Tim Martell SLAMS Industry SEO Vendors

[Tim Martell]

Wow. This thread get's busy when you look away for a minute. K-Car: want a job?

Love the passion. As you know, it is easy to find flaws in virtually anyone's designs or services. For this reason, I never comment on things that could be construed as taste, style or opinion. There are vendors in the automotive space who do know seo. Though very few. I guess I am still a bit naive to thing that there aren't more seo companies who wouldn't utilize and understand a strategy like that indicated in your first paragraph. In fact, it is the basis for TK Carsites SEO strategy (now owned by KPA).

Be careful about speaking in absolutes. Because you can't 100% say you know 100% about anyone else if you haven't worked with them or walked in their shoes. I called out dealer.com because they know better. When I was a dealer working in retail I brought this to their attention (5 or 6 years ago) and they've done nothing about it. I called out Car-Mercial because ranking a dealer for 583 keywords that have 0 search volume is a waste of their time and a dealers money and there is no ambiguity to that statement. It's not a matter of taste or style.

With regard to your "ranking challenge" we've had and currently do have seo clients ranking for terms generating many hundreds of thousands of searches per month. One of our newest clients was ranked #1 for a multitude of relevant keywords totaling over 30,000 searches after only one month of service.

I won't get in to the specifics on a forum on our approach with the wikimotivepricing url. Let's just say it was necessary to appease google -- and not from an seo standpoint.

With regard to buying likes, followers, and +1's, we are actually discontinuing our Google plus marketing service altogether and announced this to our active clients last week. Google sold everyone a bill of goods on how "influential" it was supposed to be on search. As you correctly pointed out. It's done nothing.

However, buying likes and followers is not unethical unless you are only selling fake likes and followers. That is not our business model. kcar, I would welcome a phone call from you if you would ever like to discuss seo in greater detail. I can always​ use a good seo guy. I can't talk today, but would love to discuss with you sometime next week. I'm sure a guy as resourceful as you can get my personal cell phone number.

-Tim

 

[Eley Duke]

Hold up Tim and KCar, dont hijack this over your differences and strategies with SEO. Take that to another post or offline please. Correct me if I am wrong Jeff, but I am sure Jeff wanted input from dealers, its why he created a poll and asked the question. It would better serve the DR community to hear from dealers, NOT VENDORS or the thread hijacked in a pissing match.

While Tim and KCar's conversation is interesting and I am no SEO expert, we need to hear from the dealers. Kevin and Joey spoke up. And I will say I am beyond fustrated with paying $599 a month for Search Marketing (and they dont even do PPC for us) and not seeing better results and always hearing "oh no, your SEO is performing great, nothign to worry about" and dancing around my questions.

Dealers, speak up, take the poll, lets hear what you have to say, do you feel your SEO provider is snake oil, spending your money on cruise control, or benefiting your sites? VENDORS.... let the dealers speak, you might learn, after all the question was

Question and Poll for the DR Community.


On a scale of 1-5 - How much do you trust your SEO provider and their provided reports?


1 being I have NO trust
5 being I have Complete trust

 

[Tim Martell]

Sure thing Eley. The intent of my post wasn't to say that our services were great and someone else's were bad. As a former dealer, I saw what I felt was an injustice being done to two of my dealer clients that also seemed to be a practiced methodology of the mentioned companies here.

My hope is that those companies having been outed will improve their products so that their dealer clients will receive the value they are expecting. More transparency in SEO is a good thing.

Eley, this is just my opinion, but I would find it hard to believe that any company could provide a decent SEO service for $599 a month. The work required to produce a strategy that can achieve real results for an industry as competitive as automotive is enormous. Respected content networks have to be established or partnered with well in advance. Building quality links takes time and sometimes money. BUT, your SEO provider should offer a high degree of transparency if they are providing a good service.

If a company tells you something is secret sauce or "If we told you then you could do it," then I would suspect there would be some ethical concerns. Having spent the first 21 years of my career in a dealership, these were certainly signs I looked for when vetting a digital vendor.

When vetting an SEO vendor you should ask for the following:

-Work history and not just the one client that they want to showcase. Ask for several examples.
- Example reporting that shows more than just random keywords that all rank in the #1 spot. A good report should show ranking, search volume and even competitor ranking. There should also be keywords on the report that don't rank well yet. Because SEO is a process it takes time. We work on some keywords until we achieve success and then move on to others. The report should indicate this.
- Last the body of work should be included or at least available for you to audit at any time. This way you will have the ability to see what your hard earned money paid for each month.

Hope this helps. I would also like to hear more from dealers about their challenges or concerns.

 

[Jeff Kershner]

Hold up Tim and KCar, dont hijack this over your differences and strategies with SEO. Take that to another post or offline please. Correct me if I am wrong Jeff, but I am sure Jeff wanted input from dealers, its why he created a poll and asked the question. It would better serve the DR community to hear from dealers, NOT VENDORS or the thread hijacked in a pissing match.

While Tim and KCar's conversation is interesting and I am no SEO expert, we need to hear from the dealers. Jeff and Joey spoke up. And I will say I am beyond fustrated with paying $599 a month for Search Marketing (and they dont even do PPC for us) and not seeing better results and always hearing "oh no, your SEO is performing great, nothign to worry about" and dancing around my questions.

Dealers, speak up, take the poll, lets hear what you have to say, do you feel your SEO provider is snake oil, spending your money on cruise control, or benefiting your sites? VENDORS.... let the dealers speak, you might learn, after all the question was

YES - thanks Eley. This thread was not started to be a back-n-forth on SEO techniques. Start another thread for that.

We want to know as Dealers, how do you feel about your current SEO provider? Do you trust them or not?

I've never outsourced my SEO efforts on the dealer level since I would do much of it myself. I hated to pay for something that I felt as if I could do a better job myself - resulting in full transparency. Plus I never felt like explaining to the dealers each month over month what SEO was and what they were getting from it.


I've heard the stories and I've seen some of these reports that Tim mentions. I've often said to myself that it would suck if I didn't know what I was looking at because the average dealer would be completely oblivious to what was being reported.

Back to the poll question at hand. How Much Do You Trust Your SEO Provider? Why and Why Not?



oh too - I just receive a text from Difeo. He said to add this emoticon to my next comment. This is for you Difeo ..

 

[kcar]

One second.. I'll stop with the back and fourth, and I get the point of the thread, but there's a problem.. How are dealers supposed to "rate" their SEO provider if 98% of them don't even know what real SEO is.. Dealers clearly have "trust" in their SEO vendor if they were willing to hire them in the first place, there had to be some established trust.. I'm sure that's declined over time, so anyways, I'm still interested to hear what dealers think...

 

[Eley Duke]

Back to the poll question at hand. How Much Do You Trust Your SEO Provider? Why and Why not

One second.. I'll stop with the back and fourth, and I get the point of the thread, but there's a problem.. How are dealers supposed to "rate" their SEO provider if 98% of them don't even know what real SEO is.. Dealers clearly have "trust" in their SEO vendor if they were willing to hire them in the first place, there had to be some established trust.. I'm sure that's declined over time, so anyways, I'm still interested to hear what dealers think...

KCar, Jeffs question is not about what your opinion is of dealers knowledge of SEO. It is whether or not dealers trust their SEO vendors, their work, and their reporting. Our customers are not techs, but they trust us to work on their vehicles with honesty and integrity and to report back to them the condition of their vehicle. And to not take advantage of them because they are not experts.

KCar, I dont agree with everything Tim does, but i respect him for having a brass set to openly challenge vendors and dealers on the topic. I respect Kevin for challenging the AWA awards as many have heard and said the same. We all know who Tim and Kevin are and whether we believe they are right or wrong with their comments, they don't hide behind a current! You have a lot of enthusiasm for what you do it seems and I like that, buts its difficult to have any respect for you! Look up the word integrity and decide if your gaining respect or not when hiding your identity and ranting as an SEO expert and calling the dealer community ignorant.

I agree with you, SEO is not dealers expertise! And, as much as some SEO vendors think they are, they are not experts in operating dealerships. Everyone has to work together and Tim is raising the point if dealers are inspecting, or know how to inspect, their SEO vendors and trusting them to help them.

 

[yagoparamo]

There needs to be more of this. This has got to be the only market that I've seen people tout "Video SEO". What is that?! I worked for a vendor that use to market some of their features as Web 3.0..... Or "21 ways to get a lead" on a vehicle details page. It reminded me of that 6 minute abs vs. 7 minute abs scene from Something About Mary. What's worse, is some of the stuff they say, "No cookie cutter sites" are actually some of the most cookie cutter sites I've seen. From the search page, to the details page, to the rest of the inner pages -- identical. If the prices keep falling, then I get that, but just don't say they aren't cookie cutter if they really are. The same goes with the SEO "formulas". Decide what's part of the service and what's part of the product!!!

Chris,

That vendor that you used to work for got the Datium award for the most leads generated per page.
As far as I know... pretty hard to buy Datium to give you the award.
The 21 leads per page (25 now) seems to be working.

Remember that just because you "measure" one dealer and things don't work exactly as they were created to do for that guy doesn't mean that the software is bad. As you know there are many things that must work together for things to truly "gel" together in the auto industry.

What really bothers me about this whole thread is that:

Is the guy selling fake social media friends that TRULY do nothing calling people out?

It seems that someone's business model just got blown out and it is trying to get notoriety by screaming foul play on other people's business.

 

[Tim Martell]

Not going to take the focus off the importance of this thread for dealers. No fake fans. Happy to discuss this in another forum or offline if anyone is truly interested. I was a dealer for 21 years and got in to the vendor space because I think I can do it better and with more transparency. Do even the slightest amount of research on me and you'll see I'm the real deal.

And watch for my next article when I call my own company out and discontinue an entire service because I recognized it was garbage and it was time to move on.

Jeff is right on the money, I too would never hire an SEO company if I were still working for a dealer. But I also understand there are only so many Jeff's and so many of me to go around. I don't think the brilliant guy in the store is a scaleable model and for that reason many dealers do have to outsource. What do other dealers think? Can you all find the diamonds like Jeff and hire them? Pay them what they're worth? What say you?

 

[Eley Duke]

Eley, this is just my opinion, but I would find it hard to believe that any company could provide a decent SEO service for $599 a month. The work required to produce a strategy that can achieve real results for an industry as competitive as automotive is enormous. Respected content networks have to be established or partnered with well in advance. Building quality links takes time and sometimes money. BUT, your SEO provider should offer a high degree of transparency if they are providing a good service.

Tim, I am not sure what the monthly rate for good SEO should be. It's the only option our web provider offers and it's pretty much canned cruise control SEO, set it and forget it maybe. Which is what it seems all the big web providers offer. I have always wondered about going outside of the automotive industry and would love to hear comments from those that have, but thats for another thread.

 

[yagoparamo]

And watch for my next article when I call my own company out and discontinue an entire service because I recognized it was garbage and it was time to move on.

Tim,

Is not that the service was garbage, it is a FRAUD. The fact that it took you so long to recognize that speaks a lot about you.

I still think that "calling your own company out" demonstrates that I'm correct when I say that you are in more need of attention than Kim Kardashian.