Automotive SEO

There's lots of SEO talk, and plenty of automotive seo "experts" trying to sell their "expertise" on the web. Unfortunately, many of these people try to twist and bend truths to make you feel like they have the answers and the automotive SEO product for your dealership. This, of course, only ends up hurting car dealerships because they invest heavily in these services and don't end up receiving much in return.

That's why I've started this page. Here you will find resources to help you understand SEO, and challenge some of these less-than-truthful search marketers with straight-forward, revealing, questions. I don't like people and businesses being swindled by the few unethical search marketers. If you doubt anything I claim, go check out the websites of the search engine optimization experts I've linked to and you'll see that my strategy and statements are cemented in real, tested, accepted truths.

Now, on to the business.

Below you'll see a list of statements often made by automotive SEO's along with my response, and a link to back me up so that you don't leave thinking it's now up to you to discover who's telling the truth. Scroll further down for specific questions to ask to your automotive website or SEO provider.

Statement 1: The guy trying to sell you his automotive SEO product boldly states "You shouldn't be going for long-tail phrases, just the core terms of 'Make + Location'".

Response: This is nonsense, but probably not for the reason you're thinking. This isn't a zero-sum game. You don't have to choose between the core "Make + Location" and the highly targeted long-tail searches like "Honda Ridgeline Los Angeles". YOU CAN TARGET BOTH!

These supposed SEO experts say not to target the long-tail because you should be targeting the core phrase. Find a search marketer that will do both for you. I know I do that for my clients (100+) every day.

Reinforcements:
SERoundTable reports on a presentation by Dan Thies concerning targeting long-tail phrases, the traffic they bring, and how they can be targeted on your website's inner pages (make sure your site isn't one page!):

"Danny explains process behind the long tail. Sometimes the less popular terms end up bringing in far more targeted traffic and end up equaling more searches than popular terms. He puts up a chart that shows the hits for primary keyword terms, and then the sum of all the long tail searches and surprisingly, the long tail terms produce more traffice [sic].

The reality is, people searching for something specific don't enter your site through the main dot com but through an interior page. The more people you catch with long tail terms the more people will come into the site."

Read the whole thing at SERoundTable here. More about Dan Thies, the "keyword guru".

Statement 2: You don't need thousands of indexed pages, your Flash site will do fine.

Response: Sure, you don't NEED thousands of pages, but if you were Google and wanted to provide your users with the best search results (which they do) and someone searched for "Mazda Toledo" would you direct them to a one page website, or a site with thousands of pages that has an inventory of Mazda vehicles indexed? I think the answer to that is obvious.

If you're serious about your search engine results, put yourself in the best position by having a website that can be thoroughly crawled and indexed by the search engines. If you have a choice, go with a provider whose sites show at least hundreds of pages indexed in Google (then you know your inventory can be indexed). You wouldn't go to into a modern-day battle with a sharpened stick, don't try to compete online with a one-page Flash site.

The benefit of a website with a large number of pages indexed is that you can more affectively target multiple key phrases. Also, if you have a site with 1,000 pages, and each links to your home page with good anchor text, that's 999 good links! While there's a lot of focus on backlinks, internal links to carry weight. Add them to your SEO arsenal.

Reinforcements: Danny Sullivan (the editor-in-chief of the very respected SearchEngineLand.com) recently stated his belief that Flash websites will never rank well in the search engines. Don't take my word for it, read what Danny had to say here: Flash websites will never do well in SERPS. In case you don't know, "SERPs" stands for "Search Engine Results Pages".

The number of pages of a website indexed in a search engine is called "Search Engine Saturation". Aaron Wall of SEOBook.com and ClientsideSEM.com states the following on his Search Engine Saturation tool: "Shows you how many pages you have indexed compared to competing sites. Each page has its own chance to rank. Sites with thousands of pages indexed are relevant for thousands and thousands of unique search queries because they have so many pages in the search lottery."

As backup to my statement that internal links can help pass link juice around see Rand Fishkin's post at SEOmoz.

I'll continue to add information as I see more absurd statements made online.

Read what Danny Sullivan had to say about this at the 2007 SES Chicago Conference: Danny Sullivan: Flash websites will NEVER do well in SERP's.

Thinking about hiring an SEO firm, or purchasing a website, for your car dealership? Below are questions to ask regarding SEO and information along with each to help you make better informed decisions, and prepare you for their likely replies which may be misleading.

For your website provider:
1 - How search engine friendly are your pages? Can I change titles and content on individual pages?

2 - How many pages of your websites are typically indexed by Google? Are individual inventory pages indexed?

For your automotive SEO analyst:
1 - Are you targeting "Make + Location"?

2 - Are you targeting long-tail phrases like "Make + Model + Location"?