Hey Joe, great stuff. We are really happy with our CRM at the dealership as well but we only have experience with one vendor. I was just curious who is it your working with that you're so happy if you don't mind me asking?

I think it's a colossal waste of time and resources. I am the internet manager at my store. After TrueCar launched it's TV campaign the number of leads became overwhelming. Most of them were from out of state and many people said they were just "playing around" after they saw the commercial. TrueCar stated they made changes to alleviate that problem, but I never noticed any noteworthy reduction. There is only one other subscribing dealer in town out of a total of 5 of my brand in my city. Anytime a price change was made we knew who did it since there are only 2 of us. It became a slippery slope of ugly, no profit deals just to get our name to pop up on top. My salespeople earn $100 for a mini deal. It made me sick to pay TrueCar $300 for doing nothing. I suggested to my principal that we cancel with them and begin advertising that "we will beat your TrueCar price" and not pay them a dime. Jerry is right, it is an erosion of profit. Companies like TrueCar have made profit a dirty word. Almost every customer that comes in with a certificate thinks that the number they were given is now the starting point for negotiation. They tell me that they've show it to other (non-participating) dealers and were told they would beat it. Of course they will since they don't have to pay $300.

I'm glad to see them scrambling and floundering. I hope my principal does not invite them back after they settle their case in Ohio.

As long as customers are able to see what others are paying for vehicles, this not a good product for dealers. Those on the program are paying a company to help reduce profit. I could care less about the brokering or data issues, for me it's always been about eroding profit.

Google has been de-emphasizing link quantity in their algorithm for almost a year now. They now focus on quality and authority of links.  You should be seeing a drop in those other companies who participate in link building schemes, UNLESS they employ other strategies that hold SEO rankings.  Content posted often (doesn't even have to be good content), relevant search terminology that matches closely with consumer entered terms, etc will influence the ranking more than links.  Now the Google+ is becoming a big factor, link building is just another black hat option that has seen its better days.

@whatjruthsaid Great feedback, glad you enjoyed More to come!

What a great article! It's not very often we see anyone talk about the ethical and moral fibers of current SEO practices like this. This article sticks out in so many ways. The linking portion of this article is becoming even more clear with Google's clear motivations to target low quality and paid links. Thank you for sharing this with the Automotive community. "The days of set-it-and-forget-it website solutions are over." - Absolutely amazing!

What a great article! This article sticks out in so many ways. The linking portion of this article is becoming even more clear with Google's clear motivations to target low quality and paid links. "The days of set-it-and-forget-it website solutions are over." - Absolutely amazing!

I agree, this situation has completely gone out of hand, and the auto industry learns this from the auto service industry, take for example the auto dealer software search, the first 3 pages are all the same compay with diferent names, I know because I have tried to buy, and later realize I am talking to the same salesrep. After three pages of junk I found what I was looking for in leasemaster, they only have one item show up, they are 100% diferent than all the other and mention auto dealer software all over the page but they rank on the fourth page, I checked yahoo. yahoo had them on the first page until Bing bought them out, now they show up on the second page, just in case they get lost forever the page is Auto Dealer-FreeDemo-Software $299.00New Used Car Boat RV ComputerProg Try looking for auto dealer software vs auto dealer computer pragrams and explain the diference!

@Dealerrefresh@chris Agreed! Community sites not only bring you link juice, but they also give you more exposure and credibility.

@Kyle Suss Haha, if I had it all figured out, I wouldn't be here right now. Just boggles my mind how some of these sites that provide nothing for a user can pop up in the #1 spot of organic listing with no backlinks. Makes me want to work harder! :0)

@xstortionist Sounds like you have it all figured out then

@Kyle Suss Kyle, I'm not an idiot, I know meta keywords are no longer a factor, I have been in this business for a long time now, probably way longer than you. The problem with these types of sites, is that there were 50 other domain names with all the same content, just different domain name, and they were all showing up in page 1 serps, and most of them still do except for the ones that are deindexed. Luckily, with a little hard work, I was able to get our main site (not our landing pages) to show up #1 in about a year. I do not believe in link building after seeing plenty of other sites that get top ranking without having links pointing to their sites. I believe providing rich content will do you better than buying sketchy links that based from Google will hurt you in the long run.

@xstortionist Hmm you're right. What a sketch website. I can only imagine that the keyword rich domain is a big factor on this. Like you said, I don't see any links pointing here. They have, however, had the domain for about 2 years longer than you've had yours, which can build some authority.

Keep in mind that meta keywords aren't useful at all anymore:

Login to view embedded media View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jK7IPbnmvVU

@Kyle Suss we own saddlebag-inserts dot com to match their domain, but still no luck with out performing, I figure domain registration has authority over our domain name. But these guys had like 50 other domain names doing the same thing, luckily I contacted google made a complaint a large number of those domain names were deindexed.

@Kyle Suss saddlebaginserts dot com

@xstortionist Let's see it

@Kyle Suss I can show you a site right now that is a competitor of one of my clients, that has no baclinks, and no content and the site ranks #1 and #2 for many keywords. The site has meta data and a HUGE image screenshot of their homepage that clicks through to their main website. Riddle me that please.

@Kyle Suss I don't know, buying links seems a bit fishy to me, especially considering this is what google says "Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines and can negatively impact a site's ranking in search results."

@xstortionist I believe they spend the money because it still works.

Case in point, the #1 rated used car store in my area buys tons of links. They opened another store that popped up on page 1 for these queries in a matter of about 2 weeks.

They don't buy the links because they expect people to actually find them on those directories/sites. They buy the links because they are still valuable in small niches.

Most auto dealerships don't spend a lot of time building links. Therefore, if you take the time to buy links from some crappy directory, then you have X amount more links than your competitor. Google doesn't have much else to judge the rank since building links isn't too high of a priority, so the site with the most (albeit low quality) links will prevail.

Throw a site with lots of natural, reputable links into the mix though, and I believe you will have a different scenario. That's the hard part thuogh

@Kyle Suss I ment to say "is not going to link to your site." trying to eat lunch and type at the same time. bare with me!

@Kyle Suss I agree that the older demographic is going to link to your site naturally. I just don't understand why people are willing to throw away so much money on people building links that really have no relevance. Lets say your site has 10,000 backlinks pointing to it, out of those 10,000 links how many of those domain names are showing up as a referral in your analytics reports?

@xstortionist I've thought about this -- and maybe I'm just making inaccurate assumptions -- but in the auto industry I don't know if there are enough individuals capable of linking to a site to combat the exact match anchor text links. I work at a Buick & GMC store. Buick's average buyer is a little on the older side still (even though they want that to change) and I can almost guarantee that those customers don't have their own website to be able to link back to me. Even if I have some amazing content on my site, what's the point (in terms of SEO) if nobody links to it naturally?

Granted, there are opportunities to grab links from vendors, industry sites, etc. -- but are those links always going to be exact match anchor text? If not, how are you going to compete with the sites that are buying exact match anchor text links? In a niche like ours, those types of links are still very relevant.

SEO is becoming a big waste of time in my opinion. You have companies building links by posting comments on blogs, doing forum posts, link farms, etc... It is a flawed system that is easily taken advantage of. Knowledge is king, and if you are working harder than your competition you will be ahead of the curve. Thinking outside the box is half of the battle when it comes to effective SEO tactics, everyone is doing the same thing when it comes to link building, because it's an easy money maker. If you are providing quality content, then you are giving people a reason to spread the knowledge.

@Umer Farooq No doubt those methods still work. In my opinion though, they're a poor way to construct an SEO plan -- especially if you're charging clients for these "services." If you aren't following the quality guidelines set forth by the search engines, then yes, I believe you are acting unethically toward your clients.

I wouldn't really take out paid links... or spamming/rss feeds from my toolbox. If it is highly competitive market... IMO do whatever it takes to get to top. I rather take a hit in a year from now... and re-work then not show up...

Would you call use of Scrapbox, XRumer, SeoNUKE, Ubots unethical as well... they do the work that you are trying to do manually.