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5 Reasons to Forget About Your SEO

T. Gordon;

A line waiting to issue commendation that the intellect of this industry follows your lead on this subject matter.

As it relates to Google Adwords, there was a Byron White who was at NADA that is Google's Automotive Marketing Strategist. I would like to humbly suggest that you reach out to Byron and make your introduction.

One thing you accurately relay at the end of your article is the FACT that dealers and dealership personnel should excel at SELLING THE CARS! Marketing, whether online or traditionally is best left to the pros who are able to remain on the front of the blade, the cutting edge of these approaches and technologies.

To that point, if and when you determine to host a web conference on "PPC vs. SEO and How to Profit from Each", I will be first to sign up! And, do remember to contact Google. They, too, can benefit from your apparent expertise on these tools and their application in auto retail sectors.

Your able professional,

D. Rawls
Auto Buyer Consultants
 
The comments above are critical read read as you build your Internet Marketing strategy for your site.

If a dealer just jumps into PPC without any idea on how they are going to convert their traffic, PPC will just result in a lot of money spent with limited success.

The first thing a dealer must do is develop their overall marketing strategy including how to market to their prospects and customers online. This strategy should include their site, social (facebook and twitter) and search. After that, a dealer can decide what Internet Marketing strategies to leverage to drive the BEST search traffic not the most traffic to their site. A dealer should think about traffic that converts not just how many visitors they get.

How many dealers are still just creating AdWords campaigns that are not tied to goals in analytics? Can a dealer say if a term is profitable? If a dealer does not know if PPC is working, they need to either pause their campaign(s) and figure out what is happening or at least quickly analyze their results and start investing their money in the right places. AND that might be PPC and SEO! SEO is still important as a way to drive good traffic if its done the right way!
 
First off, good job on establishing the importance of a well run PPC campaign. Being Google Adwords Certified Partners ourselves, I can appreciate a good PPC campaign any day of the week. That said, I'm all for sensationalism, but it's a little irresponsible to say 'forget about SEO unless your website is in transition, or to call it wiz-bang nonsense'. 

This especially when SEO drives 8.5X as many clicks as a PPC ad does (source Via Enquisite: PPC Agencies Make 45X What SEOs Do for the Same Value

Furthermore, with Landing Page Quality Score being the second most important factor (after CTR) http://bit.ly/j0JJHt it's important to make sure your LP has basic on-page SEO implemented. Let me play devil's advocate to some of the PPC-isms you talk about:Control - No one can guarantee placement. While that is true, you can control a number of other very important things.

- Meta Descriptions 
- Integrated Listing Rich Name, Address, Phone #, Ratings Data. 

Timing - It's important to tie non-branded organic search traffic to conversion data the same way you'd tie PPC traffic to conversion data. An analysis should be done around the 3 month mark to see how cost per lead via SEO is far lower than the cost per lead via PPC.

Traffic - We've got clients in every major vertical (think Yellow Pages verticals) and the theme I see repeated on every analytics account is that about 50%+ of their traffic is mid-tail or long tail organic traffic. This is 'non-branded' traffic as well by the way. Focusing on your top 3-5 money keywords is a good start, but it's also what the competition is gunning for. Play it smart by uncovering keywords that have low traffic and low competition, then generate content that hits different keyword variations for easy ranking wins.

ROI - You're on the money about how the ROI between SEO and PPC pans out. As more dealers get into online marketing, average bid prices will go up at a more liquid/elastic rate than the average price for SEO services (which everyone charges a different rate for). 

Terence, all in all a great post on the merits of PPC. Just had to make sure the sensationalism of the "SEO is Dead" type commentary was presented with a grain of salt.
 
First off, good job on establishing the importance of a well run PPC campaign. Being Google Adwords Certified Partners ourselves, I can appreciate a good PPC campaign any day of the week. That said, I'm all for sensationalism, but it's a little irresponsible to say 'forget about SEO unless your website is in transition, or to call it wiz-bang nonsense'. 

This especially when SEO drives 8.5X as many clicks as a PPC ad does (source Via Enquisite: PPC Agencies Make 45X What SEOs Do for the Same Value

Furthermore, with Landing Page Quality Score being the second most important factor (after CTR) http://bit.ly/j0JJHt it's important to make sure your LP has basic on-page SEO implemented. Let me play devil's advocate to some of the PPC-isms you talk about:Control - No one can guarantee placement. While that is true, you can control a number of other very important things.

- Meta Descriptions 
- Integrated Listing Rich Name, Address, Phone #, Ratings Data. 

Timing - It's important to tie non-branded organic search traffic to conversion data the same way you'd tie PPC traffic to conversion data. An analysis should be done around the 3 month mark to see how cost per lead via SEO is far lower than the cost per lead via PPC.

Traffic - We've got clients in every major vertical (think Yellow Pages verticals) and the theme I see repeated on every analytics account is that about 50%+ of their traffic is mid-tail or long tail organic traffic. This is 'non-branded' traffic as well by the way. Focusing on your top 3-5 money keywords is a good start, but it's also what the competition is gunning for. Play it smart by uncovering keywords that have low traffic and low competition, then generate content that hits different keyword variations for easy ranking wins.

ROI - You're on the money about how the ROI between SEO and PPC pans out. As more dealers get into online marketing, average bid prices will go up at a more liquid/elastic rate than the average price for SEO services (which everyone charges a different rate for). 

Terence, all in all a great post on the merits of PPC. Just had to make sure the sensationalism of the "SEO is Dead" type commentary was presented with a grain of salt.