In the first post we went over how to use the SEObook.com toolbar and RankChecker utility.  We also covered creating a keyword list.  This post is a follow up to that with an updated RankChecker report as well as some other tools that I tend to follow to make sure that the SEO is progressing the way that it should.   One of the interesting things about the way we build sites at DealerTrend with Dynamic SEO is that even though we target Google and follow their best practices all of our sites do very well in Yahoo and live.  Look at the Southlake report now verses the first report, both Yahoo and live are coming up on page one for most of the keywords.

Ranking Report for Classic Chevrolet in Fort Worth

Ranking Report for Classic Chevrolet in Dallas

Ranking Report for Classic Chevrolet in Grapevine

Ranking Report for Classic Chevrolet in Southlake

This post and videos describes how you can use Google Analytics to track your marketing campaigns with precision.  There is a lot of information already available in your Google Analytics that can help you in monitoring you website successes as well as failures, but tracking offline market will require that you use the steps outlined in this post.

If you have any question please feel free to comment, in an effort to get this information up I am afraid that the information ran together a little.

For those of you that attended my session at Digital Dealer, thank you and I apologize for the delay in getting this posted.

Everyone is the best at SEO

So by now you have heard of SEO and the importance of being found in the Search Engines.  Not only have you heard about it, but every vendor that walks in your door is probably telling you how they do it better than anyone else.  I know this because that is exactly what we say when we talk to dealers and the response is alway “that’s what everyone says”.

So how do you seperate the quality SEO vendors from sales tactics?

Be careful of the Spin?

Vendors of SEO in general can very easily ’spin’ what looks like great results in their favor, here are just a couple examples;

Spin #1: Targeting one or two long tail keywords/phrases as proof of success.  An example of this would be targeting a phrase like “The biggest truck dealership northeast texas” to have this specific phrase come up #1 in Google.  This phrase could possibly generate one visit per year (probably the person who did it showing another potential client :-)), but no real relevant traffic.

Spin #2: Another good ’spin’ is to use “Independent studies” as proof that your sites are the best, in this case read the study there is usually a slant.

Spin #3: Using the site: function (e.g. site:http://websitenamehere.com) to show you how many pages are indexed in Google.  This is actually a great tool and something that you want to know, but is your site indexed AND relevant .  So in other words it is great that Google knows that your site has pages and the more they know about the better; however, if they aren’t relevant and get found for common searches it just doesn’t matter.

Test for Results

So as a car dealership how can test if a site is actually performing well or better in the Search Engines?  My belief is that the results speak louder that words.  Of course your site analytic tool should tell you things like; how many visitors are you getting from organic search, how many keywords are generating traffic to your site, the number of pages that are being landed on directly from organic search, and much more.  But you can only see those stats on your own site.  How can you compare your site with your competition or a prospective website vendor?  Using the RankChecker tool as described in the video allows you to check your site, a competitors site, or prospective vendors websites comparing apples and apples.  The main reason I like to test a list of keywords as described in this video is to determine if my sites are relevant for what a dealership sells where they sell so that the site is found when real buyers are looking.  You can definately add as many keywords as you would like or test on things that you see relevant.  As a matter of fact if you would like to add keywords that you would like us to get Classic Chevrolet ranked for please don’t hesitate to list them in the comments below.  We will and at least add them to our ranking reports to show you the true power of a well built site.

CSV reports of the Ranking that I ran per location.  Notice that the Southlake report shows completely blank for every keyword, this is because the previous web provider didn’t target it at all.  For the purpose of this example and as we get the site up and running we are including it.  If it proves to not generate any significant traffic we will change it to another location or remove the 4th city all together.

Grapevine Texas

Dallas Texas

Fort Worth Texas

Southlake

This short video is designed to show you how to monitor what people are saying about you on the web.  Using Google Alerts you will be notified immediately if someone is mentioning your dealership in blogs, forums, websites, or even news sites.  Put yourself in a position to take action and keep you clients happy.  Unfortunately the clients that are unhappy about something at your dealership will quickly tell the world but won’t tell you so you can resolve their issue.   By being informed in a timely matter you will be able to make things right and then let the world know.

Google has done a great job at getting the most relevant local businesses to the top of their search with Google Local Business Listings.  However it is a gigantic task to make sure that all of the businesses have correct information.  Below is a video of how to log into Google and add or edit your dealerships information.  As mentioned in the video make sure and review this listing often as it is possible for other businesses to hijack your information in addition to the potential of software errors.

Example of Googles Local Business Listing