Sorry about the harsh statement…but in my opinion very true. I am not talking about the design elements of the site, because some of the designs are quite good. I am speaking of usability, updating capabilities and SEO friendliness. Car dealerships are still playing by the old game of, we just need to get these people through our doors and then we can sell. This is no longer the case…WE LIVE IN AN ONLINE WORLD. The majority of wise car shoppers are going to do most of the research and decision making before they leave the house.

If you ask someone in the market for an automobile where they start their search, most probably say online; or even more specifically AutoTrader.com or Cars.com. Consumers are willing to travel further nowadays to get their vehicle if it is at the right price. And with technology, consumers have the edge, especially over local dealerships. Find the right price on your iPad while waiting for those 30 minute visits to the ‘sales manager’? I’ll drive those extra miles if you can’t match the price. Why aren’t these local dealerships doing everything they can to keep their local customers? Let’s get to the meat and bones…

Usability

This is one of the big factors that cause people to go to AutoTrader.com or Cars.com. They are just much easier and less stressful to use. The #1 key to their usability is they actually SHOW THE PRICE. If I am looking for a vehicle online the last thing I want to do is call you for a price so you can use your sales pitches on me and then call me 3 times a week for the rest of eternity. Consumers shop online for a reason: they can compare prices, read reviews, do their research right from the comfort of their own home.

My second frustration is not listing the mileage. We all know that this is one of the major factors in buying a used car. Take the extra 30 seconds to list the mileage because the customer will find out at some point. Internet shoppers are not patient and they know that they should get all of the information that they desire in a fraction of a second. Wasting a visitors time with the lack of information (mileage or any other pertinent details) is not a key factor of usability, believe it or not.

Mobile

I doubt this is a news flash to anyone, but people use their mobile devices to make buying decisions when they are  away from their computer. What is with all the flash? While my phone supports flash (thanks to Froyo) there are many mobile devices out there that don’t…remember the iPhone? If your main site must be in flash, make sure you are creating an easy to use mobile version of your site. If you can’t do that or aren’t convinced it well help, just ask.

It’s Not All Bad

More and more dealerships are improving their sorting, browsing and search functions. This is certainly a step in the right direction. If you don’t have the budget or in house ability to do so on your own, there are options to have your inventory powered by a 3rd party source such as AutoTrader.

Inventory Updating Capabilities

A web consumer expects is accuracy. Leaving your ‘sold’ cars on the website is not an option (unless they are marked as sold). After a sales takes place, take the <5 minutes to mark the vehicle as no longer available. If your inventory management solution does not allow easy access of updating your inventory, get a new solution. Additionally, it is in the dealership’s own best interest to get the vehicles online ASAP. It will give the consumer a higher likelihood of finding what they want from your dealership as opposed to someone else that already listed a similar car.

SEO

Get the attention of the locals and people traveling in your area with good local optimization, both on your main site and mobile site. Major dealerships supported by a manufacturer is generally better with this than the small used lots, but those smaller lots can easily compete and can often have the upper hand in terms of price and if they are low-pressure, a better relationship once the consumer gets through their door. Ensure that you are not only optimizing for the city or town’s name, but also zip code and nickname (for the locals). Keep your local listings up to date and accurate with addresses, phone numbers and links to inventory. With the right strategy your ROI on SEO should be through the roof.

Along the same lines, create descriptions of the vehicles that are unique. It seems as though the copy writers are following a book of car descriptions that are suppose to sound enticing and exciting. Users are not searching ‘a car that has it all’, ‘immaculate’, or ‘must see’. The car description is valuable real estate. Use it for what the user needs to know while taking into consideration what they might be searching.

In Conclusion

I am obviously not speaking of every car dealer website out there…but let’s be honest. Too many of them are not meeting the needs of today’s online consumer. Because we are more apt to travel for the right price and we can find information so easily, dealerships are only hurting themselves.

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Looking for a solution to manage your social media accounts? While there are many and we weren’t able to test each one, we did test a few so you don’t have to.

Dave and I both like the standard desktop applications, despite the lack of some capabilities. They tend to be the most user friendly and have the most stable mobile counterparts. Want to learn more about social media management and strategy?

Helpful links:
Hootsuite
PeopleBrowsr
MediaFunnel
Seesmic
Tweetdeck
Socialite

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There is a lot of talk about what employers need to do to keep them ‘safe’ from the social media world. But what about individuals? I see a lot of Facebook updates and pictures and it seems as though people don’t understand the implications that can occur from some of them. What you post on these sites lives somewhere whether you delete it from your own account or not, so it is important to think before posting. What can you do to keep yourself and family safe?

Parents: I want to start with what I believe is the most important area. The Facebook discussion is obviously new, but I strongly believe that parents need to make their children aware of the dangers, some which can be long term. I know that some parents aren’t extremely knowledgeable about social media, but it is worth taking the time to learn and discuss…you may even learn some tips from your kids! Make sure your kids understand that what they are posting may not only be seen by friends. Even if their privacy settings are appropriately set up, that doesn’t mean that people that see the posts or pictures won’t talk and word can spread to other adults, teachers, and maybe future employers. While Facebook has taken steps to improve their privacy concerns, that cannot stop the human nature urge to gossip.

Second, at this point we should all be aware of the issue of online predators. Social media is not exempt from this, and at times may even be a breeding ground. While some of these issues are being tackled abroad, the US is still lacking some features. Just announced today is a ‘panic button’ for U.K. minors using Facebook. The panic button will allow the user to report suspicious behavior immediately to the proper authorities. While this was being rejected by Facebook just a few months ago, it appears to be a reality now and should spread to the U.S. shortly after the U.K. release. Learn more about the ClickCEOP app.Also find more tips for child Facebook safety from PCWorld.com.

Employees: Yes, you may be heading your company’s social media policy, but are your posts going to keep you out of trouble? Exclaiming how bad your work day was or how much you hate your boss can easily get back to them. Maybe they won’t fire you for it…but what about that promotion you were hoping for? Those types of post aren’t going to sky rocket your career.

People in general: A carpenter will always say measure twice, cut once. Take that into consideration with social media: think twice, post once! I have seen several status updates that were obviously regretted afterwards. You see them in your news feed, but they are deleted from the profile just a few minutes later. Just because you delete quickly, doesn’t mean that no one saw it. Remember, it only takes one person to see it for word to spread.

What about your location? Sometimes I think that this issue is a little overblown, but there is some validity to it. When you exclaim to the Facebook world that you will be away from your house for 2 weeks, it could create a predicament.  My guess is that the majority of people can’t really trust 100% of their Facebook friends, and if you think you do you should probably think twice.

Obviously this is not an all inclusive list, as it would be much longer. And by no means am I trying to deter you from using social media, just use it smart. Again, think twice…post once. Review these tips from Mashable for improving your Facebook privacy settings. Consider what a simple status post or photo could do in the future and take responsibility for your actions and you can still have fun and enjoy the social media world.

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The former Talking Phonebook has put a lot of marketing dollars into their latest identity, LocalEdge. I assume they moved away from having the word “phonebook” in their name because who uses a phonebook anymore? The new LocalEdge sales people make their rounds relying heavily on the words SEO and social media. They give free seminars about the subject, but these just end up being another sales pitch. See below from a local chamber newsletter:

MAY 11 -- Internet SEMINAR, --------- Restaurant, Route ----, Cuba, 5:30 - 7 PM.  The seminar will feature guest speaker, Mark ---------, Google Adwords Certified Professional.  Why do some websites rank higher than others?  If I advertise online, how will I know it's working?  Where are today's consumers finding my services? Seminar will also be held June 1 and July 20.  Space is limited for this free seminar, so please email --------@localedge.com or call 716-376-----.

Before I go on, I do want to mention that LocalEdge is owned by Hearst Communications. It was announced this month that Hearst would acquire iCrossing, one of the largest search marketing companies that exists. I also want to note that LocalEdge and iCrossing sharing the same owner, does not make LocalEdge an SEO firm. I highly doubt that the iCrossing talent will be providing services for LocalEdge.

I didn’t want to start knocking what LocalEdge was calling SEO without first looking into it. After all, I don’t mind competition, in fact I think it is necessary, but I am not a big fan of the way they mislead their customers. Let’s take a look at what I found when I reviewed their ‘SEO Package’.

What they are optimizing is your ‘ProAd’ that was already purchased through LocalEdge. From what I have seen, all of these ‘ProAds’ look exactly the same. The owner has the ability edit each section, with what appears to be with little guidance from LocalEdge. When you choose to edit service areas, you fill in a list, similar to a Google Places edit function. From there, the terms get populated onto your ProAd, which from the majority of listings I look at, look very spammy.

After purchasing the ProAd, you have the option to purchase an SEO package. I had access to a company’s account that had already purchased the package, so I was able to navigate around their system. From what I was able to find, you choose a few keywords that you want to optimize for, and they then place them in the Page Title and Meta Description. The options to edit your own elements or keywords were not able to be found anywhere in the interface, so to the best of my understanding these are auto-generated after you tell your rep which keywords you want to optimize for. It appears that if you do not purchase the SEO package, you do not have this ability to edit these areas, your Page Title and META description appear like this:

Page Title: (Business Name – Address) Find business listings, White Pages, Maps & Directions, consumer information, and more in The Talking Phone Book / Area Wide search directory.

Meta Desc: (Business Name – Address) Yellow Pages, online, Internet, directory, national, search, local business listings, phone book, local stores, maps, driving directions, White Pages, business phone number, consumer information, advertising, companies, products, services, addresses, find phone numbers, shopping, directory assistance, 411, consumer information, Consumer Guides, City Guides, local directories

I guess when you compare to the this, you should probably purchase the SEO package if you have a ProAd. My favorite is when other directories pull this information and use it to describe a business’ services. See below:

Why isn’t this ‘service’ SEO? Well, first and foremost, there is much more to SEO that changing a Page Title and Meta description, second, your listing in the organic results still show “www.localedge.com/…” as the URL, third, there is a search box at the top of every page on your ProAd that allows a user to easily leave yours even if they do find you through organic search. It is insulting to SEO professionals that put time and care into their work to call something that can be done in less than 30 minutes SEO. Not only that, it gives small business owners a bad taste in their mouth for SEO if they purchase this and get the results I expect they are getting.

So do they do anything right? Well, they use <divs>, <h1> and <h2> headers, for the most part the pages are content heavy, whether or not it is good content is up to the business owner, and they give businesses that have no web presence at least something.

The package you purchase will also give you access to SEO Tracker, which gives you an idea of average search engine ranking for Google, Bing and Yahoo for the terms that you chose. What they are reporting appears to be accurate compared to what I was finding through other ranking programs and my own searches.

In conclusion, I do not want to knock the services provided by LocalEdge, I just don’t think they should be calling it SEO. Call it what it is, an enhanced online phonebook listing. Some businesses will find the services beneficial, fruitful, and maybe even perfect for their situation, but again, my biggest concern is that they call these services SEO. Maybe I am off track here and businesses are getting great results from the packages they are purchasing, if so I gladly welcome your feedback.

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There has been debate for some time now regarding whether or not bidding on multiple match types for the same keyword is an effective strategy or not. An example would be purchasing:

Bradford PA Restaurants
”Bradford PA Restaurants”
[Bradford PA Restaurants]

In this case the advertiser would be attempting to purchase the same term in Broad, Phrase and Exact match types. Regardless of whether or not they are in their own ad group, all terms would be turned on in an attempt to serve an ad. So why would anyone do that?

I recommend using this strategy for testing purposes. Not all match types are perfect for all keywords. Sometimes an exact match type will carry a slightly higher CPC, but you will likely not be spending money on wasted clicks as often found by using broad match. But, yes there is a but, broad match can be a great tool. It can help you find new keywords to purchase as well as allow you to build a more significant negative keyword list if you intend to stay away from exact match.

Depending on the account structure, I will start by placing the keywords in their own ad groups, sometimes even their own campaigns. This can help with bid and budget management and will be easy to clean up when you stop purchasing all match types. According to Google:

If you have multiple keywords that are the same, the system will prefer to use the keyword with the more restrictive keyword match type.

Therefore, depending on the queries that are driving traffic, your broad terms will only be served to users that aren’t searching the exact term or using the phrase as part of a longer query (theoretically). In testing, you may find that you are getting the majority of your conversions from the less restrictive match types or vice versa. But because search is a data driven marketing strategy, why not gather all the data you can get; including which match type performs better for you. And again, even if you are nervous about broad match it can really provide some great search query reports to help you build your account with high performing keywords, or expand your list of negatives.

In conclusion, my opinion is that bidding on multiple match types is a great testing and data gathering strategy, but not necessarily a long term solution. I am a firm believer that if you can gather data to improve your account performance long-term, trying various tests aside from the simple A/B test is a good practice.

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How Could the Social Graph Work?

Last time we covered linking and how the search engines use linking to understand more about your website; both from a “popularity” perspective and content perspective. So how would a social graph compare and will it take over the link graph? Although I cannot answer these questions 100% because I do not have insider knowledge from the search engines…I do have ideas of how it may work.

Overall I believe the way search engines gather and use the data will be similar. The more related and reputable people discussing, mentioning, and linking to specific sites, brands etc., the higher the likelihood that those “links” will affect search engine visibility.

A few years ago, social bookmarking was all the talk about how the social world would be used similar to linking. For the most part, that never happened. Yes…you could get traffic, they provided little if any link value. Nofollows were added because of spam. Yes, spammers ruin pretty much everything, they also change the way SEO is performed.

So where have we come since social bookmarking? Well, everyone and their grandparents have a Facebook account, Google created one of the largest social networks nearly overnight with Google Buzz, many people still have a hard time grasping the idea of Twitter (but use it anyways), and real-time search using social media has become a reality not just speculation…and yes, social bookmarking is still around.

Again, I come back to the thought that the technology behind the social graph will be similar to the link graph. People share nearly everything through social media. Some things extremely small and unimportant, sometimes breaking news stories, sometimes the latest music trends, etc. Whatever it may be, there is text or a link track what people are talking about. Whether a user is using Twitter usernames, brand names or a shortened URL, the search engines will have the technology to compile that data. Real-time search may even be the foundation of the social graph. Most people think Google real-time search was a flop and takes away the integrity of search results, which whether or not this is true, Google is using incredibly advanced technology to make it happen. Once a search engine can understand what people are talking about or sharing across various social landscapes, it can implement that data into algorithms.

The link graph will not go away entirely. As Rand at SEOMoz mentioned on a whiteboard Friday, not everything is shared through social media. There are just certain types of things that you don’t mention or link to on Twitter and Facebook, yet this is information that still needs to be ranked.

To sum everything up. I do not believe the social graph will completely remove the need for inbound links for something to be visible within the search engines. Although, I do believe as more “partnerships” are made between search engines and social media venues, the more that information will be used to determine where something should rank organically (not including real-time search). It will be important for a business/website to be involved with social media in some way. Have a Facebook page with all of your information and a link to your site, fill out your Twitter profile completely, and just become active. I do believe in the future your social popularity, good or bad, will come into play and directly correlate with SEO. There will be challenges with Spam, but this is a obstacle search engines, users and marketing professionals have to deal with. This may not be the perfect explanation of how the social graph will come into play, because I just don’t have all of that information. Some of this is speculation, but the usage and technology is already in place. It will be surprising if the search engines don’t take advantage of that to make organic search more relevant.

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Understanding Links

How often do you hear, SEO is all about linking (aside from good content of course). I hear this all the time from  clients, they understand they need links to their site, but do they know why? Furthermore, what role will links play when if search engines fully adopt the social graph? I for one am not very fond of the “act” of link building. I find it to be tedious, stressful and mind-numbing. But, I do not think it will go away completely.

Let’s talk about links.  Without technical jargon (or as little as possible), the original purpose for following the link graph system was for the search engines to understand what a site was about, as well as use them as a reputation gauge. Anchor text became so important because it said, “hey Google, if Googlebot follows this link they will be visiting a site that provides information about the best hot dogs in Chicago”…or whatever the anchor text might say. Googlebot would then use the reputation of that site to determine whether or not to take their word for it that it is the best hot dog in all of Chicago. If coming from a reputable source, this anchor text would be much better than “visit them here”, because that text essentially provides little value. Hopefully after Googlebot crawls the link and the content on the site correlates to the anchor text. This is how a link is used to provide some background of the website to Googlebot or a user before/as they visit it.

In terms of reputation, search engines would take into consideration how many websites were linking to a specific  website while taking into consideration the reputation of those websites as well. To put this in an everyday scenario: a bunch of people are always recommending Josh Curcio for some reason or another. Ambassadors, Deans of Universities, reputable people within the SEO industry, and some guy that has been following Phish around for the last 15 years. While the recommendations from the ambassadors and deans would provide some clout, ultimately the recommendations from reputable people within my industry would go a much further if the recommendation is related to SEO. The guy following Phish around for the last several years may be saying wonderful things about me, but everyone knows he says that about everyone and is not the most trustworthy source; therefore, his recommendation is taken with a grain of salt.

Linking is the same way. Yes, it is important to have various links, but ultimately the highest quality and most relevant links will provide the most benefit. Links from unrelated and/or unreliable sources that are linked to every site the webmaster comes across will provide little or no weight and could even harm your ranking (Link Farms).

That covers how a search engine uses the anchor text of a link as well as the volume, reputation and relevancy of inbound links to aid in your search engine visibility. In part 2 I will discuss how adopting the social graph could change our focus on link building.

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Most website or business owners do not have a problem tracking standard web metrics such as visits, orders, click-through-rate, unique visitors, etc. Whether it comes to paid search or SEO, it may be more beneficial for you to dig deeper for more useful metrics. According to a post at eMarketer, only 53% of respondents believe that ROI is very important. I was surprised by this number because understanding ROI can completely change your marketing strategies. Simply looking and orders and cost, you are not fully understanding your total investment.

I understand that with organic search this number is difficult to gauge 100% because some sales obviously could have been driven without SEO or with prior efforts. With paid search, ROI is a vital metric, and easily tracked.

ROI, or return-on-investment is simply calculated as:

ROI = [(Payback - Investment)/Investment)]*100

Your payback number would be considered the amount of money earned from your efforts. Let’s assume over the course of 1 month you earned $10,000 from a paid marketing campaign. Your investment would be the amount of money or resources you put into the efforts. For example sake let’s assume you spent $4,000 in the search engines and you hired an outside contractor to manage the campaign at $2,000. Because you hired an outside firm your total investment for this strategy is $6,000 (Budget + Management Fee). Your ROI for this specific strategy was 66.6% based on the below calculation:

[($10,000 - $6,000)/$6,000)]*100 = 66.6%

It is important to include all resources invested into the project to get an actual number. This would mean if the strategy was handled in house you would include salary paid to whichever team member handles the account, software or equipment purchased for the specific strategy, and if you are the business owner, include your own time too, because after all it is one of your business’ resources.

So what if you are not able to track revenue through your website analytics because you are focusing on driving leads or soft conversions? ROI can be much tougher in these instances because it is difficult to truly understand your payback. The best way to handle this situation is to understand the value of a lead. This will vary from business to business, and is often not easy to calculate. There are many factors that you can consider when calculating the value of a lead such as quality, life time value, seasonality, profitability etc. For the ease of better understanding ROI, let’s use a simple calculation to determine a lead’s value: Average Revenue per Sale/percent of leads converted to sales. While this calculation is perfect by no means, it will allow us to show ROI in a lead generation situation. To calculate based on our simple lead value calculation our new ROI formula would look like this:

ROI = [({Value of Lead*Number of Leads} – Investment)/Investment]*100

Again, while the lead formula is flawed and doesn’t take into consideration what happens after the lead or profit, it at least gives you an idea in calculating ROI without a direct “payback” number. Sadly, too many businesses are ignoring ROI when it should be one of the most important metrics of any marketing strategy online or offline. Using these simple calculations you can have a better idea of what your marketing ROI actually is.

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I find this quite interesting and somewhat amusing. This was pointed out by Amit Singhal of Google, in a post called “This Stuff is Tough”.

What does Bing have to say?

And let’s go out on a limb here…Alta Vista?

I find it quite interesting that the most popular search engine only ranks in the top 3 in Alta Vista. I guess this proves that popularity only gets you so far in the world of SEO. No offense Google, I still love you.

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Google announced today that they will include real-time search results in their search engine that will also work on iphone and android devices. Google real-time search results will show the most current news and information for your searches. They announced the real-time search results will include news, Tweets, blogs and more. If people are still unsure of the importance of Twitter for business, this should convince them. Twitter will be a great way for you to communicate with the world in real-time.

Also announced today was Google Goggles. Google Goggles allows you to search for things visually. Using your Android smartphone you are able to snap a picture and pull up search results based on the picture you snapped. This is very exciting! I have already installed it on my Droid!

These new technologies released by Google will present a new, but exciting challenge for web marketers. What is next to come in the world of search?

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