If You Were A Lobsterman How Many Lobster Traps Would You Set?

Many car dealers think that having the ultimate website will bring them tons of traffic from the internet. The truth is, they are only half right.

The problem is you can only target so many different keywords on any given website, and the internet is wide open for everybody. Car Dealers do more than simply sell cars. They each have Service Departments, Part Departments and Auto Body Ships. Plus, they sell used cars.

So from your homepage which do you target most? New Cars, your brand? It is physically impossible to own your area in all searches, unless you have zero competition. There are some great website providers out there that give you optimized, clean coded sites. However, it is up to you to make it work.

So I ask you, if you were a Lobsterman how many lobster traps would you set? Hopefully your answer is more than just one.

We’re all approaching a new year, and as bad as the economy is people still need cars. As bad as the unemployment rate is, 85% of us still have jobs.

Now is the time to act, and you can go it alone or ask us for help. Either way we will tell you what you should do.

First, let me start by saying there isn’t one single method out there for a car dealer’s internet success. It is up to you to monitor the performance of each vendor. Most dealers feel the simple answer is to sign up for AutoTrader and Cars.com. Although they are both great websites with boatloads of traffic, they do not own the internet. If that was the case your website and every other car related website wouldn’t get any organic traffic from Google, Yahoo and Bing.

I see car dealers paying 3.00 to 4.00 dollars a click on Google Adsense, yet they don’t think of the free organic traffic you can obtain from Search Engines.

If you are a worker and you want success, follow these tips and it will work. If you are a lazy internet sales manager, here is a link back to your Facebook.

Lobster Trap Number 1 – Get yourself a proper microsite:

Do not get a microsite from your current vendor. Many of them jumped on the microsite band wagon to make a few bucks. If you ask them to build you one I’m sure they will make it look nice. But, will it serve it’s purpose? No

Why? There will be no links pointing to it, therefore it will have no link juice to pass along to your website.

Hopefully you know what Google Pagerank is. There is some big controversy lately in the forums about the benefits of it, but it is still a report card of your website. Most dealer websites have a Pagerank of 3, if you have 4 or more than you are doing a great job.

But, what is the pagerank of your microsite? If it’s a 1 or less you will get very little value from it. If the Pagerank of your miscrosite is weak, it’s because you don’t have any links pointing to it. You need to get out there and obtain links from car bloggers. Even if it’s a link exchange that will suffice, but a “one way link” works best.

Don’t bother checking your pagerank every day, because it is only updated publicly every 3 months or so. The last update happened about a month ago, so you will not get your next report card for at least a couple of months. Now is the time to work on making it higher.

I like to call our dealer microsites “macrosites”, because that is really what they are. Not only do we provide great backlinks to juice up your website, but we list your entire inventory without using i-frames. So, if you have 75 cars you will have 76 backlinks from every vehicle listing you have (you get an extra one from your main page.

Lobster Trap Number 2 – Get A Dealer Blog:

Again, I would advise against having your current vendor set-up your blog. You need a real blog, not one that appears to be one. A self hosted Wordpress Blog works best, and even Matt Cutts from Google says so. For $96.00 a year you can have your own. Besides the link juice a good blog can give you, you can easily add many call to action widgets including Twitter & Facebook Badges, RSS Feeds and links to your dealer website. It won’t be a true blog, and it won’t ping Google every time you make a new post. We do not build dealer websites, so I can honestly say if you fell for an “Izmo Cars Blog” then call me, I have a bridge to sell you. Izmo makes some great looking dealer websites, but next to BZ Results they have the worse technology out there.

You can spend 30 minutes a week writing blog posts with unique content. Talk about the cars you just came in or promotions you are having. In all posts, be sure to mention you city state and used anchor text links.

For example, I write keyword blog posts for a few of my clients. If I was to write one today, I would look at their newest inventory. I see a 2008 PT Cruiser that just came in so I will write about it.

This is what not to do: “We just got this beautiful 2008 Chrysler PT Cruiser in. It has low miles……”

This is what you should do: “If you are looking for a used Chrysler PT Cruiser in Orlando Florida be sure to check out our newest edition….” Note the anchor test used. This will help that page rank better in search engines. Plus, there is a link to Napleton’s Dealer website from that page. Ultimately, we are juicing up the dealer’s website by doing this, not necessarily the dealer’s microsite.

It is important not to put too many anchor text links in one post, you really shouldn’t put more than two.

Let me give you one more example. It’s 3 days later and I’m looking for a topic to blog about. Let’s work on the service department:

“Have you been to Napleton Jeep Chrysler Dodge’s New State Of The Art Service Department? If you need your car repaired in the Orlando Florida area I invite you to come by and…..”

I just gave them a deep link to their main website’s service department page. How many deep links do you have pointing to your service department page coming from another website?

I sincerely hope you are understanding this. If you are an internet sales manager or director, it is your job to know this stuff. This is why the turnaround for internet sales managers is so great. Most lack the talent and skills needed. I’m sure your franchise teaches you how to manage leads, but do they show you how to get them?

Be aggressive! That’s all it takes.

Lobster Trap Number 3, 4 and 5

If you followed the first 2 steps wait about 90 days. In the meantime start monitoring your stats. Once you realize how much this works, you will be excited to move on. Now it’s time to make a microsite for your Service Department. At first, you will need to make some educated guesses on what people will search for. According to Yahoo!, the number one Service Related search is “tires”.

So obviously you want to start with that one. The easiest thing to do would be to set up a Wordpress Blog, and be sure the words “your town”, “your state”, “Tires”, repair and maybe “auto” are listed on your first post AND up in your title tag.

Work it with about 2 posts a week, be sure to link to it from your current website to get it going.

After this kicks in you may want to consider doing the same with your auto body & parts department.

So What now?

Eventually you will find yourself with a network of blogs with authority. Now you simply seek out link exchanges with authority websites on your topic. Simply make Google searches like this: “your state car” + blog”. Contact them and aske them for a link exchange. Tell them you will give them a link from one of your blogs, if they in turn link to your main dealer website. This is how the internet works.

Ever wonder why Lemonfree.com show up in search engines? Check this out . That is against Google terms of service, so I wouldn’t suggest buying links. It could get you de-indexed.

I suggest you print this out and make it a long term goal. This will work, and you will own your area! Good luck to you.

I have no problem answering questions. Call me direct at 863-666-0130

Thanks!

Mike Annable