Dear Mark O’Neil,

You are the Chairman and CEO of DealerTrack with a fascinating bio that includes being President of an Auto Dealer Group, you’ve worked at Intel, you co-founded CarMax and you’re Director at DealerTire.com. It’s quite clear you have a nose for opportunity and with your Harvard MBA, you know how to leverage it.  I hope this information finds its way to your desk.

I would like to present to you comprehensive report of a gigantic opportunity that resides inside one of your existing companies.  It is an undiscovered jewel that’s waiting for you to roll it out.  Once you do, your data marketing partner will become Google…Yes Google.

I have better news. Google’s management team needs you and is looking for CHROME.

What is this Google Opportunity and what does this have to do with DealerTrack’s CHROME?  Google has a new  product search feature called Google Products, and it requires extremely detailed product data that CHROME specializes in.  Let’s see how it all fits…

Share the wealth!

Hopefully you’re reading that title thinking “duh Alex, of course SEO is evolving.”  Google changes things in their algorithms so often it is almost a different animal every day. Staying ahead of things is a full time job.  However, you’re probably wondering how it crosses into the real world.

No, I don’t want to get into the weeds of SEO, but I do want to point-out a very significant change that could drastically change our approach to SEO going forward.

Before I tell you what I’m seeing let’s make some assumptions.

1. When I say “SEO” I’m talking about organic search on Google
2. Google’s mission in life is to deliver the most relevant results to its users
3. SEO practices, as we define them today, are simply a gaming of Google’s algorithms

Those last two points are bigees. Google has been limited by technology and has had to rely on tags, links, and things of that nature to point their spiders in the right direction. He who understands these things, and plays to them, wins the SEO game. The problem here is that it is all a SEO game; it isn’t real life. In real life a good product is a good product and when you have a good product people talk about it. When people solely turn to Google, a good product can be trumped by a superior SEO strategy if the inferior product knows how to play the SEO game. A “product” can be a website, it can be your business, it can actually be a product you purchase.

How can Google get around things that game their system?

They can bring the real world into the algorithm. Web 2.0 was all about giving individuals a voice and one of the results of this movement was a broader acceptance of social media. Some sites like twitter and facebook created standards for communication on their platforms that made it very easy for Google to see. Pair that with review sites like Yelp, DealerRater, and all the review engines there is another standard of information that is very simple for Google to crawl. If these social medias and review spots are representative of individuals mimicking “real life word of mouth voting” then Google has a very powerful new addition to their algorithm.  Why has Google’s Places with Reviews pages seen such real estate increases in SERPs?

To put this in plain English:

Google is currently experimenting with using social media and reviews to drive search results. Their experimenting is getting deeper and deeper and is looking more and more like it is going to become a very major piece very soon.

Right this minute, the old SEO game is still very much alive. Representatives from Google have even stated that traditional linking still has more weight than social media.  Content and Links still apply.

I just want you to start thinking about how you’re going to put more effort into your reputation management strategy as the SEO game (you might want to reread this article) could significantly change in the very near future.

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I encourage dealers to create a process, in your dealership, to conduct a search on your dealership name each week to see if anyone is purchasing your business name in a Google Adwords competitive attack. Adwords (also known as PPC, Paid Search, or SEM) is a fast and efficient way for competitors and third parties to prey on the brand equity and awareness that dealers have created through traditional media investments. We have discussed this before in regards to POD Score and Google Page One Management.

I’d like to show two examples that I found this week that just defy logic and good business sense. The first example is Tier 2 advertising groups that buy the dealership name as part of their Adwords campaign. I am against having your regional ad group use your name in an Adwords campaign because those leads can go to another store.

Now if the agency that is operating the Adwords campaign is sloppy, they are buying any search phrases that contain the word “Toyota”. It is a simple task to add a “negative keyword” to their list which would be your name. So if you see your regional OEM ad group (tier 2) ask them to omit your business name from their campaign.

In New Jersey, the competition is very strong for BMW sales and in the example above, the Tri-State BMW ad group is running ads on Open Road BMW’s business name. I can guarantee you that this brand attack is generating leads for other BMW dealers in the state that are just 25 miles away. This is sloppy digital marketing from the Tier 2 agency and of course this lowers their direct website leads.

I think we all can agree that since the dealers name is the #1 organic search phrase that drives traffic to their website, this dealer does NOT need their Tier 2 ad agency to get in the middle of the consumer and their website. This is in reference to using their multi-million dollar brand name. The Tier 2 agency can buy all generic keywords they want to generate additional leads.

Edmunds.com Lacks Good Judgment

Is Edmunds at it again?

The DealerRefesh community has called Edmunds out in the past about buying car dealers franchise names. Edmunds is once again running Google Adwords campaigns that drive consumers to lead capture pages using a dealer’s name. These leads are then sold to the dealer (if they are buying leads) and their nearest competitors.

Is Edmunds dealer centric or are they poaching on car dealer’s brand equity? You decide.

Would you like Edmunds to be using your trade name to generate leads for your competitors like in these examples below?

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Recently Google created a Tsunami of change by integrating Google Places into organic search results. Dealers called me to ask what I thought these changes would have to their Automotive SEO strategies. I was not quick to answer because I think that Google is still refining their balancing act of SEO, SEM, and Google Places.

With that said, I am feeling much better about the changes that are in play. I was worried that the new Google Places integration would start at the top of organic listings which would favor websites connected to a Google Places page. From what I can see, Google is still rewarding exact match domain names and highly optimized websites before the “mosh pit” (in green) is displayed.

In the example below, a broad search phrase like “Los Angeles Dealers” produces a list of car dealers that have Google Maps, but before those listings, three company websites appear.

In the search results shown above, you can see that an “exact match” domain with good content, links, and relevance PRECEDES the massive block of results shown in green that are enhanced by Google Places data. You can also see the other two websites that rank above the Google Places block are not slackers at all: Automotive.com and Cars.com.

Google SERP Find Exact Matches First

I’ve said this before and will repeat it again, Google always tries to present, on a search results page (SERP), the best matching assets in its database. Google, Yahoo, and Bing all weight exact matching domains very high as long as the websites have relevant content. Redirected domains that are not hosted will never appear in search results so all those parked domains you may own are not helping you. It may be time to get those parked domains on a real content publishing strategy!

Don’t Forget The Stars

When Google integrated Google Places, the normal 8-10 organic listings were changed dramatically which created a “jump ball” once again in the search marketing Olympics.

I would like to remind all car dealers that they MUST develop a comprehensive Internet Reputation Management (IRM) strategy to increase participation of their clients to posted reviews. My recommendation is that a successful dealer should have TWICE the number of positive reviews “stars” of their nearest competitor. That may be harder in years to come but all dealers should have a few HUNDRED reviews posted from authentic customers.

Testing Search Results Start To Show A Trend

From recent testing that I have done, websites hosted on great domain names may actually have an edge over local car dealer websites. Take a look at the search listed below. The websites that Google felt were best matches and NOT in Google Places were listed first. Then the local dealers were listed.

Once again, the TOP websites above the integrated and enhanced Google Places organic listings are two heavyweight contenders UsedCars.com and Yahoo Autos. For the car industry, the bigger, more established inventory advertising websites could be getting more traffic because they are NOT in the green Google Places area and shown at the top of the page.

This trend continues as you type in even broader searches, and you can see that websites that are EXACT matching or that have high SEO inbound links on targeted keywords, appear on Google Page One before the Google Places block. So, in essence, Automotive SEO strategies are still in tact and dealers that have EXACT matching microsites with great content are getting a boost.

The Future Automotive SEO

Since I am an advocate of Automotive Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies, you would expect me to defend this marketing strategy but I will be the first to say that the changes with Google Places is still a dynamic event. I’ll keep you posted on what I find and make recommendations to take advantage of opportunities I see.

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Every customer who arrives at your site has a unique experience.  If you don’t take the time to understand the multitude of possible experiences on your site, you might be missing enormous amounts of opportunity.  Ask yourself a simple question:  “What are the different problems I can solve for my customers?”  You’ll find out quickly that the many solutions you offer your clients are not found on your site.  This is the basic premise behind search personas.  To read more on search personas, check out Marketing in the Age of Google.

Paid search allows us to segment data to better observe these funnels of customers and understand how they behave differently, therefore justifying the need to treat them differently.  We separated Used, New and Service customers and dove into the data.

We looked for high-level indicators of behavior:  Page views per visit and Calls per form submission.  Page views:

Used and New customers behaved very much alike, visiting 2 and 3 pages per visit respectfully and landing solidly at 3 calls per form submission.

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