The Blurb and SEO

Search Engines primarily ‘read’ content in text. Therefore, GSM websites provide a space on the ‘Home’ and ‘About Us’ pages for text, so a dealer can enhance the already excellent Search Engine Optimization of those websites. This space (on the ‘Home Page’, it’s called a ‘blurb’) has some default text, so it won’t be blank, but it is left up to the dealership person in charge of website content to add specific text that will enhance that page’s SEO.

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What Affects Your SEO? Part 1

Since roughly 50% of all of your web site traffic will get to you through a Search Engine, it is incredibly important that you do an excellent job of optimizing your web site for those Search Engines. We call this Search Engine Optimization or SEO.

In web site design, there are four basic categories that affect your placement on a Search Engine results page. Based on the search criteria (keywords) that the customer types into the ‘Search’ gadget, the Search Engine will return results that it ‘feels’ will be of the most value to the consumer. What is shown to the customer will be very highly based on where they are located and the following four items:

- Title Tags = labels of about 20 or so characters that describes what is on that page

- Content = the words on the page (Search Engines don’t read pictures or Flash – only text)

- URL = it’s usually wise to own three or maybe four URL’s, such as common misspellings of your true web address

- Links = this determines how ‘popular’ your web site is. If others link to your web site, that implies that your web site has a lot of value to people

Clickmotive, the builder of your web site, does a fantastic job with the first of these four items. They will build literally thousands of pages in your web site, each with a unique Title Tag. If you were to look into a typical car dealer’s web site, you would see maybe 3-500 pages, most of them with exactly the same Title Tag. In a Clickmotive web site, there are typically 2-3,000 pages, all with unique Title Tags.

What Affects Your SEO Part 2

Search Engine Optimization is one of the critical things that every dealer should pay attention to. There are things that you can do in the other three categories that can improve your placement on the Search Engine results page.
First, you can put some level of custom text on almost every page. For example, you can place a paragraph on your homepage in the ‘Custom Text’ area.

This can and should include all of the communities in your primary market areas, (PMA). If my dealership were in New York City, I might want to be certain that Manhattan, Brooklyn and Harlem were listed somewhere on my web site, as long as they are a part of my PMA. We strongly encourage you NOT TO INLCUDE THE NAMES OF CITIES THAT ARE NOT IN YOUR PMA! This could cause you some severe penalties from Toyota and from the Search Engine itself, when (not if) you get caught. You can also include this information on your ‘About Us’ web page.

To make changes to this Custom Text section, log in to Fusion Tools and select Custom Text from the menu on the left.

Second, you can do some research about similar URL’s and you can purchase those that make sense. If my dealership’s name were Rogers Toyota, I would also want to own Rodgers Toyota and Roger’s Toyota if it were possible, since these are common misspellings of my dealership’s name.

Third, you should look for opportunities to build links in your web site from other related and non-automotive web sites. These can include other dealerships if you are part of a group or a ‘mother’ site for the entire group. Or it may be for the local Better Business Bureau or Chamber of Commerce. If your dealer has organizations that they support like a university, charity or community organization, you should arrange for links from their site to yours. You can arrange for links from your local media web sites to your web site, especially if you are already spending thousands of dollars advertising with those companies.

Finally, although it’s not part of the construction of the web site, one other item that can improve your SEO is frequently updating and maintaining the site. Much of this is done for you with automatic used car specials and updated incentives, but anything that you can do, like new car specials, will also help.