To Micro-site or not to Micro-site?

[umer.autojini]

Joe do you have any stats to back this up... how many visitors did you really get on these key phrases... 1 or two... in a month. Given you will only convert 3%-6% of your traffic it is a long shot.

I don't think it is worth the money and effort for a micro site for such a long key phrase. When your main site can do the same thing... since you are just competing with less then 5,000 pages.

Now if your micro site ranks well for these...

Used Cars Buffalo
Used saturn buffalo

it's a different game.

 

[Steve Crim]

James,

Why does Click Motive still use landing pages for their PPC? Aren't the new websites being sold as conversion tools?

Also, after 10 years in ASEV (Automotive Search Engine Visibility) I can tell you that having a phrase like the one above is an extremely low percentage of real searches.

Can you show some successful searches that would actually drive traffic to a dealer? I have current SEV reports on several of the Wyler sites.

Steve
ScreenCrafters

 

[Joe Pistell]

I am done trying to wake up people about the value of long tail.

If you want real proof, take a good look at the behemoth content monster that our comrade Alex has put together. Here is a man that has seen the back end of his old site and has "doubled down" on his success and attacked the long tail even harder.

personally, I know Long Tail works because I've studied it from the bottom up (like Alex). I've studied our sites LOG FILES, listened to 100's and hundreds of hours of recorded calls coming from our assorted web properties (via CallBright.com). I've trailed shoppers all the way to a post sale surveys and post sale reviews with sales reps.

I am done preaching LT, my conscience is cleared and I hope you remain unconvinced.

Joe

 

[Eric Miltsch (blog)]

Joe -

The Long Tail can in fact be your friend - wondering though if you are relying soley on log files as a measure of your keyword success?

My philosophy has always been to go after the "heavy terms" and get to the 1st page for those terms...go where the people are.

Eventually the long tail can be identified from the site analytics; obviously each store needs to leverage what works for the type of market, customer, dealer type, etc...

Eventually it all comes down to making sure the choices made at the store level are as cost-effective as possible while helping deliver more units.

Doesn't matter If its long tail, targeted 6 word phrases for a micro-site, or broad based 2-3 word phrases for the main site - as long as it works for your store, then work it hard.

 

[umer.autojini]

Not discounting if long tail works... it WORKS... but is it worth putting up a micro site just for that, in my opinion it is not, when you can spend that money on your primary site or a blog by autoconversion.com.

 

[Alex Snyder (blog)]

Thanks for the props on the new site Joe! Can't wait to see yours, but I'm hoping you don't one-up me

 

[Joe Pistell]

Alex,
I have plans, big plans, but, nothing as ambitious as yours!

Plus, I'd like our readers to consider their market size.
If you're within a one hour drive of a very large maket (or in one),
excellent ROI from SEO is far more easy to obtain. SEO construction costs (and level of difficulty) are the same in Philly or in Peoria.

Joe

 

[Joe Pistell]

Entertaining Offers:

www.Over30mpg.com
(GM should own this URL)
I bought the URL the day oil broke over $40 a bbl. The current site is just a simple template and has no real value. The value lies in the URL itself.

Send contact info to joepistell-at-gmail.com, or to Jeff K here at DR, he'll get it to me.

thnx,
joe

 

[Chip Grueter]

First GM needs to build a 30MPG car, then they can worry about buying the URL! jk. I'd buy www.over75mpg.com, setup a forum and let people talk about how they've modified their hybrids to achieve this goal, and have it all sponsored by "Dealer X".

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Long tail SEO traffic, while potentially noisy, is extremely important for small, new, websites (micro sites). It's the only type of SE traffic you can go after in the beginning, unless you're lucky enough to have an authority site pointing to you. Plus the more narrow that query is, the better chance of getting some one in-market.

Additionally, SEO success breeds SEO success, so one day you're ranking well for "Used 2007 BMW 535xi, Boston, MA" and the next quarter you're now ranking for "2008 BMW 535xi, Boston, MA" and then in another quarter you're ranking for "BMW 535xi, Boston, MA" and then "BMW, Boston, MA" until you reach something like "Massachusetts BMW Dealers" and you've gone from a very long tail search, to "stealing" traffic away from your competitors in droves. The important thing is to have a clear-cut plan of what your ultimate goal is and prepare your campaign around it. Ideally you want to be ranking for specific vehicles, regardless of the manufacture year, that you can keep building on year after year.

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While I can use only the tools provided to me, I suspect that search engine traffic for region, specific cars pales in comparison to region, specific dealer queries. By now, I think most shoppers are going straight to autotrader, cars, ebay, craigslist... when they know what car they want and they'll have used non-region specific queries to figure out what that car is. And no micro site is going to be able to compete with the results for "2008 Honda Accord, Toyota Camry, Ford Explorer...". So, I think long tail is very important for the success of a micro site.

Is anyone doing conquest micro sites? Building micro sites to rank high for your competitor's name?

Chip-

 

[umer.autojini]

Chip I have some price comparison sites... targeting competitors name and niche... works out nicely...