Word on the street in the SEO world is that Google just had a big algorithm update that is finally starting to match what they've been saying for a while: mobile-friendliness is important for search rankings.

The move was first noted by Bronco's update watch on January 26th.…

Search engine results page listing will determine the amount of traffic your website will get. Organic SERP is one main component.

What is SERP?  It stands for …

There are always going to be those who are real experts offering real products or services with proven strategies and the ability to make changes to their techniques as the market and industries change. There are also always going to be those who put on the uniform, slide on the…

An additional area of concern is within the CRM Inventory Tool. In our experience, not every store uses the Inventory Tool to its fullest capability.  The basics of having pictures, custom comments, pricing, aged inventory, hits, leads, etc etc, should excite every dealership sales manager within a store.  All of this extremely valuable information is essential to not only helping drive leads to your store, but also managing and caring for existing leads and converting them to…

One of the keys to being a true dealership partner amongst a sea of vendors is having the willingness to “share the playbook” with our clients and prospects. This is much more important today than ever before in the world of automotive internet marketing because the changes are happening too rapidly. Marketing professionals and companies must stay on top of…

It may be the biggest change in the Google algorithm that very few people noticed. The reason they didn't notice is that the change has been slowly happening since February, 2011. Between Panda, Penguin, and the rise of social signals, word count of content is not…

Every few months, marketers around the blogosphere start the next batch of chants that search engine optimization is dying or dead. It's like clockwork; Google makes a change, their pages rank poorly, they declare that the party's over. I think I've written about the topic at least once a year since 2008.

The chants are starting…

Itʼs pretty much a universally known fact in the industry that blogging is a vital part of any search engine optimization strategy. Everyone understands you need a blog, the trouble comes from figuring out just who exactly is going to write it. Should you handle…

No matter how hard you try you can’t control who is going to link to your website. Every site out there is going to have a few unsavory links that they want to get rid of, it’s a reality of building a website. Since Google came out with their Penguin update people have been scrambling to try to clean up their link profiles and many are resorting to some pretty desperate measures. There are even stories of sites charging to remove their links in this link un-building panic. When combined with…

I’m often getting request from clients to take a look at specific area of their website, where for some reason they may not be getting as much traffic as they would like. There are many great search engine optimization strategies you can use for single pages or sections…

Most businesses understand the benefits of search engine optimization, but many miss out on easy opportunities. Building backlinks is common, but social link building is often overlooked. Social link building enables you to build links that will spread…

The basic Law of Reciprocity states: To give and take mutually.

I have thought about this a lot over the last few months. We use this concept very effectively in conversion optimization by giving white papers, special…

We all want to manage our online presence, especially when it comes to search engine optimization. Unfortunately, due to the very nature of backlinks, it’s often out of our control. Until now, there hasn’t been an official solution for when you’re bombarded by poor…

"Why"?

This is the single most difficult concept for most marketers in automotive to understand.  “Why” is the reason AutoTrader and Cars.com run millions of dollars in ads on TV, then put only a fraction of…

Google’s Matt Cutts just recently announced an update for the Page Layout algorithm, which originally came out in January. This algorithm is designed to reward websites who place their content above their advertisements. In a tweet on the subject Matt Cutts mentioned that 0.7% of English language queries will be affected. This may seem like a small number but in reference to…

One measurement of website success tends to get overlooked a lot in favor of other, bigger numbers like traffic and bounce rate. That measurement is conversion rate, what percentage of visitors to your website convert into a lead. One of the biggest factors when it comes to…

SEO, Search Engine Optimization, is how websites alter their content to improve ranking on search engines; e.g., Google, Yahoo, Bing. The higher a website ranks on a search--ideally within the first five results--the more website traffic. This is often the difference between commercial success and failure. SEO alters a website's webpages by modifying HTML, Hyper Text Mark-up Language, external and internal links, and content to improve the website's search rank.

Crawlers:

To…

ZMOT its everywhere seems like these days. With Google as the general session at Digital Dealer this year I thought I would talk about how we see the execution of ZMOT for dealers. Below are the slides from my presentation. I think these numbers will add up to a pattern if you look at the slides closely.

There is not ONE ZMOT in Automotive there are TWO

• People spend as much time consuming online media as they do off
• Targeting is getting better & faster online,…

Last Digital Dealer we explored the data behind SEO & PPC and where your efforts get the most bang for the buck.

At Digital Dealer 12 in Orlado April 3-5 will will explore the data behind ZMOT and how to execute it in your store to increase lead volume and most importantly Show Rate in the dealerhips.

Click Here to attend my Digital Dealer 12 Session "Marketing…

That kills a General Manager it’s what he doesn’t know!

Those words spoken to me by one of the smartest dealers I ever worked for, Jay Marks, have stayed with me since 1996. Same principal applies in every position of the dealership but particularly in marketing.

Let’s face it Marketing is quickly becoming a…