13 posts tagged “automotive seo”

Building on the momentum from the 2009 Driving Sales Executive Summit where I shared the stage with Paul Rushing and JD Rucker to speak about Automotive Marketing, the show will continue to go on!

I will be co-hosting a weekly webcast on Automotive Marketing with JD Rucker from TK Carsites and Paul Rushing from DealerBytes.  The show will air every Wednesday at 12:00 Noon EST.  It will be a live video feed from our three offices and you can watch in real-time.

The first "demo" for the live show will be on Wednesday October 21, 2009 at 12:00 noon EST.    Please mark you calendar to join us.

The link to join the weekly show is: http://ustream.tv/channel/dealer-internet-marketing. 

I invite everyone who is interested in Automotive Marketing to watch our first run through of the show.  The first official show will be October 28th.  We'll be covering Automotive SEO, SEM, Social Media, IRM and all topics that members of our industry suggest.   Join us each week as we discuss a number of timely topics.

Interactive Live Video

Everyone who joins the live broadcast can submit questions during our open mic shows and we will post the topics we will cover over the next two months during the first show.

Since the three of us have different approaches to achieving success online, the show is designed to guide, educate and clarify the misinformation that is out in the field of Automotive Marketing.  We also plan to have some guests on the show in future weeks so every week will be of value.

Get On The Show Email List

If you are interested in getting on our show email reminder list, send me a note:  brian@paschconsulting.com and soon we will have a more organized sign-up process so you can get a reminder each week and be informed on the topic.  We will also setup a Twitter feed for the show and well as creating a "name"..more to come.

 

On Tuesday, October 13, 2009 the Driving Sales Executive Summit kicks off their "un-conference" designed to empower leaders in the automotive industry.  I will be participating in the Driving Sales event in Las Vegas at the Hard Rock Hotel with fellow Internet Marketing leaders Paul Rushing and JD Rucker.

The three musketeers of Automotive SEO and Social Media will be part of a roundtable event on Tuesday Octover 13th at 4:00 pm.  If you are planning on attending the conference, I hope you will join our roundtable event.

The goal of the Driving Sales Las Vegas event is to raise the bar for automotive educational seminars by breaking the traditional format that conferences follow.  The un-conference is designed to hold both the presenter and attendee accountable for the success of the summit.

Raising The Bar For Automotive SEO

If your car dealership is looking to raise the bar for your Automotive SEO campaign, I encourage you to speak with me at the Driving Sales Summit or call my office for a free consultation.  By calling 732-450-8200 you will start the process of knowing exactly where your website stands.  If you are passionate about dominating sales in your PMA then you will find equally competitive and passionate forces at the Pasch Consulting Group.

If you can't attend the Driving Sales Executive Summit, I will also be speaking at the 7th Digital Dealer Conference in Nashville which runs from November 1-3rd.  If your schedule does not permit you to attend either conference, call our offices for a private consultation about our Automotive SEO services.

Driving Sales Executive Summit Agenda

Tuesday, October 13, 2009
9:00am	On-Site Registration Open
Noon	Luncheon
1:00pm	Current Web Statistics: What Are Your Customers Doing Online? New and comprehensive data clearly illustrating how the automotive Internet shopper becomes a buyer… or doesn't.  - Skip Streets, Compete
	New Media Transitions: Lessons Learned --  Developing a clear marketing strategy and partnering with suppliers of profit generating systems  - Dennis Galbraith, RevenueGuru.com
	Media Spend: Efficiently Reaching Today's Buyers -- Triple your results by understanding how the media environment has changed and will continue to change  - Will Travis, Dentsu America
	Technology Showcase: You Heard It Here First! - Five-minute presentations of new products and services you don't want to miss:   Piracy Prevention – Richard Winch, eXtéres Corporation   Chat Integration – Todd Smith, ActivEngage   Targeting Data – David Armitage, Blue Kai   Social Marketing – Ralph Paglia, ADP   Pump Up Service – Reuben Muinos, DealerSocket   Mobile Marketing –  Al Babbington, OneCommand   Don't Pay for Search – Mike DeCecco, Dealer.com
3:30pm	Break
4:00pm	Breakouts
	Evolving from an Internet Presence to an Internet Business - Don Crawford, eBay Motors	Search Marketing Panel  - JD Rucker, Hasai  - Paul Rushing  - Brian Pasch
	Roundtables, Session I
	Chat Integration	Piracy Prevention
	Targeting Data	Media Spend
	Statistics Data	Internet Presence to Internet Business
	Roundtables, Session II
	Pump Up Service	Post Click Marketing
	Social Marketing	Reputation Management
	Don't Pay for Search	Reducing Dealership Ad Spend & Increasing Business
5:30pm	Networking Reception at "Wasted Space Club" in Hard Rock
	Ongoing
	Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn Bootcamp:  Hands-on guidance on how to get followed, how to get fans and how to have your own channel on YouTube.  - Gary May, Interactive Marketing and Consulting Services
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
7:30am	Breakfast
8:15am	Service Marketing: New Solutions for New Challenges - Learn how you can win the service customer battle profitably by using new marketing techniques  - Kevin Root, DriverSide and Lonnie Miller, R.L. Polk & Co.
	Social Media: Where it Works in Business and Does it Fit in Automotive? Understand what it takes for your business to succeed with proven strategies for creating social programs and prescriptive steps for getting started  - Aaron Strout, Powered
	The New Economic Model for Dealership Advertising -- With consumers creating millions of uniquely targeted content pages daily, how has the economic model of dealership advertising been affected?     - Jared Hamilton, DrivingSales.com
9:45am	Break
10:00am	Breakouts
	Secret Metrics Revealed  - Joe Orr, Hannah Honda	Throw Out Your Internet Department!  - Howard Polirer, AutoTrader.com  - Rafi Hamid, vAuto
	Roundtables, Session III
	Service Marketing	Social Media
	Metrics Measurement Including Google Analytics	Throw Out Your Internet Department!
	History Report Intelligence	Mobile Marketing
	Respect Your Data
11:30am	Trust Agent: How trust moves online and how it impacts the automotive buyer and the business overall.  - Chris Brogan, New Marketing Labs
12:30pm	Bloggers' Lunch

 

 

F&I professionals that do their homework and then write content that leverages these popular search phrases and double, triple or quadruple the leads that come into their dealership. Microsites are not the only place to post targeted F&I content.   There are a handful of free blogs, press release websites and social media tools that can also draw hundreds of prospects to your F&I offerings each month. 

The future of automotive marketing will require dealers to either hire a full-time content writer for their business or outsource that service part-time to a consultant.  Automotive SEO with a content based approach yields results year after year; a lead generation annuity.   There just has to be a commitment to add new content about your cars, services and products each month to effective marketing platforms.

This approach applies not only to F&I services but also to parts and service.  The easier of these two is service because most dealers do not promote OEM factory service.  Selling parts online is a more competitive endeavor and limited by the fact that until recently, most dealers were using the same parts inventory platform that is not optimized for SEO.  We are working on some new parts marketing tools that will change the rules for increased revenue in OEM parts sales.

In conclusion, pay-per-click advertising for F&I products and car financing is expensive.  Automotive SEO is a cost effective long term approach to increase visibility, leads and sales for the entire dealership infrastructure.  Google rewards first responders so dealerships that act first will often hold on time top placement ahead of late followers.

 

As some of you may know, I have been working on a marketing plan for the new Cash For Clunkers bill to drive leads to my clients.

As I was reviewing the placement of the website www.cashforclunkersfacts.com I was reminded why press releases are SO very important.  Look at what is at the top of Google search results for the phrase "cash for clunkers".

 

On June 16, 2009 I did a Google search for the phrase "cash for clunkers" and this is what was shown:

 

 

 

I am very glad that the MediaSyndicate press release was one that we posted.  I was also glad that the WordPress microsite is holding strong despite being late to the game.

The new search engine from Microsoft called Bing started to get some testing from our team and of course one of my targeted search phrases is "automotive seo". This is not a highly searched phrase but it does describe one of the services the Pasch Consulting Group offers car dealers.

So, on June 2, 2009 I did my first Bing search on Automotive SEO and I smiled at the results.  Brian Pasch and Jim Rucker continue to dominate page one search results. JD Rucker is a leader in Automotive Social Marketing and SEO and is employed by TK Carsites.  Jim has been a leader in the automotive Internet marketing profession for many years and his blogs and tweets are worth following.

Automotive SEO Searches on Bing

So the screen shot I took on June 2, 2009 shows that the Pasch Consulting Group has five listings for Pasch Consulting websites and two slots for JD Rucker.  Between the two of us we dominate 70% of the page which is a direct result of employing the same strategies that we advise our clients to follow.  In this case, the shoemaker's kids have good shoes.

The other national page one listings includes Dan Durick who works at Dealer.com and eXteres with the third site not identified to anyone in particular.  I don't need another search engine to complicate live and add more work to my testing protocols but from first glance, our global automotive SEO strategies at PCG seems to adapt well to Bing.

Will Bing be a major force in search engine marketing? No one knows but we will be watching the Bing engine for Automotive SEO in the coming months and let you know what we find.

 

 

 

Automotive Internet Marketing

If you are interested in Automotive SEO and Internet Marketing, I invite you to visit my new NING community for Internet Sales Managers and anyone in the Internet marketing community, not just car dealers.  I'll be using my free time to post strategies and articles that may be useful to improving your visibility on the Internet. 

You can also post your own blogs and interact with other members of the business world who share the same passions you do. I encourage you to join; www.internetsalesmanager.org

 

 

Mark Wilson’s Better Used Cars in Ontario has joined the ranks of Canadian car dealers who are looking for more cost effective ways to market their businesses online.  By selecting the Internet marketing services of Pasch Consulting Group (PCG), Mark Wilson will expand their used car business with innovative social marketing, automotive blogging as well as precise Automotive SEO strategies

The Pasch Consulting Group specializes in automotive Internet marketing and offers car dealers a Google search marketing compliant microsite platform that is custom branded for the car dealer’s business.    Mark Wilson’s Better Used Cars in Guelph will take advantage of the cost effective content publishing website to attract additional car leads and buyers.

Used Car Sales Ontario

The used car microsite, based on Wordpress technology, we will create a portal for Ontario used car shoppers seeking information on buying a reliable preowned cars.  Mark Wilson's is the proud recipient of the Guelph Mercury's Reader's Choice Favorite Used Car dealer award for the fourth year in a row! They have been voted Guelph's #1 used car dealership in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008!

Brian Pasch, CEO of the Pasch Consulting Group, commented, “Our automotive marketing strategies leverage blogging, social networking and precise content placement.  This is just what car dealer’s need in this economy; cost effective content publishing platforms that generate high visibility on the Internet.  With the cost of pay-per-click advertising on the rise, dealers are realizing they need to invest in their own lead generation and sales platform.  Unlike other car dealer platforms, our custom marketing platform employs the best in search engine optimization architecture.”

More information on the Automotive SEO services offered by PCG is available at http://www.dealer-seo.com/
For additional information, contact Brian Pasch, CEO of the Pasch Consulting Group at 732-450-8200.

At first I thought that creating a blog on Edmunds CarSpace.com was a good idea.  That was until they took the blog down.  It seems that the CarSpace folks only want consumers to discuss cars and not someone offering marketing advice.  The staff at CarSpace said that the blogs are not for commercial purposes.

It seems that they had a recent sweep of the blogs and if anyone was over linking in their articles or had identified themselves honestly as a business owner, they were shut down.

The funny thing was that I was not trying to marketing myself in any direct way but to start a discussion.  So, I was wrong and CarSpace is only for people who want to chat about cars. 

 

If something sounds too good from an SEO company, its probably a scam.  One of the biggest scams in the SEO world are automated link building services. Since a customer recently got burned by such a service, I thought that I would share my experience with automated link building software and service companies offering automated link submissions for your car dealer website.

As soon as you hear or read claims that your website can be submitted, for a low cost, to hundreds or thousands of "quality" websites; run as fast as you can.  DO NOT participate in these scams or you will pay a very expensive price. For most people, they could not name 10 business directory websites that they frequent let alone a hundred.

Using an automated system to "submit" your website to directories will most often result in a steady stream of emails that offer all sorts of SEO services, logo design services and related Internet marketing “crap”.  These SEO submission websites are lead generators for unscrupulous SEO companies that put up web directories that have ZERO Google PageRank and little true visitor traffic. 

Many of these services place your dealership website on a LINK FARM, which Google has already banned. A link farm is a website that is comprised on web links with very little content and consumer value.  Think of a stripped down Internet yellow pages on a URL name that know one knows about. These site owners create dozens of these link farms just to say that you site was submitted to hundreds of web directories.  They fail to tell you that many of these directoy pages have a PageRank of ZERO.

Recently I witnessed a high quality website get banned from Google and Yahoo.  Nothing internally on the website had changed and it was not using any black hat designs.  One change that I saw was they participated in a “link building” service from an India based company.  They now had hundreds of bogus links pointing to their website.  This New Jersey branding agency, which had a very good Google PageRank, is now out of the Google index.  They thought a free offer to build links to their website was harmless.   They are now working with us to fix this big problem that was created by spam link services.

When I looked into why this happened, I saw that HUNDREDS of links were created from link farm to their website. Some websites had dozens of links to my client’s website under different business sub-categories.  Google is very keen on tagging this link building scams and if your website gets caught in the crosshairs, you could be de-listed. My word of advice is NOT to use an automated link building service.

There are about 20 “universal” directories that have value on the Internet.   Many of these directories are free and you can easily add your business information.  Some of these site include:

• DMOZ
• Yahoo Local
• Google Maps
• Merchant Circle
• Insider Pages
• Yelp
• Dealer Rater
• Topix
• Local
• Yellowbot

After the “base” list, each industry has another few dozen websites that are valuable for link building.  It is well worth every car dealer’s time to make sure that they are in the “best of the best” and then work on building links through reputable sources.

Reputable sources for car dealer would include:

• Press Releases – Share Your Dealership News
• Ezine Articles - Expert Articles on a Topic You Know
• Blogging on industry websites
• Industry Forums
• Social Networking Websites

I can’t stress enough how short lived the success of link farms and automated links services can be.  Your dealership website and brand must be protected at all costs.  Participating in link building scams is a recipe for disaster.

For additional tips on Automotive SEO, visit our website at: www.dealer-seo.com

 

Before you start and SEO engagement, it is best to know what is already written on the Internet about your company.  Test this by searching your company name in Google, Yahoo and MSN.   Write down the places where positive and negative comments have been posted.  You will need this list later when you attempt to write a balanced response to any negative article.  Checking your online reputation is the first thing you should do before you start an automotive SEO project.  If it exists, why bring more attention to your business with an SEO project that brings more eyeballs to negative press?

Blogging has given consumers unprecedented power to distribute their  written  opinion about car dealers. This is both a blessing and a curse depending on the content and target of the written piece.  For automotive retailers, Internet Reputation Management has sky-rocketed.  Dealers   are finding themselves confronted with highly visible commentary of their car dealership on  Google, Yahoo and MSN searches.   

Car dealer management teams can feel helpless in protecting their online reputation from valid blog posts and negative posts planted by competing dealers.  On the flip side, car dealers often fail to leverage positive commentary and testimonials posted on the Internet. A simple test would be to ask your dealership how many press releases do they post a month. Having a proactive strategy for disseminating positive customer feedback can often be the best defense against future negative attacks.

Discussions on Internet reputation management  (IRM) are here to stay. Web content is growing in direct relation to the explosive growth of social networking portals.   Each month new tools are being made available to allow a non-technical Internet user to create their own website, blog and social networking portal.  With the ease at which content can be created, organized and shared on the Internet, business owners need to be mindful of what is being written about their company.

Google Alerts - A Simple IRM Tool

Protecting your reputation on the Internet can start with using a simple and effective tool called “Google Alerts”. Once you create a free Google account, you can enter specific search phrases into your own watch list.  Google will then send you an email with links to articles that include the phrases in your watch list.  You can request notifications as they happen or summarized daily, weekly or monthly. I would recommend that you start with the “as it happens” choice for a week, and then decide if you want to move it to “once a day”.

My watch list includes ‘Brian Pasch”, “Pasch Consulting”, “Pasch Consulting Group”, and “NJ SEO”. We also include in our watch list some of the buzz words in the niches we cover.  For our Automotive Marketing Division our watch list includes: “Automotive SEO”, “Automotive Digital Marketing” , “Car Dealer Websites” and “Automotive SEO Specialist” .  We use Google Alerts for both reputation management as well as tracking what other companies are posting in our competitive space.

Creating a IRM Watch List

A recommended strategy for an automotive  watch list would include your dealership  name, your product names and the names of your key executives.  Knowing what is being said, both positive and negative, is the first step in creating a sustained reputation management plan.

Your Internet Reputation Management strategy should have a clear escalation plan for positive and negative commentary.  Positive commentary should be evaluated and the very best should be included on your own company blog or website news page.  You may want to get permission from the individual to repurpose their commentary in your marketing materials.

Negative content should have an immediate response strategy which is best handled by a seasoned SEO and Reputation Management Consultant (RPC). Every post will have a different strategy depending on where the post was made and the policies of the website host.

 

IRM Applies to All Businesses

A New York City executive coaching firm called PCG about a barrage of vicious attacks on the firm’s founder and on the services they offer for executives in transition.  The negative posts were well planned and well placed so that they appeared on Google Page One, when consumers issued a search on the company name.  The CEO said that these comments were directly hurting their business and needed immediate relief.

The company’s lawyer had already pursued legal action against the individual who posted the verbal assaults under different names and aliases.  This disgruntled individual eventually signed a retraction letter and promised to stop this Internet reputation attack.  In reality, he never stopped posting.  So we were called in to help. Within 30 days we were able to have the most visible articles removed from the various websites. We also found additional negative posts on business portal sites that we were able to remove directly.

PCG created an offensive plan to get articles posted about the hundreds of satisfied clients the company had from its long history.  For this client, they never invested the time to post their client testimonials and case studies on the Internet.  Using various techniques, PCG was able to add significant content in Google page 1 and 2 for searches on their company name.

IRM for Car Dealers

For Automotive Dealers, online reputation management must be part of your Internet Marketing Strategy to protect your Primary Market Area (PMA) from neighboring car dealers.  If a car dealer’s visible Internet reputation is poor, consumers may very well shop at a neighboring dealership.  

I have seen posts on the Internet that were outlandish and shocking.  If I were in the market to buy a car, these negative posts would give me second thoughts about buying from certain dealers.  It only takes a few angry consumers to make any dealership look like the devil.  You can search Google yourself to find dealers being called racist, discriminatory and deceptive. 

Often, consumers have a choice between two dealers that are 15 miles apart. If one car dealer has glowing reputation scores and one has low scores, reputation can sway their final pick.  I recognize that other factors play a part in that final decision like price, convenience and availability.  However, if your Internet reputation can be improved, taking remedial action is mandatory to continue to grow your Internet sales leads.

Sites like DealerRater.com, Yahoo Local, Insider Pages, Google Maps and Yelp all have review engines that can appear on Google Page One when consumers search your business name.  General Managers need to implement a system to regularly request positive review from their customers.  This can include new car customers as well as service customers.

Automotive retailers   should create a list of all review website pages in an email and send these links to satisfied customers.  The email should request that they post an honest review of your company; make it easy for them to post a review with one click of their mouse.  Do not attempt to post customer reviews from your own business computers.  Many of these sites track IP addresses and you could be banned from the directory for review spamming.

Rally Your Satisfied Customers

Reputation Management requires both an offensive and defensive strategy.  The longer your offensive strategy is in place, the harder it is for negative commentary to drastically affect your business.  If you have been lax at posting positive commentary, then ANY negative commentary will look out of proportion.

Car Dealers can no longer ignore public commentary and commercial review websites.  A restaurant owner that has a comment posted on the Internet about a food poisoning episode, without balanced commentary, will be affected for consumers looking to try a new restaurant using Internet based searches.   A hotel that has posts about dirty bed linens and mildew will see their online bookings drop.  Simply stated, any post with your company name needs to be reviewed.

The Pasch Consulting Group has effective strategies to assist business owners in implementing  a solid reputation management action plan.  If you would like additional information, visit www.paschconsulting.com or call 732-842-4720.

Introducing Automotive Search Marketing Architecture (ASMA) Checklist

 

For many automotive retailers website, their inventory pages make up over 85% of the total content on their website.  Google search ranking are heavily skewed to reward good content and good SEO architecture.  Facing this truth, every car dealer should know the strengths and weaknesses of their inventory listing module.  This knowledge can then direct their marketing efforts to promote and sell cars in the Internet.

 

The Pasch Consulting Group created the ASMA Checklist to make it easy to compare different inventory modules for their search engine optimization potential. Some dealer inventory modules are optimized for search marketing and others are not.  Use this grid to score your site for important SEO architectural factors. This document will guide you on how to collect the data for the ASMA checklist.

 

If all the items in the checklist are “Yes” then you have an outstanding opportunity to market your cars for model specific searches in Google, Yahoo and MSN.

 

Other factors, not included in the ASMA checklist, will determine the overall ability of your inventory module to sell cars once a consumer lands on the page.  The ASMA checklist is only evaluating the search marketing strengths and not design and interactive aspects of inventory modules.

 

ASMA Checklist
Dealer Platform Vendor	On-Site Hosted Inventory	Unique Inventory Page Titles	Unique Inventory META descriptions	Unique Inventory META keywords	Optimized URL names
MyBestCarSites	Y	N	N	N	N

 

 

 

On-Site Hosted Inventory – This is the hardest one to determine unless you have asked your vendor about this in the past. You want your inventory module hosted onsite and on your URL.  The ideal SEO friendly inventory module will produce unique pages for each car that is displayed.

 

Offsite hosted inventory means that your inventory is sitting on an outside website or web service and the pages are displayed in a “framed” page on your site.  Off-site hosted inventory does not help your SERP rankings because the pages are not associated with your URL.   An analogy is an electronic photo frame.  The wood frame is stationary (your website) but the photos are changing from a memory card (offsite hosted inventory).  The two are not hard connected and Google will only reward your website in SERP rankings if your inventory is hard connected.

 

If all your car detail pages are displayed on the same page like “New_Inventory.aspx” and just the inside contents of the page change when you click on a car, this is a framed off-site inventory system.  To Google and Yahoo, you have ONE index page regardless of you have 1,000 cars in stock. 

 

To see if your inventory is hosted off site, click through a few cars in your used car inventory and see if the URL name changes.  If it stays the same, you most likely have a framed off site inventory module.   You can also do a “view source” of the car detail page code and search for the word “iframe”.

 

If the URL name contains another website address, then the inventory module is most likely being redirected to an offsite location.

 

 

Unique Page Titles & META Descriptions – Google Webmaster Guidelines recommend that ever page on your website has a unique page title and META description.   Google’s webmaster tools even has a page dedicated to point out duplicate tags for webmasters to correct so the knowledge is ready available.  To check to see if you site’s inventory module is producing unique data, use the Google “site:” command.

 

Go into Google and type in this command:  site:www.yourwebsite.com

 

This will list all the pages indexed in Google.  Since most dealer sites have over 100 pages, you will have to click through a few pages of search results to see all the pages in your site.  If you see pages that have duplicate titles and descriptions, the inventory module is not helping you market via organic search.  This also makes it very difficult for your site to appear for consumers search that use year, make and model.

 

Unique META Keywords tag – It is widely known that Google and Yahoo have ignored the META keyword tag and instead have focused on other factors of web page architecture.  I have included this in the checklist so dealers to check and see if the keyword tag is being used improperly for spamming. 

 

A keyword tag should have 5-10 keywords that apply ONLY TO THAT PAGE.  I have visited dealer sites to find that they have 30-50 keywords jammed in the META keywords tag.  This should be corrected immediately because you do not want Google to think you are trying to spam the index.  If all your META keyword tags are the same for every car in stock, don’t fret since that tag is basically a neutral event now.

 

To view the keywords on any web page, right click your mouse on the outer edge of the page and in Internet Explorer a choice will come up to “View Source”.  This will open up your text editor.  The page will look like a foreign language to many but it’s just the HTML code to create that page.  Search for the word “keywords” and you will find your META keywords tag.

 

Optimized URL Names – This is a very important feature since if your inventory module has unique page titles and unique META descriptions, this feature would put you ahead of the competition.  There are three common strategies for URL names, ranked from worst to bet.

 

Worst – One page name that has a replacing center section for each car.  These pages could be named “new-inventory.apx” and “used-Inventory.aspx” so to Google you have two pages on your site for cars and NO unique tags.

 

Average – One page for each car but the URL string contains a data tag that no one will ever search.  This is called a dynamic page and there are hundreds of articles on the web why dynamic pages are not helpful for organic search optimization. An example of a dynamic page is: /preowned/dsp_viewcar.cfm?vin=JNRAS08W58X205839

 

Best – One page for each car and the URL string has the year, make and model in the URL name.  An example of this is: detail-2007-bmw-3_series-328xi_sedan-3452069.html

 

 

 

When you have completed your ASMA Checklist, you now have actionable data.  If you have discovered that your inventory module is not SEO friendly, then you can look for ways to better promote your cars. There may also be an upgrade available from your software provider so call them and ask.  To be competitive in today’s marketplace, you should have an ASMA compliant site.   

 

You can also check your competitor’s websites to see how their inventory module stacks up.  I have tested about 20 dealer software platforms as part of this research and the results vary across the board.  If you would like examples of any of these issues that are brought up in this article, I can send you links to dealer sites that demonstrate the topic of interest.