SEO (vs.) SEM

[Mitch Gallant]

Guys, my point isn't SEO is bad. I'm in on SEO, I just feel as though the fluff needs to be murdered so that even when experiments go bad people say "Thank god we learned not to do that again" instead of trying to spin it into a positive. I've seen over 400% traffic increase (5K to +20K) over the past 5 years, I'm not bragging, please know we could do tons better, but I've made a shit ton of mistakes and feel like I've grown and learned a few things, and I feel like SEO is over hyped.

Yago, we could get into a debate on your example being good or not. I have a fairly pragmatic opinion. If it's getting eyeballs that are viewing multiple pages and sticking around >6 minutes then it's great. If not, it's mediocre (or worse). In my experience these type of long tail targets yield <25 visits that don't engage, to which I would be better off spending time figuring out how to optimize for more competitive and lucrative search terms such as "Used Cars in Geo" "OEM in GEO", but that's a long term play and takes tons of effort. Getting something that ends up on page one for a long tail is a great way to get pats on the head, but not to sell cars.

My point is simple, the terms that yield results cannot be gamed by a single landing page with good key words and some work on your meta. It takes many forms of marketing to build them up and in my opinion car dealers aren't well equipped to handle them. It's so much harder then it looks, which is why I think car dealers jump in with both feet because we're suckers for a huge challenge!

 

[Mitch Gallant]

Maybe I'm just jaded and cynical. I hope I'm wrong about this and thanks for the PM @cmjerry4531 I'll reach out for a better conversation!

 

[yagoparamo]

Yago, we could get into a debate on your example being good or not. I have a fairly pragmatic opinion. If it's getting eyeballs that are viewing multiple pages and sticking around >6 minutes then it's great. If not, it's mediocre (or worse). In my experience these type of long tail targets yield <25 visits that don't engage, to which I would be better off spending time figuring out how to optimize for more competitive and lucrative search terms such as "Used Cars in Geo" "OEM in GEO", but that's a long term play and takes tons of effort. Getting something that ends up on page one for a long tail is a great way to get pats on the head, but not to sell cars.

My point is simple, the terms that yield results cannot be gamed by a single landing page with good key words and some work on your meta. It takes many forms of marketing to build them up and in my opinion car dealers aren't well equipped to handle them. It's so much harder then it looks, which is why I think car dealers jump in with both feet because we're suckers for a huge challenge!

Mitch,

It is very hard to debate SEO in a forum because every example can be rebuffed and still only one example. I'm more interested in larger views on what works and what doesn't but that is hard to argue in a short blog paragraph.

For the little that I know I have collected several strategies that I follow for a website internal SEO. I hope this helps better showcase my findings and help other dealers:

Strong searches (fat):

One of my original examples 2014 Infiniti Q50 in Seattle | Seattle Luxury Cars is a very targeted page with unique URL and content. The page has also the proper metatags, internal links etc. You can be at $40-80 a page like this for everything (content, page building, linking, graphics, coding, etc).

It is a one time expense and you can reuse the content in a few other things like a blog, newsletter, microsites, or Facebook.

This type of approach allows you to go after very competitive searches so to maximize it you need someone writing this with some analytical understanding of the car business and of your dealer.

Whether these just attacks clicks or improve time on site will depend on the content that you chose, its relevance, and how informative it is. What the content does is different depending on its nature (new car info VS special finance help pages) and it will also change over time like for example this Q50 page may not be effective 5 years from now if the Q50 is discontinued. To that point let me share that there is so little geo located content for the Q50 that even a search for 'seattle q50 service' key words fr what that wasn't built, still shows that page #1. So in the future that page may bring unanticipated business.


Long tail:

This one is more controversial: Does it help? I know Ralph Paglia doesn't agree with me for example.

What people are failing to add into the context is the cost: None.

So if it doesn't cost any money and I can have 400,000 pages indexed Harris Ford VS having 582 pages indexed Sound Ford and when I type things like 'renton ford rebates' the out of DMA dealer shows on top of the local dealer, why wouldn't you have more pages indexed then?


A little bit more complicated and new is the long tail geo located inventory pages. same dealer, same website, URL and inventory structure targets all surrounding cities (so multiple inventory databases key worded differently):

http://www.infinitiofkirkland.com/search/used-everett_wa/tp-cy98201 City of Everett
http://www.infinitiofkirkland.com/search/used-lynnwood_wa/tp-cy98036 City of Lynnwood
http://www.infinitiofkirkland.com/search/used-mill_creek_wa/tp-cy98082 City of Mill Creek

Again, I look at this into 2 pieces of context:

1) ROI: I will not charge you more for building this, so is it better to have it or not to have it?

2) Compounding effect: One strategy will not kill the other dealer, but all of them combined in the same site (plus other things) will affect your competitor.

 

[yagoparamo]

And so what happens when you add links to DR...