Have You Ever Tried To SEO A Service Department For A Car Dealer?
Service Department Microsite
I asked this question last week at the NADA Convention in Orlando Florida to every marketing vendor I met. Every single company I asked cringed before answering. Have you ever helped a dealer market their service department on the internet?
Showroom Logic is in the process of doing just that for the Napleton Auto Group. They have over 60 rooftops nationwide, located in 4 or 5 different states. We’re starting with a group of close to 20 dealerships.
Our plans are simple. We’ll set-up a Google Adwords PPC campaign to get traffic while the website and blog is being built. This will enable us to find out what the hot keywords are and go after them.
We have many things to consider, and setting up the keyword phrases for the PPC campaign will be the toughest. We have to figure out how people search in all these different areas. But the question is, do people search for “Oil Changes” or “oil change coupons”? I know Google will suggest keywords to use, but the unique keyword phrases not on the list are the ones you can get cheap.
During the past 3 weeks we have been running a PPC campaign for a car dealer in Kissimmee Florida. We’ve been advertising cars for them with great success. When they saw our numbers compared to other marketing companies they asked us to help them with their service department.
Although this wasn’t part of our business model, we love to try new things so we went for it. We started doing some keyword research and worked on some custom landing pages to obtain a better quality score from Google. We want to get as many quality impressions as possible without spending too much per click.
When we launched the campaign we were surprised to see how many companies were doing PPC in the Orlando / Kissimmee Florida area for oil changes alone.
Jiffy Lube alone has a huge presence for organic and PPC searches. It appears they are paying over $4.00 per click, and their national website is so powerful and mature that it ranks first and third for the term “oil change orlando”. The first is their main website, and the third is a subdomain (orlando.jiffylube.com).
To obtain rankings like Jiffy Lube is possible, but it certainly won’t happen over night. Many people think SEO is all about keywords, but there is a lot more to it than that. You can have the most optimized website in the world but if you don’t have any quality links pointing to it from other relevant websites you won’t get much out of it.
So, where should these links come from? You can start with directories but that will be just a small piece. Directory links are weak, but it’s a good start.
You have to have a successful link building campaign going, and you cannot get links too quick. If the search engines see too many backlinks roll in you may get a penalty. If you get a Google Penalty, consider it the kiss of death.
Basically, it will take at least 4 – 5 months to get Jiffy Lube types of rankings. There is no magic switch an SEO company has to get a website ranked. It takes time and money.
The time comes in doing keywords research, writing 500+ word articles and publishing them to the right websites, hub pages, etc…
The money is needed to have premium listings in some powerful directories and to fund the person assigned to all of the above practices.
Performing SEO for a new website is like playing chess by mail, with the other player living on the North Pole and you’re using the pony express for delivery.
Besides the main website for Napleton, we will also be launching a service department blog to help juice it up. our first rooftop will be Ed Napleton Honda in Missouri.
Search Engine Marketing For Car Dealer Service Departments
Search Marketing For Service Departments
Last week Patrick and I were approached by a car dealer in Orlando Florida. They are already an existing customer of ours, using our Orlando Microsite to sell more new and used cars online.
Anyway, they wanted us to help them market their service department online because they are very happy with the results we’ve given them so far.
This dealer has 3 separate websites. The first is their main site, which is operated by Izmo Cars. The second is a macrosite provided by Showroom Logic. The third website is a microsite by dealer.com which attempts to target the Orlando Florida market.
The campaign we agreed upon will be Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing using Google Adwords.
For the SEO Aspect we felt it would be best to develop and maintain a blog for their service department. This will give us more flexibility to optimize the website for keywords. The reason we decided not to use any of their existing websites is because of the lack of technology available for creating new pages.
Their Izmo Cars website doesn’t have a log-in where you can add or edit a webpage. They have to be contacted for each change and they will do it. The problem is I do not wish to wait when I need something changed.
The Dealer.com website is much better than Izmo, but it still lacks flexibility. I could of created a new page for their service department, but I wouldn’t have access to change the title tags.
This is why we chose the blog, and it’s actually like having an additional website for our customer. Counting our used car blog, they now have 5 websites:
- Orlando Used Car Classified Microsite This website shows up better than any of their websites for organic (free) searches on Google, Bing and Yahoo. We do not market their brand or franchise. We market their inventory, new and used. We also use our Google Adwords Software to promote their vehicles within a 40 mile radius of their dealership.
- Orlando Car Blog This blog helps to rank all of their other websites in search engines. Weekly blog posts are done about their new inventory as it comes in. Whenever a blog post is published, the system “pings” Google, and the article is crawled and indexed within a couple of minutes. A couple of months ago they acquired over 10 used Corvettes. I made the Corvette keyword a main focus during one week, and since then all of the Corvettes have been sold.
- Service Department Blog: This blog provides the same as above, only the traffic is funneled to either their lead management tool or their existing main dealer website service pages. It also blends in social networking accounts like Twitter and Facebook.
- Main Napleton Website: This website is their main dealer website, operated by Izmo Cars. It obtains most of it’s traffic by drive-by’s, newspaper and TV advertising.
- Corporate Website: This website is provided by Chrysler and it has backlinks from corporate Jeep, Chrysler and Dodge websites. It also offers more flexibilitythan their main dealer website.
This is why Napleton is a leader in internet sales in the Orlando area. They have a large internet presence consisting of 5 different websites and they blast their inventory daily to Twitter, Facebook and Craigslist using our automated tools.
We can only service one dealership per city, so it’s first come first serve. If you would like more information regarding our services, please email mike@showroomlogic.com.
Ed Napleton Auto Group Teams Up With Showroom Logic For Car Dealer SEO
Napleton Auto Group
Ed Napleton Automotive Group has hired Showroom Logic to perform SEO services for all 18 of their car dealerships. We will be promoting and marketing their used cars in 3 different states, plus their auto service department in Missouri.
After a successful campaign for Napleton Jeep Chrysler Dodge in Kissimmee Florida, our performance overshadowed anyone they’ve ever hired. About 3 months ago we launched a website in Orlando Florida for Napleton’s used car inventory.
Since then, their return on investment has been over 900%. We at Showroom Logic are proud of that figure, especially when we blew all of their other internet advertising companies out of the water.
If you are a multiple rooftop dealer, Showroom Logic can help you literally own your area.
In today’s internet world, you have to meet your customers half way. Showroom Logic not only helps dealers with organic (free) listings in search engines. We go one step further. We blast your entire inventory to Facebook, Twitter, Craigslist and Google’s network of car related news sites like Motor Trend.
You can see more information here.