Did SEO Ever Really Help Sell Cars?

[ed.brooks]

There is a drawback with strictly relying on Google Analytics -

 

[joe.pistell]

The video assumes that all traffic has to be funneled thru the website, where the 'conversion' occurs.

Ed,
Sorry, it wasn't my intent to take the video literally. In the video, the basket ball metaphor did a great job of demoing how shoppers behave AND how loony it is to award all the credit to one source (e.g. the shooter).




Video was referring to:

And that, perhaps, is the heart of the issue - In highly-involved sales, no one site or source is key. And yet our CRM systems are built to attribute a sale to a single source even though Google says car shoppers conduct thorough research relying on multiple sources.

There is a disconnect.

 

[joe.pistell]

There is a drawback with strictly relying on Google Analytics -

Why no one surveys shoppers at delivery is mind boggling (to me).

 

[joe.pistell]

Wow Gabriel Montano is a shooter. Great mind, has a clear view of the battle field!!

Like to see him here!!

 

[Alexander Lau]

One of the smartest guys in the automotive marketing world, Eric Miltsch, wrote, “You don’t need to hire an SEO professional, you need to hire a team of marketing professionals who also understand data science, shopping psychology and user intent” under the heading Standalone SEO Gets Assassinated in his outstanding piece, “4 Predictions in 2016 for Car Dealerships”.

I’m curious; did SEO ever help dealers sell cars?

I know, I know, a tremendous amount of time, energy, and money has been devoted to automotive SEO, but my question was serious; did SEO ever help sell a substantial number of cars? Here’s the problem; shopping for a car is what marketing professors call a high-involvement purchase.

Here’s a definition, “High-involvement purchases include those involving high expenditure or personal risk – for example buying a house, a car or making investments.” High-involvement purchases almost always involve extended problem solving and extensive research. The 18+ sources discussed in ZMOT, Winning the Zero Moment of Truth is a great example of the extensive research that consumers undertake when they are looking to make a high-involvement purchase. Auto marketing folks hoped, dreamed really, that they could short-circuit the research by ranking high enough for this or that keyword on Google. The fervent hope was that they could control shopper behavior and, in effect, make the purchase lower involvement.

Of course ZMOT argued just the opposite; that the Internet was making consumer behavior more like shopping for a car even when consumers were shopping for less expensive, less consequential, products.

Was that ever a realistic hope?

When I’m in a new town, I don’t Google “restaurants”; I tend to use Yelp or TripAdvisor – simply because I’ve learned from experience that those two sites will come up at the top of a Google search anyway (and I have the apps installed on my phone already). I then conduct some quick research and then make a decision. And this is a much lower involvement decision than the ones stemming from shopping for a car.

I’m not arguing against all SEO at all. You want to show up for your own name. You want to show up for ‘Chevy dealer in my town’. Basic SEO should have already accomplished those things for you. But would that have helped you sell a car?

And I understand the dream;

• A customer thinks about buying a car
• They perform a simple Google search
• They click on your dealership
• They buy a car

All in a few easy steps. And again I ask, was this ever realistic?

I didn't see this post, stumbled across it. Well, as you had mentioned groups like Beepi and Vroom are counting on this, coupled with paid search, display and pre-roll, etc.

I am in complete agreement. Don't hire an SEO person per se. Hire marketing people, (smarter than you, if possible) who are able to create marketing collateral and at the same time crunch numbers for a variety of reasons.

It's not as if components of SEO or the optimization of on-site (and/or off-site) content and quality, relevant backlinks are unimportant.

Still a big believer in this concept (take out sports stories, insert dealership local or staff stories, etc.)

 

[Alexander Lau]

There is a drawback with strictly relying on Google Analytics -

One of the biggest problems is using tag-based systems to record visitor behavior. Contrary to popular belief, Google Analytics is not the best tool out there. IMO, dealers barely act on the high level data that's provided to them via GA, let alone breakdowns from more sophisticated tools.

Google Analytics and tag-based analytics tools suck and tend to be very incomplete. Rather, use Passive Data Capture tools performed through a tap and packet sniffing, not tags (which are insecure and a liability). Yes, the logistics are more difficult, but the results are better.

A friend of mine sold his company Metronome to IBM and it's become what is known as Tea Leaf @ http://www-01.ibm.com/software/info/tealeaf.

 

[trappstick]

Hey guys (Ed), I know I'm insanely late to this thread but I just joined, so bear with me.

Here's my take as a veteran Internet marketer with over 16 years of lead gen experience in the B2C finance sector.

It depends.

You can still quite easily influence the Google Local listings and rank for nearly any relevant term locally, but SEO the way everyone thinks of it (Massive organic traffic from big generic keywords and long tails) is a bit of a dying niche. The harsh reality is those meaty terms with a lot of traffic are covered by the big dogs in the respective niche. To clear it up a bit, here's my industry.

Take auto insurance.

10 years ago I could rank my website top 5 for any long tail keyword, we're talking city/state make/model and every combination in each. This meant my Ford pages pulled for their respective models, i.e. Ford Mustang + auto insurance and so on. Same with Los Angeles Auto Insurance. It was truly a gold mine and up until about 2010 it was still possible, but you could see it was waning.

Google got wise to the games and so did the carriers. Companies like GEICO, Progressive, Allstate, State Farm, etc. were now playing the game with 10 figure yearly budgets. Paid links (Nationwide got busted a few years back), endless content and of course - authority. They got all of the links, all of the tweets (I don't care what anyone says, social beacons DO play a part) and all of the traffic.

My little affiliate website was no match for those behemoths and that wasn't unique to my situation. This was happening everywhere, not just in finance. Ranking factors were changing constantly, links (both organic and paid) were being devalued at an alarming rate it seemed like the big guys, the industry marketshare leaders that were spending 8 figures+ on Google Adwords were really winning the game.

And if you think about it, why shouldn't they?

If I put the hate aside for second and look at the big picture it's pretty clear that the companies I listed bring massive value to web users. They stay longer. They get quotes (which fires a conversion pixel in some instances if tied to GA or Adwords) and they engage on nearly every social platform on Earth.

I can't compete with that. Most smaller companies can't either.

However, this brings me back to Local SEO. Yes, this one area where the small guy can still win. You can still get top billing for your region on various point-of-sale search terms for free.

Is it something you can do yourself? Absolutely. In addition to adding great content people engage with and share (you absolutely need them to share it!) you've got a great shot at optimizing your location profile to pull for keywords that matter to you. It's not always easy and you should definitely keep chasing those great long tails (Beaverton, OR Nissan Dealership) but keep your expectations in check. There are no silver bullets and the key to winning is being a company that people want to interact with and share. If you can pull that off you'll find the organic traffic will follow.

If you have any questions feel free to PM me, I don't mind pointing people in the right direction.

One of the smartest guys in the automotive marketing world, Eric Miltsch, wrote, “You don’t need to hire an SEO professional, you need to hire a team of marketing professionals who also understand data science, shopping psychology and user intent” under the heading Standalone SEO Gets Assassinated in his outstanding piece, “4 Predictions in 2016 for Car Dealerships”.

I’m curious; did SEO ever help dealers sell cars?

I know, I know, a tremendous amount of time, energy, and money has been devoted to automotive SEO, but my question was serious; did SEO ever help sell a substantial number of cars? Here’s the problem; shopping for a car is what marketing professors call a high-involvement purchase.

Here’s a definition, “High-involvement purchases include those involving high expenditure or personal risk – for example buying a house, a car or making investments.” High-involvement purchases almost always involve extended problem solving and extensive research. The 18+ sources discussed in ZMOT, Winning the Zero Moment of Truth is a great example of the extensive research that consumers undertake when they are looking to make a high-involvement purchase. Auto marketing folks hoped, dreamed really, that they could short-circuit the research by ranking high enough for this or that keyword on Google. The fervent hope was that they could control shopper behavior and, in effect, make the purchase lower involvement.

Of course ZMOT argued just the opposite; that the Internet was making consumer behavior more like shopping for a car even when consumers were shopping for less expensive, less consequential, products.

Was that ever a realistic hope?

When I’m in a new town, I don’t Google “restaurants”; I tend to use Yelp or TripAdvisor – simply because I’ve learned from experience that those two sites will come up at the top of a Google search anyway (and I have the apps installed on my phone already). I then conduct some quick research and then make a decision. And this is a much lower involvement decision than the ones stemming from shopping for a car.

I’m not arguing against all SEO at all. You want to show up for your own name. You want to show up for ‘Chevy dealer in my town’. Basic SEO should have already accomplished those things for you. But would that have helped you sell a car?

And I understand the dream;

• A customer thinks about buying a car
• They perform a simple Google search
• They click on your dealership
• They buy a car

All in a few easy steps. And again I ask, was this ever realistic?

 

[Alexander Lau]

If we want to start talking processes, techniques and tools.

Going after Keywords based upon Search Volume alone is a bad concept. It goes without saying (even though presumptions are the mother of all crack-ups, especially when dealing with humans) a strategy is absolutely needed. An understanding of your target audience / demographic behavior is an absolute must. Failing to comprehend keyword conversion performance will drastically hurt your website's chance of being properly optimized and in future conversion performance. In other words:

Reporting on improvements in keyword position is pointless without applying keyword visits and conversion data

The better tools we have to understanding which keywords truly convert, the better off we are with producing content for conversion processes.

http://www.gshiftlabs.com/seo-blog/...ver-deliver-report-highly-converting-keywords = "Google’s algorithm updates have changed the practice of SEO. Search marketing firms have an opportunity to evolve their sales, delivery and reporting practices to differentiate themselves. Focusing on the discovery of highly converting keywords beginning with the sales and marketing conversations through delivery and reporting will produce stronger SEO results over the long term and happier SEO clients."

Additionally, you or your 3rd party "SEO" Company should be using an SEO / Content Marketing CRM or the like from groups like gShift (shown below) or Moz. As you can see below, tools like this measure the effectiveness of Keywords (popularity / search volume, ranking and your conversions (based upon goals and conversion set-up - can be imported in from Google Analytics, if need be), On-Site Page and Off-Site Page analysis, Social Signals, Backlinks (they absolutely still matter) and how your Competition compares according to the aforementioned, especially conversions for the same keywords.

I think there's something we all need to keep in mind. SEOs can rank the living hell out of a keyword, keep it #1 for years, but if the corresponding website or landing page fails to convert, that ranking means squat. In other words, you can bring a horse to water, but you cannot force her to drink.

I hear a lot of, "man, I have this keyword ranked through the roof and my conversion rate is dismal...!" Well, yeah, that's due to the poorly designed conversion points on your website. Time to rethink your website, if that's the case. Time to start using an optimization tool.

 

[JSammon512]

Alexander stole my thunder a bit here but just to reinforce the things that he is talking about.

SEO is important and it can make a huge impact on your business. To start tracking how it's happening on your site before you either hire someone or start doing SEO yourself, it's key to track the data in Google Analytics and make sure that you have goal tracking set up. Many of the local dealerships have a call to action on their website for visitors to "lock in the online price" and "schedule an appointment" at the dealership. It will be key to see the channel that is driving these responses. From there, you can start to make changes to the pages that are driving the most conversions (both in design and content).

As the thread mentions, SEO is about a lot of different things now - both offsite and onsite. I would focus on content and changing the design of the key pages to increase response inititally.

Don't discount the value of reviews in local search too!

If you can tie the submissions into a CRM to trace the sales process from lead to sale, this will help tremendously. Often, SEO is the most consistent source of leads that turn into sales.

If anyone has any questions, please feel free to reach out. Happy to help!

 

[Rick Buffkin]

If Carguru's had a dealership website SEO pkg., I'd be all over that MOFO!!!!