Most people tend to focus a lot of their local search engine marketing for their auto dealer website on Google Places.  While it's true that a lot, if not most, of your search traffic comes from Google, it's still important to make sure your dealership is properly optimized for the other major players as well.

Here are…

If you aren't happy with the way your dealership website is performing in terms of search engine results (and you aren't violating Google's webmaster guidelines), you can ask Google to "reconsider" your site.  Essentially, you can ask Google to take a look at your site to see if it was manually marked as spam.

Over the years, Google has improved this process to make it more transparent.  After submitting a site, Google will let the webmaster know that they received the…

I try to spend at least a little time each day reading forums and blogs from outside the auto industry because I think there is a lot to learn from other business communities.  Today, I found an interesting question up for discussion, and would like to pose the same to you.

What would it take for you to leave the auto industry?

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Google has just bought Zagat, a company that provides ratings and reviews of restaurants, entertainment venues, and travel locations.  Known primarily for their yearly restaurant book guides, they have been doing quite well with their online subscription based site and community.

Google plans for Zagat to be the "cornerstone of our local offering", helping them  to compete directly with Yelp and other online review sites.  Think it was a coincidence that Google recently…

Google is at it again.  According to the Google Operating System Blog, an unofficial source of news and tips about Google, the search engine giant will soon be launching Google Trusted Stores.  This new service is designed to make it "easy for online shoppers to identify stores that provide an excellent online shopping experience."

I have to wonder how closely this will be tied to the reviews a…

DealerOn, the premier car dealer website provider, has been named to 2011 Inc. 5000 List of Fastest Growing Private Companies at #2002, based on a three-year sales growth of 127%.  "DealerOn is thrilled to be a part of such an elite group of companies," said DealerOn co-founder and CEO, Ali Amirrezvani.  "This recognition means so much to the DealerOn family.  It is confirmation of, and a testament to, our employees’ hard work,…

Within the past year, Maryland has been hit by an earthquake and a hurricane (in the same week!), as well as a huge snowstorm, all fairly uncommon occurrences in our state.  While DealerOn, both the office and our employees, were lucky enough to dodge any real damage, it definitely made us all think about how prepared we are for these kinds of emergencies.

DealerOn had enough warning before Hurricane Irene (and dodged…