Automotive SEO

Car Dealers embrace In-Store Reputation Management Platform developed by Automotive Advertising Network, that was unveiled at the recent 2012 NADA and 2012 DMSC conferences.

The Automotive Advertising Network is the industry’s first content syndication and search engine optimized network designed to promote car dealers’ inventories on national, regional, local and specialty sites. Now AAN members have the ability to capture reviews while customers are still in the store finishing up the buying the process.

The in-Store review platform along with the syndication services for inventory and content is considered to have a heavy influence on Automotive ZMOT.

The AAN helps dealers dominate ZMOT by owning multiple AAN created web assets and syndicating consumer reviews so that no matter where the consumer looks, an AAN client is always top of mind and top of results pages.

About the Automotive Advertising Network

The AAN is the industry’s first optimized, dealer-centric network with no third-party ads, designed to promote car dealers’ inventories on national, regional, local and specialty sites.

AAN is a comprehensive digital marketing and branding platform that utilizes proven practices in Search Engine Optimization (Automotive SEO), inventory advertising, social media and content publishing to advertise and sell dealer inventory.

Using these proven SEO strategies, the AAN helps dealers establish high quality, exclusive leads for less money, translating into higher closing ratios and lower costs for the dealers.  Plus, unlike traditional third party lead collectors, the dealer’s own inventory-listing pages are free of competing ads. 

The AAN has changed the playing field for dealers who have typically had to compete with national third- party lead providers who have long had an advantage on the search engines because of their national footprint and corresponding search authority.

For more information on becoming a member visit our website at http://www.automotiveadvertisingnetwork.com or give us a call at 732-450-8222

According to Google’s data, on average a car buyer visits 18 different sources before they make a decision on what car they want and where to buy. An automotive dealer marketing campaign should include strategies in which the dealer online assets appear in more places.

Dealers need to invest time, effort and money to make sure the most popular questions are answered for the prospective consumers on different sources where the consumer is likely to come across during their ZMOT process.

According to Google the most important questions are related to price (64%), vehicle performance (44%) and styling (37%). Content should be written around these topics and published in places where consumers are likely to see. Obviously the content need to be optimized for search engines to capture as many places in searches as possible.

Assuming a consumers are educated on price, performance and styling, the other thing they would look for is where to shop for their next vehicle.

Online Reviews play an important role in providing a consumer an idea of the experience they would have when they visit the dealership. If dealer’s online reputation is great, you can expect more sales.

Google place reviews play an important role in Automotive ZMOT. And dealers need to put extra effort in making sure their online reputation is excellent. The best time to obtain a review is while the consumer is still at the dealership after they purchased their vehicle. This also gives the dealer an opportunity to reconcile any potential negative reputation that they might get from a not so happy customer.

According to Google “If your business received a review that you don’t agree with, we encourage you to use business owner responses to reconcile the situation with the customer. We know a negative review can be frustrating, but we believe that engaging with a customer to address his or her concerns creates the best environment on Google Places. “

AAN (Automotive Advertising Network) has tools and technology to address and be a big part  of ZMOT influencers. With content syndication across 100% automotive websites addressing the most common consumer questions, in-store reputation management tools and, Review Syndication across 100% automotive search optimized websites, AAN provides dealers a way to influence car buyers ZMOT.

Dealers who have competition and lead grabbers appearing on Google’s page one results for their name need to fight back. Its important for dealers make sure and have an excellent strategy for counter the page one situation.

As part of Automotive Advertising Strategy can signup for Automotive Advertising Network membership and can get help.

As a recent example of how it works, Infiniti of Mission Viejo needed more dedicated assets on page one for their name. AAN created a subdomain on their name off the national site cardealersale.com. Then high ranking AAN network assets are used to build valuable and authoritative content and links back to the newly created automotive microsite. Google bot immediately recognized the new site, off-site SEO content and backlinks and positioned the dealer microsite on page one for their name.

Below, you can see the power of AAN and how dealers can leverage the AAN membership.

If you are looking for a Page one strategy you can contact us and we will demonstrate how the network can help you achieve you organic SEO goals using your inventory, SEO content and the power of AAN.

Recently while searching for a laptop to buy, I already knew what I wanted to buy. It’s an HP Core I7 that was on sale in Staples. The zero moment of truth is I already decided not only what to buy but also where to buy.

Then I decided to test out Google and see if Google can give me the best deal in a reputed store for the laptop I am interested in for a better price. I typed “laptop” in Google. I noticed something very new showing up. Since Google wants to show the best results for my query, gave me options of highly optimized and ranking sites in my area to buy a laptop on page one. Staples is not one of them.

Then I noticed a new thing showing up at the top of the results and just below the paid listings. Google is now showing options to filter results based on the broad product search term I used.

What Google is actually trying to do is providing me with options to refine my search. A click on any of these options are automatically added to the search box and results are displayed for the new focused search.

Since many of my clients are auto dealers and have created numerous Automotive Microsites for dealers, I tried a few more searches for Toyota, Cars, Honda, and the results seem to be normal like old days. But when I searched for Tires, or brakes the related search option showed up.

As interesting as this seems, it appears Google started providing this option mostly for products, and is not being shown on actual OEM brand searches yet. But my gut feeling is very soon we start seeing Stores, Models, and even service centers for the keywords like “Toyota”

Impact on Dealer SEO strategies

Needless to say this will have a huge impact on organic SEO strategies for car dealers. My speculation is that Automotive Dealers who invest on the best Automotive SEO strategy now will benefit when Google opens this for other Automotive Search Terms.

The trick seems to be on page one for these important keywords and right now the greater impact is on Fixed Ops Microsites related searches. Search for Tires or Brakes and you will see what I am writing about.

Members of Automotive Advertising Network have a unique opportunity that helps dealers achieve this faster with the network of sites. Dealers who understand the game changing rules of Google Optimization will be able to add custom links for these major keywords, that will help their link target rank higher and eventually when Google provides Related Searches for these terms your dealership will show up.

If you are interested in AAN and Content Syndication on Dealer Microsites give us a call for a demo at 732-450-8222.

Google has once again changed its position regarding reviews in Google place. It started dropping third party star count. This change is a welcome change for some dealers who have bad third party reviews but for those dealers whose reviews were better off with third party counts have to step up their game in getting reviews posted in Google Places from their Customers.

What can Dealers do to improve their review counts?

Automotive dealers need to have an in-store reputation management policy to manage Google Places. With a whole lot of smart phones on the market selling at considerably lower prices, dealers need to start using Android phones, iPhones, iPads etc. The Google Places app can be installed right on them.

Dealers can use Google Boost to spice up their PPC strategy. Boost is an up and coming strategic advantage which we have been discussing with clients.

Third party reviews are still important and will still be indexed and viewed by your prospective customers.

In-Store IRM Processes and Training

Dealers looking for direction on how to best adapt to these changes should start an in store reputation management process that include using 3G smart devices.

Dealers must set processes to identify consumers with Google accounts while they are in the dealership. 550,000 Android devices are activated a DAY and all have Google Accounts. Google empowered consumers can post reviews directly on Google Places, with their account, from a mobile device.

If you need help with in store training, processes, and strategy on reputation management, give IntelliFusion a call.

IntelliFusion Technologies is an Automotive SEO and IT company and AAN Reseller. For your automotive advertising needs send us a note or call us at 732 450 8222 and see how the Automotive Advertising Strategies are built for your specific needs.

Although Search Engines are constantly changing their algorithms to better serve the consumer, the basics of SEO haven’t changed. Exact match domain URLs, Titles, Description and Keywords still play and continue to play a major role in Search Engine optimization. Maintaining high relevant content and keyword linking strategies are still important and are fundamental to Organic SEO. More than half the battle is won once these fundamentals are in place on your website. Then depending on the competitiveness in your area, your SEO Marketing efforts need to be supplemented with Microsites and PPC.

Automotive Advertising strategies used in AAN (Automotive Advertising Network) is built on the same principles outlined here.

For Search Dominance in your area for key money phrases, its imperative you use these key terms while linking. And deep linking these keywords will only make it better and faster.

Press Releases and Content publishing on several content publishing platforms like Free Press Release and the network of AAN sites is important to further achieve this dominance. For a busy dealership selling cars, its quite often very difficult to spend enough time on these Automotive Marketing and Search Dominance Strategies. To help dealers achieve this strategy, IntelliFusion has created a Content Syndication Tool to minimize the time it takes to publish content not only on AAN sites but also other blogging platforms like WordPress, Blogger, etc. We are continually developing new tools to further content syndication on most of the free platforms.

If you are member of AAN, you can schedule some time with Ananth Godavari for a quick demo and training on the tool. If you are not a member of AAN then perhaps its time to have a chat on what AAN can deliver for your dealership.

Here is what some dealers have to say about this new content syndication dashboard designed and created by Ananth Godavari and Automotive Advertising Company.

Gary Sanders from Stevinson Auto: The new www.dealersyndicator.com will save Internet Managers time and allows more post on more sites. Before the new member tool, I was manually adding VDP post to three sites. I could see the search results in Google, but was short on time to do our entire inventory. I am excited to use this tool. Once again Ananth, Brian and the PCG team is helping get our inventory more exposure.

Joey Abna from Peltier:  Ananth,

I just wanted to take a moment to let you know how excited I am to have the new features that the Dealer Syndicator delivers to my business. I will be trained on the new tools tomorrow but I couldn’t wait to play around. I created a blog post for one of our WordPress blogs in less than five minutes the first time I used the tool. It was so easy to just click through the options copy the code and paste into my wordpress site.

These new tools will allow me to build even more content with optimized anchor text in much less time than ever before. I can’t wait to use the rest of the tools.

If you want to take your Automotive Advertising to the next step contact us and we strategize your marketing efforts.