking websites, but they don’t rank for inventory listings. Until they make a massive change in their coding, they never will. One of my dealers uses Izmo for their main website, and I was shocked to learn they don’t even have a backend to log on to and make changes. You have to call your rep every time, in INDIA!! I am doing some SEO work for a car dealer that uses Izmo for their main site. Last month I found a microsite they were using that was a Dealer.com site. I switched all backlinks to that website instead of their main Izmo site because I know I could juice that one up better.
• BZ Results: I worked for a dealership that used them about 2 years ago. They were stuck in a very expensive 3 year contract, and it was by far the worst possible website provider out their. Needless to say, the 3 rooftop dealership went out of business about 4 months ago. Whoever sold that contract made a killing. They put $150,000.00 down and had to pay $8,000.00 a month for three years.

I did see some new companies at the NADA Convention in Orlando, but I haven’t found anyone using them.

Did I miss anyone? Leave a comment and let me know.

If anyone represents any of the website providers above, I would love to debate. Everything I said is my opinion, and I don’t pretend to know everything. But…I’ve been doing this since 1994. I’ve been around to see how everything evolved in many different industries. I’ve sold printing online, seafood and cars. Now I only work with car dealers.

Private debates are welcome. Email mike@showroomlogic.com