Category

Dealership Websites

In Dealership Websites, Search Engine Marketing (PPC)

PPC Tip – Use Micro Ad Groups

Most PPC accounts are set up in a way that saves lots of time – but saving time isn’t your goal! This week’s Wednesday Workshop explains why the “every keyword in one ad group” strategy isn’t a great idea… and then explains why “micro ad groups” are the right way to set up your account. If your dealership does any PPC advertising, you don’t want to miss this video!

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Welcome back to the DealerOn Wednesday Workshop. Today we’re talking about paid search, also known as SEM or PPC.
And specifically we’re addressing campaign performance tips.

Since the beginning of automotive SEM campaigns, agencies and providers have employed Ad Group strategies that cram hundreds of keywords into each Ad Group, usually using dynamic keyword insertion. This is not optimal, but it is easy.

Typical automotive campaigns are set up this way to save time – it’s definitely not for optimal performance. You should avoid throwing every keyword into one ad group with a few generic ads. Sure, it saves time… but saving time isn’t your goal.

If you want to get the best results from your campaigns, use a micro ad group structure. With micro ad groups, there are only a few keywords in each ad group (both modified broad and exact match) that relate exactly to your text ad.

Space permitting, the ad should include the keywords in the headline, and the ad copy must speak to the keywords and land on a related page on your site. You should never have an ad land on your site’s home page. This will help your quality score and overall ad performance.

If you have questions about micro ad group structures or SEM in general, jump down to the comments section and leave your questions there. We’ll get back to you as soon as we can.

Thanks for check out this week’s video – See you next week with another DealerOn Wednesday workshop.

In Dealership Websites, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Video

Presentation: Super Powered SEO Tips for Auto Dealers

I presented a webinar for Digital Dealer yesterday, and we wanted to share the recording here on our blog. Learn the latest tips to help get your dealership to rank higher in local searches, from on site optimization to off site links and citations.

Need help with SEO for your dealership? Let us know! We can help – even if you’re not using DealerOn for your website. Leave a comment down below and let us know what we can help with…

Download the slides

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Hey again – I’m back with another video… We’re still tossing segment names around, but we’re kinda leaning towards Wednesday Workshop – pop down to the comments and let us know what you think of it, or if you have an idea for something.

Most of these videos will just be a few minutes long, but today’s is a long one – don’t let that scare ya off. I did a webinar for Digital Dealer yesterday, and we wanted to share the presentation with you here on the DealerOn blog.

In fact, we’ll be sharing recordings of all of my presentations here after I give them. We know it’s tough to travel to conferences, and it’s rare that dealership personnel will get to more than one or two conferences a year.

I’m speaking at 8 events in the next two months – so make sure you check back and watch those presentations. I never re-use presentations, so each one will have fresh knowledge nuggets that will help your dealership be more awesome.

So anyway, back to today’s video… It’s about an hour long, so if you don’t have time to catch it all now, just remember to check back and watch later when you’ve got time. Enjoy!

Thanks for watching – I hope you learned a few things that can help your dealership! If you’ve got any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask! Just pop down below and leave your questions in the comments section, and I’ll get back to you as quickly as I can. Don’t forget to check back next week for another tentatively titled Wednesday Workshop video!

In Dealership Websites

Free Web Tools for Car Dealership Websites

In a follow-up comment to a post I wrote last week about social media web tools, Jared Hamilton asked me about other free tools I’d recommend for dealers and internet managers to be as effective as possible in their daily marketing efforts.  Below are some tools that various team members at DealerOn use or have used in the past.

Compete.com –By entering your website and those of your competitors, you can see site traffic history, competitive analytics, and your “Compete Rank”, a stat based on unique visitors.

Quantcast.com — Similar information to Compete.com, Quantcast gives you another site to triangulate on information about your website, your visitors, and your competitors’ website visitors.

Spyfu.com – Not free, but they provide a free trial, and if you find it useful, it’s fairly cheap.  Spyfu provides information about your competitors keywords (organic and paid), ad copy, and spend levels.  The data isn’t perfect, but it’s interesting and helpful.

Website Grader–This is similar to Compete.com, providing information on various aspects of your site (metadata, readability level, indexed pages, linking domains, etc), and ways you can improve your website’s score.

Google Keyword Tool–This well-known tool allows you to see how many searches are done on a keyword, as well as related terms.  It’s a good, basic way to help start your keyword research for your website.  It also serves as a keyword discovery tool–providing additional keyword suggestions, that Google views as similar to the keywords you provide.

Google Webmaster Tools–Get the most out of your website by seeing how Google sees your site, get information about internal and external links, and make sure Google has your sitemap.

Google Analytics–I recently wrote a post about the importance of incorporating this analytics tool on your dealership site.  There’s absolutely no good reason not to have it, its free, and even if you don’t check it but every few months, getting your site coded today, will mean that 2 months from now, you haveenough data to actually draw some conclusions about your site and your traffic.

Google Alerts–At a minimum, your dealership should be tracking when your employee’s names, dealership name, and competitors’ brand names are mentioned online.  Results are delivered to your email inbox.

Backlink Checker–By simply entering your URL, you can find out how many backlinks Yahoo, Bing, and Google have to your site.  You can click onto the results to see which sites are linking to your website.  This is a useful stat to keep an eye on–if there is a sudden increase or decrease, you’ll want to find out why.

If you have any questions about how best to use these or other free web tools, feel free to contact DealerOn at clientresults@dealeron.com.  Are there are any other free web tools that your dealership uses?  Please share below.

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