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…

Let’s look at a Google Products example for a Garmin GPS:

Google is slowly building out it’s Google Products platform. Here is another Google Products example, this time taken from the automobile accessories industry.  See the link for  “Jeep Floor Mats” (Scroll to the bottom and you’ll see the “product attributes” that Google requires to make this work). If you swap out the Jeep Floor mats and insert ANY vehicle for sale (like a NEW 2011 Ford Flex or a USED 2008 Buick Enclave) Wow!

This digital marketing opportunity is not limited to Google.  Here is Yahoo’s example of the same concept:

Bing has it also, but it’s not as fully developed.

WHY CHROME?

I saw this opportunity in 2010 and attempted to fill this void myself.  I’ve had discussions with Google Products data vendors from other verticals (EdgeNet.com) and have come to the conclusion that it will require an automotive data specialist inside our space to make this happen.  IMO, there are few companies in the automotive space that has what Google needs and I have been working with CHROME data so long, I felt you’d be best suited to it.  This is confirmed by Google’s PR: “Going to the Source to Improve Product Data”

When CHROME takes on this new partnership with Google, what kind of nationwide impact am I talking about here?

Let look at the automobile accessories industry for clues to what could happen in our space, let’s look at Audi Q7 accessories and visualize a 2011 Audi Q7 in its place:

What happens is CHROME creates the attribute map for all automobiles and this information creates a path FROM Google Products to the Google Shopping system, and to the organic search results AND to the Google Adwords (Paid search) results. I’ve uploaded my inventory to Google Shopping and nothing happens because there is no Google Products for automobiles (yet).  My Audi Q7 is highlighted below and it sits there all dressed up and no place to go!

The Google Products is a relatively new feature for Google, and Google’s roll-out is limited to the time consuming connections it makes with vendor attribute specialists.  Google is looking for a solution partner in the automotive manufacturer/dealer space and they don’t know you have the key to the attribute vault!

CHROME’s Revenue model? That’s up for exploration.  I believe you’ll need to build a new business model for the product as it’s a data/advertising product with no peer (in our space).   My research taken from www.Edgenet.com tells me that any retailer that wanted to be visible in the Google Products system needs to “participate” with the data vendors program.  This makes the Google Products vendor the “gatekeeper” for all retailers!  That being said, the Automotive model is completely unlike ecommerce retail so creative exploration will be required.

I do know, once it’s launched, it’s impact WILL dramatically impact our entire automotive retail internet marketing industry… forever.

Mr. O’Neil, your team’s contact at Google is Mr. Brian Lam, Strategic Partner Manager, Google Product Search.  Mr/ Lam is a new hire (6/2010) and you two need to talk!   The  “Google Products” platform is built around ecommerce, so some joint creative thinking will be needed.  Once you two conquer the details, the impact to consumer, manufacturer and retailer is going to be… epic.

I hope you and Mr. Lam found this report to be the beginning of a new product launch in the automotive retail space.  If I can be of any service to you or your team, please feel free to contact me.

-Joe Pistell

An Open Letter to Mark O’Neil – Chairman and CEO of DealerTrack is a post from: Internet sales manager training

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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.

SEO is Evolving …into our world is a post from: Internet sales manager training

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Share the wealth!

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?

——–

Using PPC against the dealership. Edmunds and Tier 2′s are still at it. is a post from: Internet sales manager training

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Share the wealth!

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.

SEO is Still Relevant Amongst Google’s Changes is a post from: Internet sales manager training

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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.

To be fair, the difference between new and used shoppers seems pretty small.  But we’re talking an average of one less page view over a full month’s worth of clicks to all of the dealers who use our paid search.  That’s pretty significant.  I think the explanation for the difference is pretty simple.  There are a lot of extra tools and resources for the new car customer. Build and research tools and reviews are definitely contributors here.

Service customers came in at 2 page views per visit and a whopping 20:1 call to form ratio.

The service customer showed their preference for the phone loud and clear.  This is a confirmation of our gut instincts, but it’s certainly good to see it on paper.  We are seeing that service customers only view 2 pages per visit.

Might the lower page views per service customer visit be attributed to dealers focusing very little attention on fixed ops?

Now the number that everyone talks about is conversion.   We looked at conversion across all of the keywords in the new, used and service departments:

12% is a good number, I was pleased to see that.  There is more to this story though.

There is a set of keywords that cannot be attributed to a specific profit center.  Things like the dealership name fit into this category and these keywords tend to do a lot of heavy lifting… they drive a lot of traffic.  Because searchers who use dealership name cannot be deep linked to a profit center, the page views per visit goes up to 5.  Calls per form rises to 5:1 as this is a grouping of sales and service customers.

The interesting story unfolds with a look at conversion on dealership terms however:

18%.  This is a pretty big number in the conversion world. Given what we know about used and new sales performance though, I think there is a story here.  Customers do their research, move up and down the purchase funnel considering different makes/models etc.  During this process they are taking in advertisements from all of the local dealers. When it’s time to make the leap to leaving a lead what do they do?  They Google the Dealership name, head to the site and contact the dealership.  Proof.

There are certainly other stories to be told here and I would love to hear other perspectives on what folks take from this data.

What does this mean to the dealer: Advertise on your name, regardless of the medium.  Too many people ask “Why should I bid on my name in paid search, we’re #1 in organic?”

Answer: Yes, the number of people who click on the dealership name in PPC is much less compared to the number of people who click on the organic listing.  However, the conversion rate on the people who clicked the PPC ad is 4 times higher.  To take this a step further, PPC is a quick and easy way to capture all those customers who may misspell your dealership’s name.  Google does a good job of trying to correct searchers’ mistakes, but they’re not perfect.

I can only say all of this because PPC gives us the most accurate view of our visitors’ behavior.  Is it a clearer window to your visitors?  I would say yes.

Is PPC a window to all visitor behavior? is a post from: Internet sales manager training

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Share the wealth!

Google is on the move again with possible (at the time of this posting) changes hot off the heels of a move to Google Instant.  In my opinion these changes should have a much more obvious impact on local businesses than what we’ve seen from Instant thus far.

Google is becoming much more integrated by combining Places (formerly known as Google Local) with Reviews and placing it inside the organic listings.

This move calls for an immediate need to concentrate on your online reviews that push stars to Google.  Right now that would be Google reviews themselves or DealerRater.

Dealers could get away with having bad reviews in the past because the maps and reviews were separate from the organic listings, but now it is really hard to miss those bad reviews.

So, what are the changes in this new integration?

• Prioritization or organic rankings also being seen on maps
• Reviews showing on Organic Listings
• Address and Telephone number showing on organic listing (could change your website conversion numbers)
• Ads from Google Places showing on Map and bottom of your organic listing
• Removal of common links under the first organic listing
• Link to Place page on organic listing
• Links to Review sites on organic listings
• Map moved to the right

I can’t stress enough how important it is to work on your customer reviews.  If anything that should be the most obvious thing these changes bring.  He with the best and most reviews will be chosen when up against someone who has few and/or bad reviews.

Thanks to JD Rucker for putting this screen cast together:

And for additional reading Matt Murray has a take on what this means as far as screen real estate goes:  Google Heightens the Space Race.

Has anyone seen how and if this changes the need to keep up with a Places listing for your dealership?  We’ve had some significant amount of pain with Local/Places for years (as seen from these DealerRefresh forums threads):

• Google Local updating is a pain
• Putting ads on your Google Places page
• Requests for help with Google Places
• Local SEO University

Reviews, Places, and SEO. Google’s new Integration. is a post from: Internet sales manager training

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Share the wealth!

A lot of speculation has been floating around since Google launched Instant yesterday.  The death of SEO, the increase or decrease in long-tail, the beginning of the end of the world!!!

Don’t know what Google Instant is?  In short geek terms it is “SERP while typing” while in general terms it is simply giving you your Google results before you hit the ENTER key.  If it isn’t working for you yet, it will be what Google is from this point on, so just go to Google to try it.

Now that you know what it is, let’s get back to the speculation.

Q:  Does Google Instant kill SEO?
A: No.  It does not kill Search Engine Optimization, but it definitely changes things.  According to Matt Cutts (Google Search Quality Group who occasionally addresses concerns) who commented on how Instant changes SEO:

I think over time it might. The search results will remain the same for a query, but it’s possible that people will learn to search differently over time. For example, I was recently researching a congressperson. With Google Instant, it was more visible to me that this congressperson had proposed an energy plan, so I refined my search to learn more, and quickly found myself reading a post on the congressperson’s blog that had been on page 2 of the search results.

And what Matt is talking about leads us into the conversation around short and long tail search changes.  If you’re not familiar with that, Short Tail is a query like “Toyota Camry” while long tail is a query like “2006 Toyota Camry LE Automatic Power Window Regulator” – it is a difference in how specific the query is.

Q:  Does Google Instant Kill Long-tail Search?
A: It is too early to tell, but there will more than likely be some behavior changes in how people use Google.  You can join a discussion on whether Google Instant kills long tail search on the forums.

Personally, I think Google Instant is going to make people more efficient in searching for things.  I think, with time, people are going to be doing multiple searches for things when they’re not just using Google as a phone book or a replacement for their address bar in the browser.

Q:  Does Google Instant kill Pay Per Click (PPC, SEM, Paid Search, etc)?
A: No.  Absolutely NO.  Where do you think Google gets a huge chunk of their money from?  If anything, it increases the relevancy of PPC ads just as much as it increases the relevancy of the organic results.

Q:  How do I better prepare my website for Google Instant?
A: There is no secret formula to it.  Even if there is a secret formula to it, Google will change things later to close that hole.  They’ve been doing that since day one.  However, if you concentrate on content and don’t get completely consumed in the other SEO areas you will always be ready for any changes that come.  People consume content.  For a search engine to remain successful, it must provide people with what they want.

My last DealerRefresh article on the Death of SEO might be soon was not written to be taken literally.  It was written to show that content is what matters more than anything when it comes to SEO and that content will pull you through any major change that might come down the road.  Got it?  CONTENT, CONTENT, CONTENT should be primary and SEO technicals should be secondary.

Q:  Will people continue to use Google Instant?
A: I am including this question in here because of Joe Pistell (Usedcarking.com and HUGE contributor to DealerRefresh).  He thinks people are not going to like it because 98% of computer users type by looking at their keyboard.  I find his simple point to be very interesting as Google Instant could, on that statement alone, become a love/hate tool.  I hope that Google Instant will be the first of many tools to encourage people to not look at their keyboards while typing, but this is just my personal hope.  By the way, try not looking at your keyboard while typing – you’ll be amazed how much faster you type and how quickly you will stop making typos.

And what about all those people who search from a Google Browser plug-in or the Google Bar?  They won’t experience Google Instant.  But I am one of those people, and I am trying to break the habit because I find Instant very useful!  What do you think?

Matt Cutt’s Quote from his blog
Mashable’s Google Instant Poll

Google Instant. Are we in Trouble? is a post from: Internet sales manager training

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Share the wealth!

We are approaching a fork in the road for organic search.  Search engines are either going to become more powerful, or they’re going to shed enough leaves to make us ask whether sustaining our current investment is sound.

Google released Realtime search, Yahoo and Bing are merging, and facebook is jumping into the search game.  Those are big things, but what do they really mean?  Let’s take a few steps back for a minute.

Search engines, traditionally, look for a few things when deciding which website to serve-up in the results:

These are things that are technically done and can be quite complex depending on who you speak with.  There is a big problem with this model though:  it is highly corruptible.  Not pointing any fingers, but as an example of the corruption, SEO “experts” and “gurus” make their livings by taking advantage of this model.  For the pure fact that this model is corruptible, it will never be the true long-term ruler.  Corruption is one simple and logical reason why we’re approaching this fork.

But let’s jump down the rabbit hole a little further and talk about social media.  Yes, I know, we’re all sick of hearing about how wonderful social media is and blah, blah, blah.  But I would advise you to not stop reading just yet because I’m not here to praise it.  Social Media is not ruled by a technical system.  There is no algorithm for results.  The content is completely provided based on judgement by the people you have chosen to hear from.

Want to buy something?  Ask your friends on facebook what they think.  That is a lot trustier than some review from a stranger you might find on Yelp after being directed there by Google.

This is technology simply getting to the roots of human nature.  We place more value on the things we hear from people we know.  And we seek that higher-valued system over any other.  The big search engines see this and they’re trying to position themselves to have a future by reorganizing and adding new features.

To all our DealerRefresh readers I am sorry to say that we have watched the plight of the newspaper, the radio, we’ll see the drop of TV ads as we know them today, and we’re starting to find that this other advertising source we are just beginning to really capitalize on could find itself as an advertising “has-been”.  We are approaching a fork in the road.

The fork might be closer than I’m letting on….

From the Nielsen Wire on Top U.S. search sites for July 2010:

The number of searches conducted in the U.S. over the last year has decreased by 16% from 10.5 billion in July 2009 to 8.8 billion in July 2010. MSN/Windows Live/Bing was the only one of the top three engines to have experienced an increase in search volume – a 28% increase from 0.9 billion to 1.2 billion.

Why do you think this is?

Is the death of SEO coming soon? is a post from: Internet sales manager training

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Share the wealth!

Google Maps and Geo Targeting Your Websites

Google Maps is the #1 organic advertising tool for most car dealers but how Google Maps actually works is a mystery to many of us in the SEO community.  For example, one New Jersey car dealer’s Google Maps listing is displayed over 17,000 a month.

What has been a challenge for many car dealers is determining why certain car dealer listings show in Google Maps when consumers do a county or statewide search.  I have tested hundreds of scenarios where a Google Local Business listing is correct but it does not show for searches that you would expect it to appear.

With GPS enabled mobile phones and geo targeted search marketing applications like FourSquare.com on the rise, I started to look into how websites are geo-targeted.  It started with a conversation with Alex Snyder at Checkered Flag because all his dealer websites are a sub-domain off of www.checkeredflag.com and not on a standalone domain name.  What that means is that Checkered Flag Toyota is located at http://toyota.checkeredflag.com and not on www.checkeredflagtoyota.com.

In the case of all the Checkered Flag store websites, they are hosted off a primary domain and Google Maps was not behaving properly for some of the store listings.  As Alex and I discussed this matter, Alex took it on his own initiative to see how other franchise chains handled mapping multiple stores off a central website.

Alex found that Best Buy (www.bestbuy.com) had a directory page for each store in their chain and that each page showed very well in organic search as well as in Google Maps.  When we looked deeper, we found that each store listing page had implemented GEO tags on the page using longitude and latitude settings.

When I searched for the Best Buy store in Eatontown New Jersey the top search result was: http://stores.bestbuy.com/1895 .  You will notice that just like Checkered Flag, all the stores are pages in a sub-domain but Best Buy was NOT having any issue with Google Maps and search results.

When you view the source code for this page two things jumped out at me; one line in the HEAD and one line in an H1 tag:

• xmlns:geo=”http://www.w3.org/2003/01/geo/wgs84_pos#”
• <h1 property=”geo:lat_long” content=”40.2908597,-74.0503975″>Best Buy – Eatontown</h1>

It looks like Best Buy added GEO tags to their store location in the H1 tag. This was the first time I saw GEO tags in an H1 tag, which got me motivated to take some time into understanding the purpose of the GEO tags.

My research showed that there are a few ways to implement GEO tagging, one is using this W3 syntax formatting and a second way was using META tags.

GEO Tagging In WordPress

I asked my WordPress programming team how they would implement GEO tagging in a php environment and after some research, they decided that it would be better to add the GEO tags in the META data.

So we created a WordPress plug-in that allows the longitude and latitude to be entered via the control panel.   With this plug-in installed, WordPress microsites will turn this data into commands in the HEAD tags of the website pages.  These are the tags for our Boston car dealers website at www.bostondealers.org:

<meta name=”ICBM”          content=”42.3583333,-71.0602778″>
<meta name=”geo.position”  content=”42.3583333;-71.0602778″>
<meta name=”geo.placename” content=”Boston”>
<meta name=”geo.region”    content=”MA”>

Car Dealer Website Platforms Should Add GEO Tags

I’m writing this article because I want to challenge the automotive website community to implement GEO tagging for car dealer websites.  The ideal tags for dealer websites should be the EXACT latitude and longitude that Google Maps displays for their local business listing

With a tsunami of website applications that are GEOP aware, I think it will be important for car dealers to have the correct GEO tags on their websites.

Getting The Correct GEO Tags For Your Store

You can get the latitude and longitude from your Google Local Business listing by following the steps below:

1.  Search your business name so that Google Maps appear
2.  Copy the EXACT street address you have displayed on your business listing.

3.  Go To Google Maps
4.  Paste the EXACT Street Address and search Google Maps

5.   When your map comes up, click on the “Link” button on the upper right corner to display the hyperlink to your business listing:

6.  Copy the link into a text editor.  The text looks like this:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=665+Southwest+8th+Street,+Miami,+FL%E2%80%8E&sll=25.766562,-80.205173&sspn=0.012986,0.020278&gl=us&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=665+SW+8th+St,+Miami,+Miami-Dade,+Florida+33130&ll=25.76631,-80.20438&spn=0.012986,0.021865&z=16

7.   The Latitude and Longitude that GOOGLE uses in shown in RED and GREEN.  Notice that the GREEN number is negative.
8.  Use these two numbers for the GEO tags on the Home Page of your website.

Do GEO Tags Matter?

Some have said that GEO tags on a website do not matter.  You can even find some articles where Google says that they ignore these tags.  In my opinion, regardless of what Google says, GEO tags will be important to ensure that your website shows properly in local search.

I have a hunch that adds GEO tags will be a benefit to car dealers as well as creating more external links to your Google Business listing page.  Time will tell…

Geo targeting for Google Maps and GPS-applications is a post from: Internet sales manager training

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Share the wealth!

Guest Posting by Rebecca Lieb

Everyone’s Local Somewhere

As far back as 2004, local search accounted for up to 25 percent of commercial activity on the Web, according to a Kelsey Group study. No wonder large and small players alike have been striving to build a better local search mousetrap. Of all the large and small search verticals out there, local is the fastest-growing and probably, most important.

It’s not hard to understand why. A dealership in Des Moines may have a Web presence, but it’s unlikely he’ll be selling cars in Cleveland. If your engine needs a tune up in Denver, a mechanic in Pittsburgh isn’t what you need now. The major search engines know this, in fact. Various geolocation technologies are baked into their algorithms. So when someone shopping for a Honda Element in Des Moines searches for a “Honda dealership,” one of the Big Three search engines is likely to figure out where she is (IP addresses are one indicator) and shove that local dentist’s site to the top of the results.

Pretty neat, right?

Well, it works for the dealer the search engines knows is in Des Moines, and therein lies much of the wisdom when it comes to optimizing for local search: defining locality.

It’s not only local service providers, shops, and tradespeople who benefit from local search optimization. So too do national brands. You don’t just want to visit Land Rover, you want to visit the nearest Land Rover dealer. You don’t research financing at Mercedes corporate headquarters, but at the local franchise. Local search is important to every business, organization and service with a localized customer base — or bases.

It’s a pity more businesses don’t know about and take advantage of local search, which can level the playing field considerably between large national businesses and small local providers. Given a degree of search savvy and a Web presence, a tiny neighborhood auto parts shop could have just as much visibility and clout only as NAPA. It’s a matter not only of knowing how to play the game, but also of knowing the game exists in the first place.

A down-and-dirty (as well as highly effective) technique to optimize for local search is not to rely of a single “Contact” page for local information. A local business can add a footer to every single page of its web site that contains its street address, city, state, Zip code and local phone number, including area code. Quite possibly, it’s appropriate to use a degree of location in title tags as well, e.g. Joe’s Auto Parts, Dallas/Forth Worth TX.

Locally oriented keywords and phrases are also critical, and should take into account the various terms people use to refer to localities, which can be broad as well as specific. Here’s a hypothetical example with local keywords highlighted:

Chicago’s premier Ford dealership serving all regions of the Chicagoland area. We offer Ford Vehicle Sales and Service in Lincoln Park, Lakeview, Wicker Park, the South Side, Old Town and the Near North side of Chicago. We also serve the Chicago suburbs of Evanston, Glencoe, and Highland Park.

No one in the Chicago area ever refers to the region as “northern Illinois.” But if they did, you can bet our fictitious Ford dealer would have cobbled the state’s name into his keywords as well. He’s betting on the fact his customers aren’t just searching for a “chicago ford dealership” in a town that big, but are winnowing their searches down to a more localized level, such as neighborhood.

Also bear in mind that local is as local does. A New Yorker in Zip code 10019 may want to order a pizza. New York is a large, but concentrated urban area. Few residents of the city would be willing to travel more than a handful of blocks for a pizza. In Montana or New Mexico, by contrast, a customer may be willing to drive miles for the same pie. Yahoo Local knows this, and sorts results by distance.

When coming up with a local optimization plan, it’s critically important to understand what local is for the area in question.

A first step in local search optimization ensuring your business is listed with the major search engines as well as with the Internet Yellow Page (IYP), the source of much of the local data used by search engines as well as other online directories and listing services. Do they have the correct information? Is your listing linked to your web site? Businesses with multiple locations in a single metro area can benefit from having separate directory listings for each and every location.

Don’t overlook local listings on popular directory services. Citysearch, Yelp, Superpages, Judy’s Book, Yahoo Local, travel guides, regional Web sites such as Boston.com and Nola.com (both run by major newspapers), ShopLocal, Chambers of Commerce, and local trade associations and other business groups.

For many local businesses, user-generated content and star ratings are a critical component of search results. The more — well, the more positive ones — the merrier. Ratings and reviews create additional relevant content associated with a business or listing, deeper descriptions, third-party authority, and can often be sorted by rating.

There’s no reason not to get the ball rolling by asking friends and family to begin reviewing or rating your business. A hairdressing salon in my neighborhood has a sign on the counter politely asking clients to add their comments about the business to Citysearch. In addition to creating greater search visibility and content, third-party reviews amount to a form of word-of-mouth marketing, one of the most persuasive and influential types of persuasion out there. It’s worth spending time developing ratings and reviews, particularly in a local context.

Further emphasize locality by adding a page (or perhaps adding to your contact page) detailed directions for finding your business or office location. Write these out in detail:

Lakehurst Chevrolet is near the Wakeland County Shopping Mall in the Bellevue neighborhood of Lakehurst, MD. To find us, drive west on Hometown Drive past the Grangeville Civic Center, then turn left on Elm Street. You’ll find us at 425 Oak Street, Lakehurst, MD, 12345.

Add a link to a map service (Google, Yahoo, MSN, Mapquest, etc.). And when linking to the directions page, “click here for directions” isn’t good enough. Instead, use “click here for directions to Lakehurst Chevrolet.”

About the Author: Rebecca Lieb oversees the U.S. operations of Econsultancy, and was VP & Editor-in-Chief the The ClickZ Network. Rebecca is also the author of a new book The Truth About Search Engine Optimization.

Optimizing Local Search for your Dealership is a post from: Internet sales manager training

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