Top Dealer SEO

Wordpress is the leading platform that businesses and individuals use for blogging. One of the most common components of Wordpress blogs and other blogging platforms is RSS, or Really Simple Syndication. This feature enables users to subscribe to a blog, thereby allowing users to get notified whenever you update your blog. RSS also enables users to read your blog in their preferred RSS reader without even going to your blog.

Recently, an all-new generation of RSS was unveiled by Wordpress called RSS Cloud. While only two RSS readers support RSS Clound thus far, more are likely to follow. The difference between standard RSS2.0 and RSS Cloud is that the latter delivers content in real time. Instead of polling a server periodically, RSSCould will enable real time blog updates to available in RSS readers.

About half a million blogs are created each month on Wordpress, which is precisely why common feed readers, including Google Reader, are likely to support RSS Cloud. After all, if Google Reader users discover that their favorite RSS reader only updates every 15 to 60 minutes while others deliver updates in real time, users will quickly adopt other platforms.

Real-time communication is becoming a hot trend thanks to services like Twitter. When breaking news happens, conversations seem to erupt on Twitter even before they spread on major news outlets. Plus, RSS already makes blogs highly measurable, and when with a real-time component there could be an even greater opportunity for RSS in the near future. Continue reading ‘Real-Time Updates Rejuvenate RSS’

Many dealers have video content lying around and posting it online is one of the easiest and most cost efficient ways to increase the reach and views of that content. Naturally, YouTube is what we all think of when considering an outlet for publishing video content online. YouTube is free and it has extremely high amounts of traffic. But there are also other outlets below that you should be taking advantage of to maximize exposure and links to your website. Using analytics, you may discover which specific video outlet yields the best response.

Flickr – Flickr is known more as a photo sharing website, but fairly recently Flickr rolled out the ability to upload video content as well. Uploading videos is straightforward, and videos can be easily tagged, labeled, and even geotagged.  Creating an account is quick and easy, and there are ample opportunities to network and get social.

Viddler – Viddler is a video sharing site that provides three ways to publish video content; for personal use, professional video publishing, and optimized for business. While many of the features are unnecessary, these provide a variety of options including creating a branded video player, removing ads around your videos, and including RSS feeds. If you want the ultimate flexibility when it comes to publishing your videos, check out Viddler.

Blip.TV – Blip.TV features massive amounts of traffic and also allows ad sharing. The site publishes independent shows and reaches over 22 million people. If you have a truly creative marketing team and top not notch video production capabilities, your video content could go viral with the help of Blip.TV.

Yahoo! Video – Like other search engines, Yahoo enables searches to find new video content. But unlike some search engines, Yahoo Video also enables users to upload their own videos. With community-driven ratings and other features, Yahoo Video, like YouTube, is also social and could provide that elusive viral exposure – just remember to give your video a clever title!

Truveo – Truveo is a video search engine owned by AOL. With an AOL account, users can upload videos and get them indexed into various search engines and get them in front of users that subscribe to videos via RSS. With the ability to submit an unlimited amount of video content, and the flexibility of tagging and bookmarking content, Truveo has become one of the most prominent sources for video content on the Web. Continue reading ‘Five Outlets for Video Content’

What any dealer jumping into running their own Google AdWords campaign may find is that running ads on the Content Network is risky business. By default, AdWords serves ads on both search results and on the content network, but unfortunately, this can often increase costs and hamper conversion rates.

The Content Network is not without its value, however. One of the best methods to ensuring a successful content campaign is to separate search and content into their own campaigns, as opposed to running them together. Generally, content campaigns garner more impressions and lower conversion rates. Therefore, keeping the campaigns separate will prevent the content campaign from skewing search campaign data.

Advertising on the content network can take some getting used to, but the point is that search and content are two very different worlds, and it’s advised to treat them as such. Try to use different keywords, ad copy, and budgets when diving into a content campaign. Unlike search, content advertising is less targeted, meaning that lower conversion rates are almost inevitable. Although ROI can be a bit difficult to gauge at first, a few weeks of testing can yield beneficial results.

One piece of advice for advertising on the content network that is difficult to adhere to is that content typically requires a healthy budget. Sending $1,000 or more per month is an important factor for ensuring a campaign’s success. If that budget is not feasible, it’s certainly a good idea to restrict advertising to search only.

Although strong conversion rates on the Content Network can be elusive, Google does provide tools that will help ensure success. Tools such as the conversion optimizer as well as the site exclusion tool are both used to improve the targeting of your content campaigns. Advertisers can also set cost-per-acquisition goals to help keep costs under control.

Content network advertising has a notorious reputation for getting out of control when it comes to clicks and spending. But by using the free tools and settings that AdWords provides, and by separating these campaigns from search, advertisers can easily discover that the Content Network provides tremendous value by allowing your brand to reside on relevant websites, popular blogs, and high-traffic portals. There are also different pricing options that including CPC, CPM, and CPA that you may want to experiment with.

When setting up your ad campaign, try to limit ad groups to a couple dozen keywords and make sure you keep similar keywords together. One of the best ways to prevent untargeted impressions and clicks is by including as many negative keywords as possible. Try running custom reports to see how these campaigns are running. Again by separating content from search, you’ll be able to use your custom reports to more easily see what’s happening. Lastly, don’t stop testing! By experimenting with new keywords, ad copy, and campaign settings, you may hit that sweet spot that’s been eluding you until now. Continue reading ‘Tips for Success on the Google AdWords Content Network’

Ford has certainly been a Big Three standout, especially as the only one of the three that has not gone through bankruptcy restructuring. But Ford is also very different in how they approach the Web and online communication. The way in which the company has embraced technology and social media has helped real people share their experiences with Ford products in an all-new way, paving the way for a real emotional connection to the brand.

One method for opening up communication with existing and potential customers is through blogging. Blogs such as The Ford Story have not only been a successful outlet for Ford news and unique stories about the company, but it has also been a forum where consumers can make their ideas and opinions be heard. The site also focuses on important areas that Ford wants to highlight, including the company’s overall plan and progress, quality, green initiatives, safety, and smart technology – all of which is also important to consumers as well.

Another important website for Ford is the Fiesta Movement. To build anticipation for the upcoming 2011 Ford Fiesta, 100 lucky people were selected to drive the cars for six months and share their experience via blogging and social media. Giving consumers the ability to promote what they really think about the car day after day is a bold step for Ford, and it also says plenty about the Fiesta’s quality and Ford’s confidence in the product ahead of its official release. It also doesn’t hurt that Jeremy Clarkson seemed to really enjoy the Fiesta either.

Ford can now be found everywhere online. From YouTube to Facebook to Twitter, Ford is not just present on prominent social media properties, Ford is an active participant. Ultimately, this reflects on their products as they’re giving consumers more opportunities to be heard, and obviously what people are saying isn’t always good and that’s not a bad thing. The company’s social media activity is a good model for other automakers and car dealers as well. Today’s auto market and today’s consumers are very different from just a few years ago, and connecting with consumers socially appears to be an increasingly important step to create trust and sell more cars. Continue reading ‘Ford Gets Social’

Providing quality content is the key to success with Web users and search engines alike. But understanding the way content is structured and how a search engine might crawl it is also important to consider. Let’s explore some important tips on site architecture and SEO.

Organize Your Content in the Planning Stage

Sometimes the aesthetics of a new website can be intoxicating. But ultimately it’s the content that will attract, retain, and convert visitors. In the early stages of planning for a new website, plan what pages, landing pages, and specific content you’ll want to highlight. By starting this off early, you’ll find that the answering questions about your content strategy may help make design decisions a little easier. Consider how similar pages should be grouped, and how navigation will allow users to drill down into sub-pages.

Utilize Bolding for Emphasis

Bolding certain words within content can help emphasis certain parts of text as users skim through a page. Additionally, bolding can be helpful for SEO as it alerts search engines to important topics and keywords. However, avoid bolding too much – if everything is bold, then nothing is important!

Isolate Flash Whenever Possible

Although Flash is not generally “SEO-friendly,” that’s not to say it has to be avoided at all costs if you intended to be successful in the SERPs. Many high-ranking automotive websites use ample Flash such as this Toms River Ford dealer website. The key to succeed with heavy use of Flash, scripts, and/or images is to balance it out with rich text content that can be easily read by browsers, users, and search engine crawlers. Additionally, using alt attributes to describe Flash and image content can still be helpful in telling search engines what the content is all about.

Avoid Duplicate Content Like the Plague

Duplicate content has never and will never be a good thing when it comes to SEO. Stay away from providing duplicated, repeating, or redundant content across multiple pages. Duplicate content is typically identified when search engines index a given page, and redundancies are eliminated from the index at some point or another. Just don’t do it!

Embrace Header Tags

Once you have a nice page of text to put on your site, you’re not quite done. Organizing your content is also important for a couple reasons. Breaking up a page with H1 or H2 header tags can make the content more readable, since more readers on the Web are likely to skim. A page on Alexandria used cars for example remains easy to read thanks to ample use of headers. But these tags can also help search engines understand the main themes of the page, thus helping in terms of SEO if keywords are present.

Unique Pages With a Call to Action

Each page should satisfy some purpose. Of course avoiding duplicate content is one way to have each page satisfy a specific objective. But pages should also educate or motivate readers. A Finance page from a New York Mazda dealer website for example not only explains financing, but it also encourages users to easily start the car buying process by filling out a credit application. By leaving out that important actionable request, you might as well say goodbye to potential leads.

Maintain Transparency at All Times

Hidden text or links on your website is always an SEO no-no. Sometimes the decisions to hide text or links may not be malicious, but trying to hide content from users in an attempt to appease the search engines will get you nowhere fast! Continue reading ‘Top 7 Content Optimization Tips’

Several months back we pointed out that Google released a Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide. This guide introduced the basic yet necessary components to creating an SEO-friendly website and how to adhere to Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

Following in Google’s footsteps, MSN’s Bing has just released a similar document called Bing: New Features Relevant to Webmasters. The guide focuses heavily on the unique features of MSN’s all-new search engine, but it too discusses the basic but necessary components that webmasters and web publishers should know about SEO.

So if Google already offers an awesome free guide on SEO, why does this new guide from Bing matter? Well, Microsoft has been promoting its new search engine heavily both online and offline in an attempt to acquire greater market share from search leaders Google and Yahoo. But even more importantly, Microsoft has just entered a long anticipated search partnership with Yahoo that will bring Bing’s search technology and listings to Yahoo properties. Once the partnership is officially implemented it will significantly expand the market share of Bing over night, and it will help Bing become a serious threat to Google’s dominance in search.

With all that is currently happening at Bing, and the sweeping changes that lie ahead, it’s worth getting acquainted with Bing if you haven’t already done so. Download the guide to Bing and if you haven’t already done so, check out the SEO Starter Guide from Google. Continue reading ‘Bing Releases Guide For Webmasters’

Here’s a quick and basic video SEO tutorial to give car dealers a jump start on an innovative automotive SEO strategy.

Continue reading ‘Basic Video SEO’

Many car dealers are becoming increasingly intrigued about online reputation management and monitoring. With countless ways for consumers, and competitors, to voice their opinions online, it’s becoming important to listen to what’s being said on consumer review websites, blogs, and social media.

If you aren’t embracing online marketing to promote your website, or even if you don’t have a website, you still have an online reputation to consider! Online media is about a conversation, and if you’re not contributing to the conversation, it won’t stop people from talking.

The best way to dive into the proactive of online reputation management is simply to start listening. High profile social media websites are a great place to start. These websites include Linkedin, Facebook, and Twitter to name just a few. For any car dealer, local search portals and review sites like CitySearch and Yelp are also important to check out to gauge what people are saying about your website. Needless to say, sites specifically within the automotive niche, such as DealerRater.com, are also helpful in identifying what customers are saying about your dealership.

One of the best ways to begin monitoring your online reputation is to simply create a free Google account which will enable you to take advantage of a number of helpful tools and resources.

The first resource to look into is Google News. Thanks to its RSS functionality, you can easily keep track of the specific news you want to stay on top of, such as information on the automotive industry or other local news. While Google News covers news and events across the world and across the web, you can use keywords to narrow-in on the specific news you seek.

Another important tool for online reputation monitoring is Google Alerts. If you’re not a fan of RSS feeds, simply add the keywords that you’re interested in, such as your dealership name or the name of your competitors, and Google Alerts will email you each time news or other recent content is found that addresses those keywords.

Google Blog Search is Google’s search destination for finding out what’s happening in the blogosphere. These days, many car dealers have their own blogs, and so do your customers. By utilizing options for email alerts or RSS, you can keep track of what car buyers and your competitors are saying.

Online reputation management and monitoring is not exclusively performed by large corporations. Small and medium sized businesses should also be gauging the pulse of their industry and local area. Of course reputation monitoring will also allow businesses to see what it is they’re doing right or doing wrong in the eyes of their customers. Continue reading ‘Jumping into Online Reputation Management’

Google appears to be increasingly embracing the universal search platform. As competition from Yahoo and Microsoft’s all-new Bing.com heats up, Google must now address the quality of its core product and the overall search experience.

Universal search blends a variety of content with search results. This might include news, images, video content, blog posts, and even books in addition to traditional website listings. While most search engines are adding content variety to their results pages, the biggest challenge is in providing the content in an easy to understand manner. The other challenge is determining how relevant a piece of content is in relation to a specific search query. For a given query, would a blog post be most relevant or perhaps a video? Regardless, the information found within the SERPs is becoming more varied than ever before, and the trend can be seen in Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

With the rapid implementation of universal search, there are certainly more opportunities for website owners. When devising content for the Web, it’s increasingly important to consider types of content and think about where to place this content. Let’s take a look at a few ways you can develop your digital assets to take full advantage of universal search.

News

Search engines love fresh content in general, but all search engines these days are also becoming hubs for news-related content. Luckily, any dealership can take advantage by creating news releases about new products, unique sales promotions, special events, or philanthropic work in the community. This content can easily find its way into Google News and become featured as ‘News’ within search results pages for important search queries. Popular websites for submitting press releases include PR Newswire and PR Leap, both of which provide a variety of options to maximize reach and SEO capabilities.

Video

Video is one of the most powerful types of content available, yet many dealers neglect to utilize this medium online. Not only is it easy for car dealers to take television commercials and post them online, but creating an online video that explores new models or provides some type of tutorial can greatly improve the online user experience. Video content can be posted on numerous websites such as YouTube, Vimeo, and even Flickr, to expand potential viewership. Best of all, videos from popular websites like YouTube not only can find their way into search results, but they can also be optimized for specific keywords and phrases.

Images

Many users turn to search engines to find images, especially new car shoppers looking for quality pictures of new models. By paying particularly close attention to files names, fie size, and most importantly SEO-friendly alt tags and text captions, the images on your website will have a greater chance of attracting more views. To prepare your images for universal search, check out the image search tool in Google’s Webmaster Central.

Local Listings

Local listings are truly the low-hanging fruit of universal search. While it’s easy to forget adding your dealership to local listings on various search engines, it could make a huge impact. By taking just a few minutes to update your local listing information, your dealership’s location and contact information can appear within the SERPs, in addition to standard organic listings. To confirm if you have been added to local listings, check out GetListed.org for more information.

Product Listings

Product listings can be a unique way to generate extra revenue for any parts and accessories department. For long-tail, specific product searches, search engines such as Google are commonly showing specific product listings in search results. By jumping into product listings, dealerships can take advantage of other outlets beyond eBay and other popular e-commerce options.

Blogs

We’ve certainly discussed the importance of blogging on Top Dealer SEO before as there are ample advantages to it when it comes to SEO and building awareness. Blogs also make it easy to add fresh content to your website and they help attract links from other websites. In addition to building buzz within the blogosphere, blogs can also ping Google Blog Search and other blog search platforms which automatically notifies these services of updates. Continue reading ‘Different Ways to Utilize Universal Search’

Multimedia is one of the greatest opportunities in Web marketing. However, it’s important to remember that when optimizing on-site content, this includes video and image content and not just text. Video optimization in particular is increasingly important as a brand-building tool. Best of all, video content potentially could find its way into search engine results pages as well.

With the growth of online video, car dealers are increasingly embracing YouTube and other online video platforms. In fact, comScore estimated that internet users in the US in the month of March viewed 14.5 billion videos on the Web! That’s an incredible statistic that shows the awesome power and demand of video content. It also may highlight the ease of putting video content online. In making it easier to find success with your online videos, let’s look at a few tips for video optimization.

When developing the video, or deciding on where to place it, consider relevancy of its content. The best online videos are those that provide value to those who view it. Videos that don’t provide any helpful information, don’t relate to the content on your website, or are simply old videos, usually are not able to gain impressive views.

Giving your video a title is probably the single most important video optimization tip. The title should be both descriptive and enticing to get people to view it. But the video titles can also be infused with important keywords to help optimize the video for search engines.

Tagging is another way to help people find your video content. Tags are used by numerous websites such as YouTube to categorize videos and they make it easier for viewers to find specific content via search queries. You should only use several keywords, no more than a half dozen. The keywords should also include keywords to aid SEO.

Naming video and image content is very important. The filenames you choose also play an important role in optimization, and should include a format that is easy to read by a human, while also being descriptive of the content. Smash Webs, a company specializing in SEO Omaha NE, agrees and adds that keywords should be used as well when applicable.

Much of search engine optimization revolves around text, which is precisely why a text transcript should also be considered. Many video and slideshow websites feature the ability to upload text to accompany your multimedia content. Adding a text transcript on your own website will also be advantageous for  car dealer SEO. While not all video sites enable this function, at the very least you’re able to provide a brief description of your content. Again, the description should accurately describe your content, be enticing like an advertisement for your video, and it should also include helpful keywords that users may use to find the video.

Video content is a social media tool, and as such can be helpful in link building efforts. Video should be engaging, entertaining, and/or informative, if you want others to link to it. Getting links from various social media outlets translates in more potential viewers.

Some videos are so entertaining or informative that they could go viral. What this means is that communities within social media sites begin to share it with friends and recommend it in  such a way that the video is passed from user to user. Again this means more eyeballs are on your video content, and it also could lead to more links pointing to your content. Don’t forget to provide proper branding or contact information on your content to ensure you won’t miss out on any leads! Continue reading ‘Tips For Optimizing Multimedia Content’