I can’t believe it took me several months to revisit this thread and read your post. While this is old news that won’t be viewed by too many, I still wanted to respond to your thoughts and maybe shed a little more light on my own (translation: I need a hobby).

From your last post: –”Indexed pages have nothing to do with true SEO. It’s a smoke and mirrors ploy.”

I’m not sure you intended this to be taken literally, but since a page has to be indexed before it can turn up in search results, it would be more accurate to say this has everything to do with true SEO. The more pages you have indexed, the better the chances that one page or another will be determined relevant enough to a particular search to be displayed highly and subsequently visited by the searcher.

–”That’s great, except that nobody searches for individual cars.”

This doesn’t seem to be the case in my market. Your post also seems to imply that site relevance to searched keywords is an either/or proposition: either you are deemed relevant to searches for “brand in city” or you are deemed relevant for searches for “brand model city”, but not both. We can (and do) have it both ways — we rank highly for both styles of searches, and I rather enjoy having my cake and eating it, too.

–”In fact, most of the inventory pages are considered “duplicate content” by Google and can be viewed as spam, thus downgrading a websites rankings for important keywords.”

The consensus seems to be that Google (and other engines??) handle duplicate content by displaying what it deems to be the most relevant of the pages containing the duplicated content. We seem to have won that battle, as searches like these turn up many of our individual pages, and in many cases where the searched-for model is one we are not even a franchised dealer for. The dupe-content argument may not even apply, as the geographical information in the pages seems to distinguish them from those of other dealers on the same inventory page platform, even if they rep the same brand.

–”When someone in Minneapolis is searching for a used Camry, they type in “toyota minneapolis” or “used cars minneapolis”.”

“Real people” don’t just search one way with regard to keyword structure, they search in an amazing variety of ways (this is why our SEM campaigns account for roughly 10,000 keywords/phrases), including the 2 we are discussing. I just can’t agree that being ranked highly for a variety of keyword possibilities is a negative. And in order to do this, we need many pages indexed, as each page would need to be optimized for a few select keywords at most.

The point of my previous post wasn’t to badmouth your company or any other–I’m sure you guys are good at what you do–but to applaud the performance Dealer.com has help me to achieve (the thread’s original subject). I’m sure they haven’t cornered the market on proficiency in Web design and that many other companies would perform similarly, just none of those I have also tried.

Thanks for the feedback & good luck.

Jeff — Many repeated kudos to you on the site…keep up the good work!

Kevin

I was the Internet Manager at this dealership he’s talking about at the time when Autoone was brought on. Reynolds’ dated design and aging look was getting to me at the time, although the conversions in the back of the site once customers searched for something were still good. The problem was too many customers would visit the hub site and then disappear. So in an effort to capitalize on those visitors, I elicited AutoOne’s services in redesigning a hub site. They had already done the SEO for the site and the results were pouring in.

In turn, we talked about a design, call to actions, things I wanted in the site and things they thought would produce good results. The result, a hub site that within a 30 day period of time was producing more leads than the other 5 sites altogether. Combined with the PPC campaigns, we were seeing close to a 1000 leads a month.

The problems with Reynolds continue to plague this dealer. The internet manager I trained to put in my place talks to me often about the issues he still has with reynolds. I mean if Eric is hitting the road, what the heck. That speaks volumes about what is going on over there. To read RAC makes one think that facism is making a comeback.

Anyway, I wanted to give a little more substance to the comment by Ryan. With the issues that Reynolds has, its all to easy to make everyone seem to be a part of the problem. Autoone does a super job. My experiences with Chris and everyone else over there have been 1st class.

Cheers –

In the past, one of the focus points at TK has been to go after the long tail search. In the two months since I got here, I’ve been changing this. It isn’t that we don’t want to rank for the long tail, but as Jeff posted in a reply to another article, you make sure you are on the searches with high volume, high conversion first, then you go after the long tail.

Are the conversion rates higher when people find you through a specific car? Absolutely! But getting a 10% conversion on 28 searches a month, like with “used toyota camry minneapolis,” is still just 3 leads (if you round up). Converting a tenth of a percentage point (0.1%, or 0.001) of 32,000 searches a month, like with “minneapolis toyota,” is 32 leads.

All I’m saying is that so many companies brag about getting the individual car search rankings but can’t deliver on the keywords that the vast majority of real buyers are searching for.

I’ve been posting on this forum since before I joined TK and I will always post from the perspective of assisting dealers. Please note that I have never even linked to TK on this site, nor have I promoted them or their products, other than one comment (on the TK thread itself) saying that I enjoy working with them.

BUT, since you brought it up, yes I work for them, and no, I do not post my thoughts based upon what they have to offer. If I say it here, it’s because I believe in it based upon experience, not because of their policies.

Joe, please feel free to call me to discuss it – 714-937-1239, ext 242. I enjoy networking with people who have insight into the industry and I’m always open to sharing ideas.

>>>…nobody searches for individual cars…<<<

Question:
You’re a SEO, you work for TK carsites, is this your opinion or is it TK’s SEO focus?

Joe

Indexed pages have nothing to do with true SEO. It’s a smoke and mirrors ploy. A few providers are saying this, pointing out that their clients can be found for individual cars. That’s great, except that nobody searches for individual cars. The “long tail search” concept is great for 3rd party companies, but for a dealership, getting listed #1 for “used toyota camry minneapolis” is meaningless when it’s searched for 20 times a month.

As long as there are at least 15-20 pages indexed, you’re fine in the seach engines. In fact, most of the inventory pages are considered “duplicate content” by Google and can be viewed as spam, thus downgrading a websites rankings for important keywords.

When someone in Minneapolis is searching for a used Camry, they type in “toyota minneapolis” or “used cars minneapolis”. Those search terms get tens of thousands of searches a month.

Don’t fall for the smoke and mirrors. If someone shows you high rankings for particular keywords, use the keyword tool link on this website. Anyone can get ranked for “2004 honda accord in shreveport lousiana”, but real people are searching for “honda shreveport”.

Regarding your question about Dealer.com, I can honestly respond from my 2+ yrs experience with this vendor that they are a cut above the rest.

They understand proper site design (code), “visibility” with search engines and the calls-to-action that induce otherwise anonymous visitors to transact with your site.

All too often, Web vendors capitalize on dealers’ general ignorance of Web technology and sell them on the buzz and bang of Flash intros, talking spokemodels and other elements which bring far less to the equation than they take from it (BZ, Izmo, Dealerskins, to name a few….sorry if I’m hurting any feelings here). In contrast, Dealer.com uses primarilty static HTML in an effort to maximize search visibility, and they pay much more attention to navigation structure and other potential roadblocks to your visitors finding what they are after and submitting a lead.

Try this:

Google “site:www.siteaddresshere.com” using example sites given to you by various vendors. This will show the number of pages within the dealer site domains that are currently indexed by Google and available to be returned on prospect search results. Many will only have 2 or 3 pages indexed, while the average Dealer.com site will have a thousand or more. What’s more, one of the reasons this is the case is that Dealer.com’s integrated inventory piece actually creates a separate indexable (is this a word?) page for each vehicle detail page….talk about a page full of relevant keywords ready to be found by your prospects.

Great support, back-end, reporting, blah blah blah…

No, I don’t work for Dealer.com — I’m an e-commerce director who is a true believer from previous experience with other framed-up, Flashed-out vendors whose sites yielded low lead counts. I could go on gushing about Dealer.com for days, but I’ll shut up now..

Hope that helps!

Kevin

I recommend also checking out Dealer.com for websites and for lead mgmt vinsolutions.com has an excellent inventory mgmt and lead mgmt tool.

Most of the mfg’s require some type of approved lead mgmt tool.

Best of luck shopping around…

Thank you!