Thanks Chip for your insight into this and great info, I feel the same way about automotive SEO, a broken record month after month. What drives me up the wall are the vendors that preach on their soap boxes about SEO and search but are no different than what you just described. I appreciate your thoughts, thanks for sharing.
Tim Martell SLAMS Industry SEO Vendors
- Thread starter Jeff Kershner
- Start date
Thanks Chip for your insight into this and great info, I feel the same way about automotive SEO, a broken record month after month. What drives me up the wall are the vendors that preach on their soap boxes about SEO and search but are no different than what you just described. I appreciate your thoughts, thanks for sharing.
- Dec 30, 2009
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- Yago
You are absolutely correct but the services available to the dealers are somewhat a reflection of what the market (dealer) is willing to deal with.
- Apr 6, 2009
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- Mitch
Chip, if you where to commission an SEO campaign today for a dealer do you have any specific companies you would consider? For us we just don't know what we don't know and commissioning SEO projects seems like an interesting alternative.
I mentioned earlier that Tim would have provided more value in providing a checklist of what dealers should consider when evaluating SEO vendors. I think education is the biggest gap in all of this. Do you have a feel for anything that should be on a list for dealers or anything you shake your head at when you look at automotive SEO? (aside from month to month)
- Jan 7, 2010
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- Chip
Hey Mitch, sure thing.
The first and most important step in SEO is defining the project and we just use the '4 Ws'. The second is the 'H....M'.
Who
Who are we going after with this project? Is it people looking for a new car? Used Car? Service, parts, troubled credit....etc? The answer to this question is what will define the rest of the project scope and should be as detailed and targeted as possible. One step back from "used car shoppers in Miami who write lefty but swing a club righty....".
What
What are the goals once you've captured this user on your website? If it's an SEO project to drive people to test drive new cars, then the landing page should be about the lower costs of ownership with a new car, for instance. Or if it's about service, dump them to a page that gives them an outline about your service. The SEO part is done at this point, they've landed on your website, now it's about conversion. Give them relevant content based on their referral.
Where
Where are you going to target your SEO efforts? SEO isn't just about search engine traffic, it's about building traffic from multiple, diverse sources. Ranking high for RELEVANT keywords is important, but so are appropriately placed external links on sites that consumers in market are driven to. If it was my dealership, I'd spend less resources on Twitter and Facebook and more on building local links. Is there a local charity that is willing to link to you? News org? Relevant Wikipedia page you can be sourced on?
Why
Why are you doing this SEO Project? Is it because you've revamped your service center or added one? Are you trying to recover from blackhat practices that someone might have used in the past. "Attract new customers" isn't a well defined project and will lead to spending money frivolously. Pick a vertical of your dealership you want to focus most on and attack that. When that project is complete, the next vertical should be even easier because you are building on the success of previous. Trying to rank for "Used cars in California" will just frustrate you and you'll end up spending a lot of time and money and get nowhere.
How....Much
Entirely budget related, but your consultant should have varying levels of service at different pricing hierarchies (is it just an SEO review of your website, are they going to be building links on your behalf, are they going to be writing the relevant, unique content...etc). I would tend to believe most people will get a little sticker shock at some of the pricing and may want to try it on their own. Definitely not a bad tactic at all, just be as committed to the process and the success of it and it can definitely work out. Just don't forget, your time is valuable too and when you break down the time involved versus the cost, it might not be as lopsided as you think.
HTH,
Chip-
The first and most important step in SEO is defining the project and we just use the '4 Ws'. The second is the 'H....M'.
Who
Who are we going after with this project? Is it people looking for a new car? Used Car? Service, parts, troubled credit....etc? The answer to this question is what will define the rest of the project scope and should be as detailed and targeted as possible. One step back from "used car shoppers in Miami who write lefty but swing a club righty....".
What
What are the goals once you've captured this user on your website? If it's an SEO project to drive people to test drive new cars, then the landing page should be about the lower costs of ownership with a new car, for instance. Or if it's about service, dump them to a page that gives them an outline about your service. The SEO part is done at this point, they've landed on your website, now it's about conversion. Give them relevant content based on their referral.
Where
Where are you going to target your SEO efforts? SEO isn't just about search engine traffic, it's about building traffic from multiple, diverse sources. Ranking high for RELEVANT keywords is important, but so are appropriately placed external links on sites that consumers in market are driven to. If it was my dealership, I'd spend less resources on Twitter and Facebook and more on building local links. Is there a local charity that is willing to link to you? News org? Relevant Wikipedia page you can be sourced on?
Why
Why are you doing this SEO Project? Is it because you've revamped your service center or added one? Are you trying to recover from blackhat practices that someone might have used in the past. "Attract new customers" isn't a well defined project and will lead to spending money frivolously. Pick a vertical of your dealership you want to focus most on and attack that. When that project is complete, the next vertical should be even easier because you are building on the success of previous. Trying to rank for "Used cars in California" will just frustrate you and you'll end up spending a lot of time and money and get nowhere.
How....Much
Entirely budget related, but your consultant should have varying levels of service at different pricing hierarchies (is it just an SEO review of your website, are they going to be building links on your behalf, are they going to be writing the relevant, unique content...etc). I would tend to believe most people will get a little sticker shock at some of the pricing and may want to try it on their own. Definitely not a bad tactic at all, just be as committed to the process and the success of it and it can definitely work out. Just don't forget, your time is valuable too and when you break down the time involved versus the cost, it might not be as lopsided as you think.
HTH,
Chip-
Comment by Ralph Paglia on ADM
Tim, as much as your article appears to be revealing something that was previously a secret... IT IS NOT!
Many of us who have been providing dealers with consulting services have ridiculed and chided suppliers who try to hype results for search terms nobody ever actually searches for when shopping for a car... For the past 7 years!
This is a commonplace sales and reporting practice and ranks right up there with having 50,000 spammy pages generated by a website technology gone out of control and then telling the dealer that more pages indexed is better than fewer... Not 49,000 duplicated content spam pages!
So, although I think you were trying to do the right thing here... Cmon, everybody knows that ranking for search terms not used by consumers is BS... Where's the news or new information in this post? I sure don't see anything other than YES, dealers should use common sense!
In regards to Car-Mercial, I have seen their videos show up in Google Search results over and over and over when I was not looking for them! And, I was certainly using the search terms such as city-make-model that are frequently amongst the top ranked in volume of use by consumers who are in the market for a car. If their technology works based on factors such as tags, title and descriptions, and you are seeing low or no volume keywords used, would the right thing to do involve somebody like yourself, who endeavors to serve that same dealer, sending instructions to the other vendors to change their Tag-Title-Descriptions to better match what you have found to be the high volume search terms?
In any event, calling the use of wrong keywords for SEO targeting within the Tag-Title-Descriptions used by any supplier "fraud" or "criminal" is not only untrue, but is as deceptive to those reading this article as the practices you seek to criticize, or worse. At the very least, you (Mr. Tim Martell), may be crossing the line into tort territory and committing Slander by its legal definition.
Tim, as much as your article appears to be revealing something that was previously a secret... IT IS NOT!
Many of us who have been providing dealers with consulting services have ridiculed and chided suppliers who try to hype results for search terms nobody ever actually searches for when shopping for a car... For the past 7 years!
This is a commonplace sales and reporting practice and ranks right up there with having 50,000 spammy pages generated by a website technology gone out of control and then telling the dealer that more pages indexed is better than fewer... Not 49,000 duplicated content spam pages!
So, although I think you were trying to do the right thing here... Cmon, everybody knows that ranking for search terms not used by consumers is BS... Where's the news or new information in this post? I sure don't see anything other than YES, dealers should use common sense!
In regards to Car-Mercial, I have seen their videos show up in Google Search results over and over and over when I was not looking for them! And, I was certainly using the search terms such as city-make-model that are frequently amongst the top ranked in volume of use by consumers who are in the market for a car. If their technology works based on factors such as tags, title and descriptions, and you are seeing low or no volume keywords used, would the right thing to do involve somebody like yourself, who endeavors to serve that same dealer, sending instructions to the other vendors to change their Tag-Title-Descriptions to better match what you have found to be the high volume search terms?
In any event, calling the use of wrong keywords for SEO targeting within the Tag-Title-Descriptions used by any supplier "fraud" or "criminal" is not only untrue, but is as deceptive to those reading this article as the practices you seek to criticize, or worse. At the very least, you (Mr. Tim Martell), may be crossing the line into tort territory and committing Slander by its legal definition.
- Jun 25, 2010
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- 5
- First Name
- Katie
This is a really important topic that I would like to chime in on. Be kind... this is my VERY first post!
I feel I should start with the fact that I work for a full service agency that represents dealers, a third party provider and non automotive clients. I do NOT make profit from any SEO vendor. In my experience automotive SEO is a different animal than other verticals. For example, I have an SEO rock star that kills it for my non-automotive clients. When I hired him to look into dealer SEO he really struggled and we learned quickly that it would cost so much to get him up to speed that I was better off hiring elsewhere that had automotive experience. With that said, we can all learn a lot from seeing how other verticals manage SEO. Chip also brought this up but that is a much longer conversation. (That would be a great topic though) Chip also commented on the way dealers pay for SEO. The whole practice of paying a monthly fee is just financing the SEO services over the course of the year because it is easier for a dealer to pay a monthly fee and spread it across the year instead of large swings in their monthly budget. Unfortunately many of the companies that offer this financing option “forget” that they have to go back and revisit the client continuously over the course of the relationship.
When a dealer signs up for the SEO package there is some benefit, however in order to make the most out of your investment you must hold the SEO vendor accountable and require a minimum of a monthly meeting where they review the work performed for the month and the reporting. The vendor must also discuss your goals and offer suggestions on how they will help you achieve them. If your vendor will not perform this monthly audit then you need to move on to find another option. Simply requiring this monthly meeting has GREATLY improved the results each of my clients are receiving from their various SEO vendors. We have also quickly learned that your experience with the vendor will vary greatly based on who is assigned to your account.
Our clients have us to manage the vendor meeting each month and we report back the results and the future strategy. If you don’t have a partner or someone in your dealership who understands the SEO space it will still benefit you to have this monthly meeting. You will learn a lot and if you have questions, simply ask. Then take the info you learned and run it by someone you trust. Oh and one more thing…. Have them recap your monthly audit in WRITING!
SEO, PPC and nearly any marketing requires dealer participation, strategy and accountability. I have found that we all benefit greatly by investing into our vendor partnerships and the time we invest on the front end saves us in the future dealing with frustration and finding new vendors. At the end of the day if the vendor isn’t performing move on and replace the vendor based on a referral from a fellow dealer or vendor you trust. Because as we all know not all vendors or partners are created equal.
I feel I should start with the fact that I work for a full service agency that represents dealers, a third party provider and non automotive clients. I do NOT make profit from any SEO vendor. In my experience automotive SEO is a different animal than other verticals. For example, I have an SEO rock star that kills it for my non-automotive clients. When I hired him to look into dealer SEO he really struggled and we learned quickly that it would cost so much to get him up to speed that I was better off hiring elsewhere that had automotive experience. With that said, we can all learn a lot from seeing how other verticals manage SEO. Chip also brought this up but that is a much longer conversation. (That would be a great topic though) Chip also commented on the way dealers pay for SEO. The whole practice of paying a monthly fee is just financing the SEO services over the course of the year because it is easier for a dealer to pay a monthly fee and spread it across the year instead of large swings in their monthly budget. Unfortunately many of the companies that offer this financing option “forget” that they have to go back and revisit the client continuously over the course of the relationship.
When a dealer signs up for the SEO package there is some benefit, however in order to make the most out of your investment you must hold the SEO vendor accountable and require a minimum of a monthly meeting where they review the work performed for the month and the reporting. The vendor must also discuss your goals and offer suggestions on how they will help you achieve them. If your vendor will not perform this monthly audit then you need to move on to find another option. Simply requiring this monthly meeting has GREATLY improved the results each of my clients are receiving from their various SEO vendors. We have also quickly learned that your experience with the vendor will vary greatly based on who is assigned to your account.
Our clients have us to manage the vendor meeting each month and we report back the results and the future strategy. If you don’t have a partner or someone in your dealership who understands the SEO space it will still benefit you to have this monthly meeting. You will learn a lot and if you have questions, simply ask. Then take the info you learned and run it by someone you trust. Oh and one more thing…. Have them recap your monthly audit in WRITING!
SEO, PPC and nearly any marketing requires dealer participation, strategy and accountability. I have found that we all benefit greatly by investing into our vendor partnerships and the time we invest on the front end saves us in the future dealing with frustration and finding new vendors. At the end of the day if the vendor isn’t performing move on and replace the vendor based on a referral from a fellow dealer or vendor you trust. Because as we all know not all vendors or partners are created equal.
- Dec 30, 2009
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- 480
- First Name
- Yago
It can't be that only good SEO vendors write in Dealer refresh and the rest are a bunch of pirates taking advantage of the dealers.
There is something nobody is talking about in here: Budget.
I work with lots of dealers that we invoice $1000 to $3000 for SEO which includes PPC. Most of the times we ONLY charge 15% which means that we make a couple hundred dollars in average. When I say "make" means we still got to pay someone to get the stuff done, keep the light on in the office. pay the sales person, etc. I can't have monthly meetings with those clients!
I'm sure that other dealers spend $25,000/month on SEO, I'll be glad to meet with them every week!
So maybe we need to have a thread that asks: What is your average SEO spend?
Then we can figure out why some of this SEO companies don't meet as often as everyone here thinks they should meet.
- Jun 25, 2010
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- 5
- First Name
- Katie
I actually feel like there are quite a few good SEO companies out there. We as a company contract out for many of our clients SEO needs. I do feel there are also quite a few companies that take advantage of their clients because I have witness it first hand. With that said, I also believe that unengaged clients can make vendors look bad! So it isn't just about pointing fingers. If you reread what I said, it is time for customers of SEO companies to take some accountability too.
As for budget.... So glad you brought that up. My dealer clients spend anywhere from 699 a month for a single rooftop all the way up to 3K+ a month depending on the size of the group. My non dealer clients spend as much or more it is just billed out differently. We use quite a few different vendors. I have worked with many of the big names and a few small firms. (I obviously have my favorites) The one thing that is very clear to me is when a company cannot afford to work on a client because of the current price point. Historically we have seen clients pay for good service. If the dealer isn't willing to pay for the service they demand then it isn't a good fit. I guess every business needs to make their pricing decisions based on what works for them... If you have a model that is on the low service end (I did not say poor service, I meant not the kind of service that allows for monthly/weekly meetings) I am sure it can work just fine if the dealer knows what to expect on the front end. Ultimately it comes down to client expectations.
What is a fair hourly rate for SEO services? I consistently see ranges between 80-150 an hour. So lets just play math. For an average rate of $115 an hour for reasonable talent and a dealer pay $699 a month. My expectation is that they would receive 6 hours of work per month and that should include a 30 minute meeting with the dealer. I can assure you that many of the SEO companies out there are not delivering a basic hours in hours out offering. On the flip side I have worked with parties that over deliver. I guess it all depends on the company and client.
Welcome Katie to the forums!
As a dealer, I am a firm believer that the measurement of a vendor's success is a mutual effort. Working with a vendor should be a partnership to have the best chance of success - I agree with Katie.
SEO is a difficult area for most dealers, as it is not always easily understood. A good SEO vendor will provide reporting to show and support their work. A great SEO vendor will show the dealer how to read and understand the reports. A poor SEO vendor will take advantage of an unknowing dealer by providing confusing or bogus reports, or none at all. I have found that talking to fellow dealers that I trust that I can identify the best vendors for my needs and weed out those that are not providing real value...
As a dealer, I am a firm believer that the measurement of a vendor's success is a mutual effort. Working with a vendor should be a partnership to have the best chance of success - I agree with Katie.
SEO is a difficult area for most dealers, as it is not always easily understood. A good SEO vendor will provide reporting to show and support their work. A great SEO vendor will show the dealer how to read and understand the reports. A poor SEO vendor will take advantage of an unknowing dealer by providing confusing or bogus reports, or none at all. I have found that talking to fellow dealers that I trust that I can identify the best vendors for my needs and weed out those that are not providing real value...
