Living the Dream ~ Kinda ~

I started web marking over a decade ago, when online poker started its hard push.  Fast forward to today and I work with clients all over the country to help them find new customers on the internet.  Part of this process of moving into a service provider position I had to establish a brick and mortar location in which to operate.

The community we chose is a beautiful bedroom community to Jacksonville, Florida.  Unfortunately we have had nothing but problems here in relation to my child.  The Camden County School System has been completely incompetent in dealing with my child with Asperger's Syndrome.  which has really turned what could of been a beautiful thing into a nightmare.

We are now fighting for change inside of their system.  What we have seen out of the Camden County School System in reply to our request has been nothing but apathy and inaction.

Market Domination with Web 2.0

Social media assets are a very important tool to use in search engine optimization.  The problem I see is that many abuse these platforms.  When creating web 2.0 properties to support another website you must make sure that you provide value to the platform you are publishing on, not just create bad content for the sake of dropping a few links.

Some examples of web 2.0 properties that we have created using my favorite web 2.0 platform are:

• Bradenton used cars - A landing page that provides links to used car resources in Bradenton, FL.
• Dealer Micros Sites - Shows how car dealers can use web 2.0 properties for dealer microsites.
• Paul Rushing - A lens about myself that really needs to be updated.

Social assets are the new search tool.  Make sure you deploy them properly and provide value to the platform that you are creating them on.
If you do not provide value to the platform you really are nothing more than a platform spammer.

Technorati Tags: squidoo, micorosites, seo

Localized Terms Again

I have been working on a few wordpress scrips that will allow the platform to be used as a full cms.  The first site was done to populate content about Kingsland Used Cars.  The thing that scares me with this type of content publsihing is I am not sure how the search engines will react to a brand new site with hundreds of fresh pages.

I am going to see how long it takes the search engines to index this content then I will follow up with some best practices and tips for using wordpress as a full function CMS.

Moving from Typead to Wordpress

We just recently worked with an Omaha Nebraska Chevy dealer and moved their typepad blog to wordpress.  The move was easy but we made one mistake.   We changed the url structure and it created some confusion in the search engines eyes.  We should of left the url structure the same.

This is a learning curve that we did not figure we would have to go through as most car dealers do not even have a blog to start with.  The move was easy  I am just not sure why there was confusion like there was.  It was not something that should of happened.

I really feel like we should of paid more attention.

Taking Inventory of Assets

While we have moved away from traffic arbitrage as a income source and more towards that of a SEO empire there comes a point when you have to take inventory of your assets.  We maintain several sites for clients and out own use very rarely do we take the time to properly identify everything that we have in stock so to speak.

Today I was taking inventory of our assets and found some real gems that have been ignored.  One of them is a blog about Digital Dealer Marketing set up on blogger, like this one.  It was set up to prove a point and to blog experiences from the digital dealer conference, but my desire to maintain industry relations curbed that urge.

We have several hundred websites in our portfolio and now is the time to put everything to good use.  As I move away from hands own product delivery to more of a marketing and managing position in my business it will be great to watch these assets receive full value.

Technorati Tags: digital dealer, assets, propeties

Chasing the tail with blogs

Long tail seo is one of the easiest ways to drive traffic to a website.  By creating well written content you will pick up an enormous amount of traffic on search terms that you did not know even existed.  When working with our dealer clients we use a network of blogs to help us identify golden opportunities for clients pick up additional traffic from the search engines.

Using this strategy we were able to determine some trending searches for our automotive seo clients.  You can do this yourself by creating a high quality blog and publishing articles relevant to your market area and news about your business.  A good example of this is what a NC Chevy dealer we work with bought a Ford dealership in Tarboro, NC this will allow them another entry in the search engines for Chevrolet and Ford terms tied to their market area.

The key is to be consistent in publishing your articles and watch your analytics so you can identify your trends in search and capitalize on that traffic that your competition is missing.

Technorati Tags: automotive seo, dealership blogs

Forcasting Traffic Trends - 2011 Ford Ranger

One of the good things about running an automotive blog network is that we can use that data to predict future demand and look for ways to help our automotive seo clients get a leg up on the competition.  A good example of this is the amount of traffic that we are getting on the 2011 Ford Ranger has been phenomenal. 

The stats show that we need to work to be well optimized for that term when the time is right for our customers.  It would not do a Cincinnati Ford dealer much good to receive inbound inquiries for this model yet.  Just as it would not do much good for a NC Chevy dealer to be ranked for the 2010 Chevy Silverado when they still have many 2009's in inventory.

You can use this long tail data to help build up high converting landing pages for affiliate offers and to market your business.  You just need to make sure your data is from a reliable source and you don't wait to long to capitalize on it.