I don't enjoy calling out vendors. It's something that I think is unprofessional in most situations. Sometimes, when a vendor is truly hurting the automotive industry, it must be done and I have to do that today.

We have a client being hounded. This other vendor has been telling them that our philosophy of using onsite and offsite content to…

We've all heard the phrase, "content is king." The question that you should ask about your content is whether or not it's worthy of being the king of something important or the king of crap. Unfortunately, much of what is pawned off as content turns out to be ruling over nothing important.

I've said it in different ways in multiple articles and videos in the…

According to Dataium's most recent benchmark study, the average number of monthly unique visitors to a dealership's website is 6,509. Of those, an average 1.7 percent submit a lead form. Combine that with an average half percent conversion rate for chat, along with phone calls and walk-ins (which are…

Pulse rates are different depending on what artery you check and what method you use. Checking someone's carotid artery by hand can yield a slightly different result than taking it with a machine through the brachial artery. The same thing happens in the car business, which is why I like to talk to different people from different parts of the industry.

Today,…

If you’re in business, I’m sure you’ve been introduced to the concept of content marketing. Experts have advised businesses to produce content for quite some time now for search engine optimization, branding, lead generation and engagement, to name just a few of the many reasons.

Content marketing can be powerful, if done properly. It is more than simply…

This is one of those blog posts that my team will probably hate. I can already hear them. "Stop giving away our secrets!" As I've posted before, there really should be no such thing as secret sauce in automotive digital marketing, so I'm going to share our recipe.

There are three key ingredients to a proper automotive SEO awesomesauce. You can taste for these…

I spend a lot of quality time with auto dealers, and am often surprised at the state of their online marketing programs. Sometimes I am even downright outraged at how some online marketing…

Every now and then I find the automotive digital marketing controversies and handwringing on sites like LinkedIn, DealerElite.net and others to be both humorous and disturbing.

Humorous, because it’s really not all that complicated (yet some people insist on adding drama to everything); and disturbing, because no matter what the issue, the bad advice always seems to outweigh the good. (Usually because those creating the…

When you have two people who have combined for over two decades of working with automotive website providers, you would think that they the company they would build together would be another website provider. It wasn't. There's a reason for this.

Search and social are the marketing venues we chose to pursue for one big reason: minimal parody. Car dealers have…

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Urbandale, IA--April 6th, 2015--Flick Fusion (www.flickfusion.com), the industry's leading video marketing provider, announced today that Tim James, Vice President of Sales with Flick Fusion, will present a "Step-by-Step Guide To Successful Video Marketing: How to Implement and Maintain a Scalable Video Marketing…

Could this checklist may have been made in 1998 or 2004 or 2015? Consistent high-level, best practices have remained the same!

Manny Luna

CEO VL Digital…

In the movie Field of Dreams, a ghostly voice tells Kevin Costner's Ray Kinsella character, "If you build it, he will come."

The first question you'll want answered is, "What is it?" In the movie, the 'it' was a baseball field, but it was actually so much more than that. In…

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.…

Once you get over the beauty of the 1970 Dodge Charger in the picture, you might ask yourself, "What does a 45-year-old muscle car have to do with automotive content?"

We've been asked the same type of question multiple times pertaining to content we publish on dealer websites. Sometimes, it's dealers asking. Other times, it's other vendors wondering what…

Having an online presence in the present day is great for your business especially in the auto dealership industry. This is because now more than ever people want to do most things from the comfort of their homes and offices and at the same time there are plenty of financial institutions that have been set up to cater for online transactions. However, simply having a website…

As you prepare for a new year at your dealership, you’re probably on the lookout for innovative, measurable ways to effectively engage your shoppers. That’s why we’ve compiled 4 customer-centric infographics to help you improve your marketing strategy and proactively engage the modern shopper in 2015.

Check out these…

When businesses ponder how to increase their presence on search engines, they typically turn to SEO strategies. Content marketing has always been a large part of any SEO strategy. It’s a given that the more fresh, relevant and unique content you produce, the better chance your online properties will have of showing in search engine results. According to an…

Inbound links still matter. Despite what you may here from SEO gurus around our industry, the power of high-quality, relevant, and natural inbound links to a dealer's website is still apparent. Google's Matt Cutts acknowledged that in the long run, this may not be the case.

That day, however, is not today.

Google is reportedly in the…

I can already hear the vendors scrambling to put together their rebuttals. I'm not going to dwell on the issue, but it's an important one to note.

For most dealers, it's okay to be in the mix. As long as you're on the first page on Google for the major keywords, you're doing just fine. Aggressive dealers, those who truly want to dominate, cannot do so if…

It has long been considered a best practice in search engine optimization and search engine marketing to use deep linking to take searchers to the exact content they are searching for, rather than simply directing them to your home page. If the searcher is not taken directly to the content they are seeking, they are forced to do a second search for the information once they…