Automotive Marketing, Automotive SEO, Social Media Marketing, and Reputation Management
As featured on the August cover of AutoSuccess Magazine. As we continue to navigate the shifting landscape in auto retail, one thing has become crystal clear… the days of cost-cutting have ended. In December, I wrote about how to make wise cuts to your marketing as the market retracted, and that was the right move then. Now, car sales have […]
So your direct traffic has been climbing, climbing, climbing, and you’re not sure why? First of all, let’s define ‘Direct Traffic’. At its core, direct traffic most frequently indicates that somebody navigated directly to your website URL without (i) performing a search, or (ii) clicking a paid ad, or referral link. It’s a bucket of traffic in your analytics that […]
So you need to increase your fixed ops business, but how do you optimize for service in search? Well, there are two ways, there’s organic search and there’s paid search but the Google search landscape is filled with misnomers and confusion. Time and time again, we see vendors focusing very heavily on fixed ops specific keywords. Of course this makes […]
What’s the difference between a vehicle listing ad (or ‘VLA’) and paid search? It used to be that you bid on a keyword (something like ‘Ford dealer’, ‘Toyota dealer’, ‘dealerships near me’, ‘used cars for sale’). In contrast, VLA’s bear more similarities to dynamic used paid search in that (rather than being keyword based) they’re based on the inventory you […]
As featured on the May 2023 cover of AutoSuccess Magazine Sales are down. Leads are down. Foot traffic is down. We have the wrong cars, and rates aren’t helping, but boy, does it feel like something just isn’t working right. Is it the website? Are the chat and digital retailing tools set up right? Do we need to switch third-party […]
Disclaimer: Due to the rapid evolution of ChatGPT this blog (an intended transcript of the video) has been enriched with additional information to ensure its timely accuracy as of the 5/23/23 airdate. So, you’ve spent the last few months hearing a lot about Chat GPT, and you might be asking yourself, can I use this to scale my SEO content? […]
GA4, What’s all the fuss about? Well, the fuss exists for good reason, and it’s probably going to continue through 2023 and into 2024. For those not aware, Google Analytics 4 (or “GA4”) is the new version of Google Analytics. It’s existed since 2020 in some form or another, has matured a lot through late 2022 into 2023, and will […]
Did you start getting a lot of out-of-state traffic in 2022? If so, were you wondering why? Well, you could have attracted out-of-market traffic via blog articles that are informational (as opposed to transactional). As we’ve discussed in recent weeks, this means blog articles that attract people who want to learn more about things like towing capacity, or trim levels, […]
If selling cars is a numbers game, then more traffic is always better, right? Well, yes and no. Let’s Talk Traffic To increase sales you need more showroom visits, which means you need more opportunities to convert to leads, which establishes the need for more traffic. Right? But…more traffic doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to have more opportunity. A […]
So, you’re here [let’s call it “Location A”] and you’re being outranked by another dealership way over here [“Location B”]? There are a number of factors that cause a dealership across the country to rank higher than you do, beginning with the keyword. Getting Outranked | Transactional Searches vs. Informational Searches Is this a transactional keyword that would indicate that […]
Blogposts in your store’s website should be a cornerstone of your SEO strategy. But what are you doing to leverage those blogs on Facebook? What does posting a blog to Facebook do for me? We refer to this as “social syndication”, and it’s a very important way of being able to accelerate the rate of climb for an SEO initiative […]
Seems like everything is video now. Why written content versus video? When it comes to your dealership’s SEO, are videos more important than written blogs? Words on your site are easier for Google to understand. Certainly the “artificial intelligence” that Google is bringing to bear is increasing in intelligence – and understanding of content is getting better and better. But […]
Do we recommend pre-order pages? Absolutely, but don’t think that you can do much in the way of search engine optimization for it. We have a lot of clients who have approached us about this, and we’ve helped most of our dealers with the creation of robust pre-order pages with good FAQ, clear calls to action, and resources throughout the […]
Organic search versus paid search? You’re looking at it all wrong and here’s why. With strong SEO, should I turn all my paid search off? No, that’s an easy oversimplification. We do have a lot of dealers who have completely moved away from paid search, especially in this current market situation where you can afford to pull back your paid […]
Some dealers struggling with inventory have hit the brakes on their SEO and content spend. Here’s why that’s a big mistake. I Don’t Have Any Inventory Why would I want to put out content for something I can’t sell right now? Well, if you actually had no inventory, you would probably be out of business. Certainly service pays the bills, […]
Are you a multi-store group and don’t know where to start when it comes to SEO? If you have a group site, and individual store sites, should you focus on your group site SEO? Or should you prioritize the store sites? Pay attention… SEO and group sites can be complicated There is definitely merit in doing SEO on your group […]
Your dealership’s name isn’t showing up on Google Maps? That’s a problem. Here’s the solution… Getting your name to display on Google Maps can be complicated. It mostly has to do whether or not your GBP (Google Business Profile) is able to rank for the keyword that was entered. For example, if someone searches for your dealership by name, you […]
So, you’re worried about your Map Pack ranking on Google, but you don’t know how to improve it? Listen up. How do I rank in the Map Pack on Google? Ranking in the Map Pack on Google has a lot to do with your physical location, which you can’t change. It also has lot to do with categories on your […]
For your dealership to have highly-performant SEO, you need a strong content strategy. But what does that mean? Whether you’re trying to write content in-house, or simply want a better understanding of how you can hold your vendor accountable, I’m going to tell you the 3 fundamentals you should be focusing on. To be effective for SEO, content needs to […]
Google Analytics Now Misreporting Location for iOS Users 2023 Update at the end. Brace yourself. This is the biggest change to the usefulness of Google Analytics acquisition data, in almost a decade. The last time we lost this much visibility in Google Analytics was when Google themselves started obfuscating keyword data for organic users. Over a few-year period, we went […]