“How about a magic trick? I’m gonna make this keyword disappear.”

*SMASH*

“TA DAA! It’s…It’s gone.”

The famous scene from The Dark Knight applies very nicely to black hat search engine optimization tricks today. Those who are still trying to “beat the system”…

There was a time when the search engines rewarded content of all types. If a website syndicated content from elsewhere on the web and exposed it to their audience, it wasn’t as good as unique content but at least it didn’t hurt. Some of the content would be de-indexed as duplicate but the overall health of the domain itself was not harmed.

Today,…

In many ways, the standard thinking about your marketing no longer applies when it comes to what’s happening online. Two of the largest components, search and social, are in a constant state of flux. For better or for worse, the big players like…

Google has stuck with its story that the various components of Google+ and the +1 button don’t have an effect on search rankings. They have to. Once they admit that it does (as countless studies and tests have indicated), the flood of spam and blackhat SEO techniques will grow larger than it already has. This is important to…

It’s this simple. When given the choice between being ranked in the top 5 for good keywords or being ranked #1 for a great keyword, I will (after asking for further qualifications and some examples) almost always opt for the former. Search has changed dramatically in the last couple of years. As a result, above the fold for many is normally better than at…

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…

The marketing adage “content is king” has been around for a long time. In 2013, it appears that both the search engines and social media sites are focusing on content as their driving forces, but in a different way than most understand. Things are changing in the world of internet marketing. Here’s what you need to know.

Content was never really “king”. Though it…

The other day I was in a meeting with a potential client. We were discussing automotive SEO best practices and the way that the search engines are changing the way they rank. We talked about the best ways a dealer can stay ahead of their competition for their current keywords while moving up in the competitive keywords in the area.…

There’s a plethora of articles, tips, and techniques about automotive SEO that fill blogs, webinars, and training courses. Everyone has opinions about what works best and how to help dealers rank better in search. The biggest mistake that dealers (and their vendors) often make isn’t in the SEO techniques themselves but rather in the underlying keyword principles. It doesn’t…

There’s a plethora of articles, tips, and techniques about automotive SEO that fill blogs, webinars, and training courses. Everyone has opinions about what works best and how to help dealers rank better in search. The biggest mistake that dealers (and their vendors) often make isn’t in the SEO techniques themselves but rather in the underlying keyword principles. It doesn’t…

It was one of the most used made-up words of 2012 (and in many cases, one of the most annoying). Just about every marketer in and out of the automotive industry used some variation of "SoLoMo" (Social/Local/Mobile) in a blog post, video, presentation, or declaration of things to come. The underlying concept - that many people and the sites they visit are…

There is a very distinguishable difference between SEO content and content that brings SEO value.

The easiest way to look at it is that SEO content is what you put on each page of your website to let both visitors and the search…

There's really no way around it. The only technique to truly maximize the effectiveness of your content to be engaging on your website, relevant for SEO, and useful for social media is to think three-dimensionally.

This is Part II in the series…

In an ideal world, we would have the time and resources to create four types of content: converting website content, engaging website content, SEO content, and social media content.

Throw in public relations content,…

Let's face it. Websites are becoming a commodity in the automotive world. Most quality website vendors are putting out solutions that are good enough to work well. Few are coming up with innovations that can differentiate them, and those differences are relatively small in the whole scheme of things. The…

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…

For the past several years, content has been a component of search engine and social media marketing that fell far below the tricks and techniques that helped achieve business goals. It was possible to be successful with limited or low-quality content. In…

I've learned that coincidences don't really happen. There's always a reason. As I worked on my story today regarding content, I stopped to check Facebook and found exactly what I needed, courtesy of…

Despite the rise of social signals and the continued prominence of content as primary search engine optimization tools, high-quality inbound links remain one of the three big components in improving rankings. The automated processes have been devalued; low-quality posts, footer links, and sidebar links are a thing of the past…