That Negative Review Can Bite Into Your SEO

 By: Brent Albrecht, SOCIALDEALER

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a staple in the majority of automotive dealers’ marketing budgets for 2012. The industry has fully embraced the Internet, so logically dealers are investing additional money in search engine rankings to get their websites seen as much as possible.  However, Social Media and Web 2.0 have changed the landscape, specifically in the way sites like Google displays search results.  Whereas at one time search results displayed a website, and other websites linked to the same content, now search results include a rating tied to customer reviews.  Online reviews have become a powerful force in the car buying process.  According to BusinessWeek, 70 percent of consumers now consult reviews before purchasing.

 In our market, I’ve seen dealers spend thousands of dollars on SEO, only to have 2 and 2.5 star ratings displayed on page one of Yelp results.  A number one or two position on the first page of Google does no good when it also displays a worse star rating than the competition.  This simply tells the potential car buyers to look elsewhere.  An online reputation can affect whether your monthly SEO investment is being wasted, or generating value for the dealership.

SEO is a continuously changing field, and now the SEP landscape has changed again to incorporate Social Media content.  Here are two examples:

1. In data from Socialnomics, it was reported that 25 percent of search results for the top 20 brands are links to user-generated content.

1. Google announced in 2011 that it looks at how reputable a person is on Twitter and uses that information in their search rankings, where previously, Google did not take this into account.

The same holds true for Search Engine Marketing (SEM). The higher number of reviews you have, the higher your click thru rate and conversion rate.  Multiple studies show increases of 10 to-20 percent depending on the total number of reviews and average score.

Social Media will continue to grow and soon will infiltrate all aspects of an Internet marketing plan.  Dealers who want to effectively market their dealerships online will be forced to include managing their reputation into that strategy or they will not succeed.

So what to do? 

1) First and foremost, manage your reputation online.   If your average rating does not stand up to your competition, cut back on SEO until it does.

2) Track the number of reviews and your average score on all the major review sites.

3) Handle negative reviews as soon as possible and generate more positive reviews by asking your customers to rate you on review sites, in order to get your average rating up.

4) Monitor what is being said about your dealership outside of review sites – what are customers saying about you on Facebook, Twitter and blogs?

5) Employ software solutions that can help you manage all of this. Assign someone in the dealership to take responsibility for managing your reputation, and track your trends over time.

 What are you doing to increase positive reviews in your dealership?

Brent Albrecht is the Marketing Director at SOCIALDEALER and can be reached at

b.albrecht@socialdealer.com or by following @SOCIALDEALER on Twitter.