What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Car Dealerships and Why Does It Matter
If you’ve been looking for a new website vendor within the past 12-24 months, you’ve heard the claim from multiple vendors that their websites have ‘SEO’ or are ‘Search Engine Friendly’. Some sales reps might show you how their Search Engine Optimization works, others might point to the high rankings of their client’s websites, while some reps sell their SEO products with a ‘trust me, we’re good’ mentality.
In order to alleviate some of the smoke-and-mirror tricks that some vendors are pushing regarding Search Engine Optimization, I’ve decided to study up on the subject of Search Engine Optimization and share what’s real/unreal and what works/what doesn’t in order to allow each dealership to pick their new website or SEO vendor based upon facts versus what a snake oil salesperson is selling.
Most of the information you’ll find in the upcoming posts have been derived from a video training session on Lynda.com. Lynda.com is a online service that allow you to go through tutorials on technological subject matter ranging from SEO to Javascript to PHP. It’s an excellent resource because it allows you to work side-by-side with a video. Really cool stuff and I suggest you check it out if your geek side is interested.
In order to explain search engine optimization, I think it’s necessary to explain search on a very basic level
What do ESPN, Pizza Hut, Ace Hardware, 1800Flowers, and your dealership have in common? They all have a website. More importantly, they all have websites and want to be visited and found by people like you and me on the web.
How do people and consumers find your website? They use multiple channels to discover new websites to visit such as word of mouth, TV, Books, Magazines, Radio, and Billboards. In today’s online environment, search engines like Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and AOL and 100s others are for the most part how your website is discovered.
Let’s break down some of the terminology and processes of search. If I want an iPod, I go to a search engine and search for ‘ipod’. After doing this, I am faced with an an overwhelming amount of information about ipods on the first page I’m presented with. These results and information are referred to as SERPS.
SERP- Search Engine Result Pages
After performing a search for ipod, within seconds, a company or person’s website will be seen with information that the search engine has deemed relevant for the keyword or phrase searched. The search engines offer multiple areas of real estate for people to click on. The sponsored links are just that, sponsored or paid for by someone for placement. I’ll write an article later about sponsored links and Pay-Per-Click marketing, but for this post, I’m going to concentrate on SEO.
All of the area outside of the sponsored links are natural, or organic, listings. These listings are where 80% of all consumers will click to get the information they’ve requested. Natural listings are trusted by consumers and seen as an being unbiased, not tainted by advertising, or tainted by the search engines themselves. This real estate is the domain of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
With 80% of all clicks occurring in this space, it’s understandable that positioning your dealership’s website high in these rankings is fiercely competitive because the search results page real estate is extremely valuable. Statistics and studies show that if your websites isn’t on Page 1 of a SERP, your chances of getting visited is about ZERO. People rarely go past Page 1 when they are searching online. Typically, if a searcher doesn’t find the information they are looking for on page one, they enter another search term and start the process over with a new page of SERPs. If they don’t find what they’re looking for after a few tries, they go to another search engine.
The reason that Google has gained a 60%+ market share of all searches and is the currently leader in the search industry is that they provide their searchers with the most relevant information with the fewest clicks. That’s what the search engines are all striving to do to get a bigger piece of this ever expanding market.
How do you get your dealership’s website listed higher? Search Engine Optimization!!!
I’ll go into to detail in later posts to explain how to increase your rankings, explain SEM (Search Engine Marketing), and White Hat/Black Hat SEO practices. If you’d like information in the meantime, don’t hesitate to contact me @ patrickworkman@gmail.com or @ 206.334.7495.
HAPPY SELLING!!!
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