August 2010 – DealerRefresh | DealerRefresh Automotive Dealer Forums

Is the death of SEO coming soon?

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. …

PR Announcements

Cars.com Extends License Agreement with Contact At Once!,

Cars.com And Contact At Once! Launches New Mobile Chat Application ATLANTA, GA – August 27, 2010 – Contact At Once!, a leading provider of live chat software for car dealerships, today announced that Cars.com has extended their license of the ContactAtOnce! live chat software including a mobile chat application. ContactAtOnce! has been powering the dealers …

Industry News & Trends

Is Your Dealers SEO Being Hijacked?

Since Google began testing “Realtime Search,” we have seen several incarnations including a scrolling area on the main search page. With the announcement last week of the new “Realtime Search,” I found a renewed interest in the possibilities of another strong source of SEO. What I discovered left me scratching my head and consequently consumed …

PR Announcements

Owyang Joins Line-up Focused on Innovating Dealership Profit Centers in Recovery Economy

Salt Lake City, Utah – August 18, 2010 – DrivingSales.com (www.drivingsales.com), the automotive industry’s largest car dealer social network, today announced that renowned social media analyst, blogger and web strategist Jeremiah Owyang will keynote the second annual DrivingSales Executive Summit (DSES) presented with WardsAuto.com scheduled for October 18th through 20th, 2010 at the Encore Wynn …

Opinions & Advice

The Dealership Hiring Dilemma

Finding Sales People to work 60 Hours a Week? A Sales Manager asked me the other day, “why am I having such a hard time finding salespeople who want to work 60 hours a week?” For those of us who have lived much of our lives in and around a dealership, 50-60 hours a week …

Industry News & Trends

Google Changes Organic Search Results Rules

I often remark why it will be difficult to publish a traditional book on SEO for car dealers when the rules pertaining to Google search results continue to change. On Friday August 20th, Google announced another change in how organic search results will be displayed in SERP’s. The 10 organic listings shown on any search …

Opinions & Advice

Purecars.com – is it worth it?

I was running through a dealer’s website the other day and came across Purecars.com on their website. I haven’t heard much about Purecars.com in a while and decided to look at it again. I started a thread in the forums to gauge whether anyone was doing anything with it and not much has been said, …

PR Announcements

PCG Digital Marketing and DrivingSales.com Announce Groundbreaking Automotive SEO Study

Car dealers are invited to participate in the largest group study for Automotive Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The study will educate and mentor 100 car dealers who are interested in applying Automotive SEO strategies at their automotive dealership. Results of the four month study will be published and presented at the 2011 NADA Conference in …

Best Practices

5 Ways To Screen Your Dealers Next Social Media Consultant

The recent post on the DealerRefresh forums about Social Media Gurus and scams led to the idea that some information might be helpful to dealers in deciding who to hire and trust. Here are some questions to consider: How can you research a company or consultant when they claim to be social media gurus? What’s …

Industry News & Trends

Look-Out AutoTrader and Cars.com, There’s a new Guru in Town

Toiling in the trenches, way under the radar, a feisty little automotive internet startup is making all the right moves with its cross-hairs fixed on you, on me and all of us in our industry… the automotive internet/retail industry. First, a little background… I am constantly tinkering and improving our site, trying to improve our …