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Who should be managing your SEO?

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#2
If SEO is looked at in 3 different levels:

1. Optimizing your website with the right meta & description tags, various header tags, and URLS ....site host
2. Building the content in your site that is flexible between customer content and search engine candy ....site host, you, or consultant
3. Experimental, advertisements, and other outside work ....site host, you, or consultant

The power is in one person doing all three so all three work together.
 
#3
In the interest of full disclosure I am of course an outside SEO company, but my answer is the result of my findings from when I worked in the Industry. By far the more valuable find is in a outside company, I have found most companies at least for SEO within the dealer worlds inner sanctum are sub-par at best. This is further proven with all the dealership GM's I have talked to and how hard it is for me, and outside company to even sell SEO. Literally everyone I talk to has been burned before by some company they read about in digital dealer or some other trade mag.

The point is from what I have found companies within the dealer circle rely more on relationships than quality product, and although there are days I wish I would of took that route at the end of the day I have to sleep and feel good about the product we provide, so I take a stand against the big companies, get black balled, and don't care. :)

Anyway, sorry for the long post, this is a hot button issue for outside SEO companies like myself, stay out of the dealer mag's choose your SEO company based on their reputation, case studies, and personal references, a top flight SEO company can handle all aspects of your SEO campaign.
 
#4
This is a big question and one we discussed on the blog a few months ago Hiring an Automotive Internet Marketing Manager

I believe if you find the right person, it would beneficial to bring it in house but it's a challenge to find that right person. Most people that are aware of having this skill (especially a SEO guru) are usually already making big money working for themselves. Unfortunately when you outsource it, most SEO companies are not doing it right OR dealers are not willing to spend the money is takes to get it done right.

SEO can be a hard sale to dealers. SEO takes time and nurturing and it's not a shiny rock you can buy off the self. For all these reasons, this is why I would venture to say less than 10% of a dealerships have a SEO strategy (unless you include the "lack" of strategy).
 
#5
Jeff Kershner said:
SEO can be a hard sale to dealers. SEO takes time and nurturing and it's not a shiny rock you can buy off the self. For all these reasons, this is why I would venture to say less than 10% of a dealerships have a SEO strategy (unless you include the "lack" of strategy).
Click to expand...


This is why every dealer we do take on we totally kill it for them.... :)
 
#8
The automotive industry is one of the few that rely on websites that essentially are not theirs. 99% of dealers are essentially "renting" their websites. That being the case, shouldn't your website provider be doing the SEO? They are the ones building it which means they hold the key to the SEO fundamentals of the website. The rest is content and link-building, which is futile without the fundamentals.

If your website provider doesn't know or offer SEO, or they don't implement it correctly then it's time to reconsider your web provider.

I've seen dealers pay thousands of dollars to outside consultants for Page Titles and META informaiton to give to their website company. :(


Terrence Gordon
VP Search & Media
ecarlist.com
 
#9
Coming up the list of keywords to target is the largest part of a organic SEO campaign. So I hope we are not relaying on the website provider to come up with that list... or hoping that website provider would include SEO in their site/inventory management prices.

Website provider has the responsibility of providing the Tools for SEO to take place... i.e. ability to make custom urls, access to page headers... access to add more content pages... etc.

Frankly... if you are not in a overly competitve market then doing just the basic on page enhancement and few links should give you the rankings... 80% of dealers fall under this. You still need a solid keyword list to have it successful.
 
#10
For the most part I agree with the last point, we cant expect website providers to handle SEO, it is totally different, and since many of them compete on price there is no chance they can give you a quality service...they just need to make sure companies like us, can come in and work with their sites enough to optimize it.
 
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