Chasing Highly Competitive Keywords

I am working on using wordpress as a microsite platform for car dealers in addition to creating landing pages as an internal blog pages.  Here are two examples:

• 2009 Ford Escape Hybrid Microsite
• 2009 Ford Escape Hybrid Cincinnati Landing Page

They both have the same goal to drive leads to a Ford dealer in Ohio.  While it could be possible to create these same type of pages internally on a car dealers website but the truth is most automotive website platforms suck and do not allow the flexibility that can be accomplished using wordpress or any CMS for that matter.

The real question would be in how fast we can get these pages to index and stick and start generating leads.  Right now I am working on setting up an offering that will allow dealers to take advantage of dealer micro sites and craigslist for car dealers.

dealer micro sites, 2009 ford escape hybrid, craigslist

How Much Traffic Will We See?

I am working on using wordpress to built landing pages inside of a blog architecture.  The first one that I did that  like focuses on the 2009 Ford Escape Hybrid.  This will be a tough keyword to win but not impossible.  This will provide way more benefit than at single two or three page dealer micro sites.

Dealers have been feed enough automotive marketing bs by the big and small vendors in the niche through alleged education.  Dealer micro sites do offer the ability to offer a an online branding platform for car dealers if they chose the right platform.  But they can do the same thing with a single one or two page lander on sites like squidoo and get way more benefit for less money.

Hopefulle we will not need to use dealer search engine marketing to promote this page and it will just gracefully rise in the serps.

automotive marketing, dealer search engine marketing, 2009 ford escape hybrid

From Affiliate Marketing to Direct Lead Generation

Search engine marketing for affiliate marketing is almost dead since google mad the changes to their rules a while back to no longer allow affiliate links in pay per click advertising. Now they are even making it harder by not allowing landing pages with affiliate links built in. The way they used to.

One way I am overcoming this is by creating properties with lead forms on the landing page and ping posting leads in that fashion. Not only does this bypass and comply with googles rules it also allows your properties to become a search engine marketing total control dominator using both pay per click and search engine optimization.

Direct lead sales are actually more profitable than referral traffic to affiliate landing pages and adsense clicks. It only makes sense to do it this way rather than affiliate programs. That does not mean I do not have other properties that still do not use the traditional old method of referral traffic. One of my best convertiong pages is actually on squidoo and goes after buy here pay here car lot searchers.

What lenght will people go to defend their product

I have been working passionately on my craigslist service for car dealers and am having a blast in the process.  The service provides much better value than any SEM campaign can.  Still at the end of the day SEO is the winner for dealership website traffic.

I did a post about car dealer website traffic and referenced another post written by another industry vendor.  They replied it took ages for an SEO campaingn to be effective.  So I did a post titled Dealer.com Challenge - SEO vs Search Engine Marketing and will be updating search results for it to prove that SEO does not take ages.

SEO can be instant traffic I have stats to prove it.  Trying to denigrate SEO by saying it "takes ages" by a website and SEM vendor makes me laugh.  I do not know if it is to defend their product or they just do not know better.

Lets see how long it takes that post to show up for dealer.com search engine marketing.

Another Local Market Beauty - That can go nation wide

Chasing the serps for local market is now turning into a fun past time for me.  Even though I am woking hard on my craigslist for car dealers service it still does not let the affiliate in my die.  It may be to my detriment some with me going after these local markets but it will still be fun.

I have talked about going after Tulsa special auto finance terms before.  I transfered a property that I had geared towards that market to someone for a trade out, but it is just to juicy to pass up.  The market there is soft and even the ones that think they know seo are losing thier local terms and they have a brick and mortar car dealership there.

The first site I created going after Bunswick GA used car terms is already showing a nice income after just two days. So I will wonder how long it will take before I see antything from the Tulsa bad credit auto loan market.

Capitalizing on Localized Traffic - Using Wordpress

Using various tools you can build nice local sites that will drive adsense and affiliate revenues.  Local traffic is a lot easier to capitalize on than national traffic in certain niches.  Using a variety of tools you can get a lot of content out there targeting local search terms and get better conversion, albeit lower traffic.

A site that I built to get traffic on Brunswick car dealers will have over 100 pages in the next thirty days and go after local terms like 2009 Shelby Mustang near Brunswick.  It will be monetized with adsense, ebay and auto lead affiliate programs.

This strategy to reach in market car buyers on a local level is far superior than chasing national traffic for car dealers with terms like Nissan delivers.  The traffic will be more substantial and last longer than a flash in the pan promotion.

This will also help me prove a case study on using wordpress for dealer micro sites on how to win the most local keyword the fastest.

Useless Keywords for Localized Businesses

The debate on the power of dealer micro sites is on again.  I love the principal of them but feel there are much better ways to leverage their power if they are built using a CMS like Wordpress.  Even a single blog like this one about NJ bad credit car loans will give more value than one targeting a single keyword like nissan delivers.

If your business or affiliate properties have a local concentration then you would be far better off to target any content locally.  For example a page about Jacksonville buy here pay here dealers will do better as far as relevancy to a surfer than one just targeting buy here pay here.  Both can have a purpose but if you are marketing a Plainfield car lot give people looking for one relevant content.  Your traffic will convert better.  Having a site that ranks for Nissan delivers for a Texas nissan dealer is useless.

Now if you were creating a property to drive traffic to multiple dealers across the nation it would make more sense and provide better monetization opportunities.  Unless you are selling it to one dealer who just does not get it.

nissan delivers, dealer micro sites, palinfield car lot, buy here pay here

Winning in local markets - Opportunities abound

Affiliate marketers spend a lot of time chasing what they believe to be long tail terms such as collection agency.  These terms can be valuable but they do not convert well for the things taht mak money.  A ton of traffic without conversions is a waste of bandwidth.

If you go after terms like Plainfield used car lots and Kingsland used car dealers you will see better converting traffic.  It is targeted and the surfer has a specific problem they are trying to solve.  Especially the automotive industry where search markets have always been weak and with all of the turmoil the industry is suffering right now it is a great niche to start exploiting and have assets in place to domanate those local search markets.

Winning in a Down Market - Using Affiliate Techniques

Car dealers are always looking for ways to get traffic to their dealership website. We discuss many of these topics at Driving Sales. One of the things though that does not come up though is using long tail keyword marketing techniques. Because dealers have been drinking Kool Aid fed to them by automotive seo vendors for so long it may be impossible to help them make the shift.

Creating other properties away from the stores main site will help dealers find good converting keywords for them to target via long tail marketing. Some of the markets that I see being capitalized on right now are Tulsa car loans and NJ bad credit via long tail marketing.  I do not car how hard you try you just will not get an effective message across to buyers looking for these types of terms with a link to a credit application and a few bright shinny words or flashing images.

Just like when users search for used cars in Cincinnati they want to be taken to the right content not the home page of a dealerships website.  Dealer need to learn to capitalize on the long tail and none of the vendors in the main stream are going to show them the way.

long tail, seo vendor

Beating the Gap

Affiliate marketing and automotive blogging is a way of life for me. I do still work a little bit behind the scenes helping others bot with affiliate marketing and setting up blogs this is in addition to using squidoo for bum marketing. It is mostly a hobby and a past time than anything else.

Besides generating revenue through squidoo and interacting with the community there it does a great job in helping you identify crazy terms people will use to find things online. One thing that surprised me the most is how many people look for New Jersey car lots versus looking for car dealers.

I do believe that it is the type of customer that most dealership do not wish to attract unless they participate in special finance. However if that is their cup of tea it is an easy market to dominate.

special finanice, new jersey car lots

Discovering Very Unlikely Niches Using Squidoo

There is no doubt about it I love squidoo.  In helping a persona recently we discovered a niche that is prime for the exploiting by accident.  We created one lens targeted to buy here pay here and the traffic is incredible for what I thought was a worthless search term.

Not only is the traffic good the income from the affiliate networks is nothing to sneeze at either.  This coupled with the squidoo traffic and the earning power of squidoo this is definitely a tool that any bum marketer should utilize.  Currently I earn a little over $300 a month from squidoo.  Nothing to sneeze at.

Oh well time to figure out some some other niche to exploit.

Getting Your Visitors to Dig Deeper

I am not a web designer by any means. I can do some basic stuff on my own but at the end of the day things like scripting and GUI I have to outsource. It really is a better use of my time. I am a marketer, that is primary goal in life. To help others market their business or look at things in a different light.

Recently in a discussion with a Cincinnati used car dealership I spoke with them about their conversion problems on their website. One thing that was happening was that there was auto played audio on the home page. This had to increase their bounce rate. Sure enough after they turned it off their lead volume jumped.

Internet Marketing is not rocket science.  You just have to use effective copy writing to generate a call to action.  You do this by placing yourself in your visitors shoes and watch your conversions rise.

Building up a game plan

Being in the trenches at an automotive social network I am able to follow trends in the industry.  It also shows markets that are prime for the picking with affiliate programs.  There are a few niches that are really under served as far as competition.  For example ebay motors.  You can use the ebay affiliate program to build some neat properties.  Right now my protege is starting to attack the automotive auction market.

We are going to start by going after markets that have closed dealer auctions and create landing pages that will encourage click throughs for individuals looking for public auctions in those markets.  To start with we are concentrating on markets we know well such as Savannah auto auctions.  They have three dealer only auctions but individuals are constantly trying to figure out how to get in them.

So we will be presenting them with local ebay car auctions as an alternative.  This allows us to profit on the traffic in several ways.  Ebay affiliate commissions. auto loan lead programs, amazon and the money squidoo pays for traffic.  One page mutliole streams of income. 

dealer auctions, automotive auctions, savannah auto auctions

Automotive SEO - It is not Tough!!

One of my good friends is an automotive SEO consultant who does a great job for his clients. Tonight I met up with another person who also consults automobile dealerships. In reviewing both techniques it appears that each have very different styles.

The thing is some of the keywords that both of these guys chase automotive terms in their personal SEO endeavors to market their businesses both they have created unnecessary competition for a low value keywords. The only real benefit to owning those keywords is to impress a potential client. Just like me trying to own the search term for Kingsland Used Car Dealers to prove a point. Other than that there is no real benefit!!

useless seo terms, automotive seo, automotive consultants

Exploiting Automotive Keywords

Automotive SEO is a joke compared to other industries. Part of the Squidoo project my friend and I are running is we are looking for medium competition keywords and see how much traffic we can draw from them. A jewel that we found was Buy Here Pay Here Lots in Indiana the daily search volume is moderate and the competition on the longtail is almost non existent.

It will be fun to see how much traffic can be generated on these terms.  On another note the lens that is targeting Tulsa Chevrolet Dealer is probably poorly created based on the keyword research I have done.  We are looking to add a couple more to the mix to see how long it takes to rank really high.  Right now we are still stuck on page five!!

buy here pay here lots in indiana, tulsa chevrolet dealer

Planting a Squidoo Bomb

I know that traffic arbitrage is more about buying traffic for one price and selling it for another. That business model is almost dead with the changes in PPC.  I also know that most affiliate marketers do not talk much about the niches they are in.  I am going to break that cycle now.

I work full time as an automotive marketing consultant and have a few clients.  New client acquisition is slow right now because the industry is in a tail spin.  Since I do not have full time to devote to affiliate marketing I am slowly working with someone to build an automotive squidoo empire.

This will do a few things when the automotive market starts to recover.  It will allow me to have established properties that can easily be transferred to or used to market future clients.  Second it will allow us to earn some income from squidoo and affiliate offers in the meantime.

I was turned onto using squidoo for this when I showed someone how easy it is to rank for non competitive keywords like "Special Financing Tulsa".  Now as stated in a previous post we are going after Tulsa Chevrolet terms with squidoo.  Right now we have one lens ranking low and are adding a dozen over the next week.

We are also going after some other terms and will post about them as well.  I have a domain I was saving for a squidoo car marketing squeeze page but now will turn it into a blog.  So keep an eye out for it.

Some people people in the industry will not like what I am doing and will probably try to cause trouble over it, but hey I am a big boy and can stand the heat!!!

tulsa chevrolet, tulsa special finance, squidoo.com, affilaite marketing, maximizing downturn in the car business

Automotive Marketing - Now is the Time for Affiliates to Get Geared Up

Right now car dealers are closing left and right and they are not spending money like they should online.  Mainly because car dealers do not understand it as well as traditional advertising.  The Internet is DrivingSales at an alarming rate and it is a way for affiliates who wish to captialize on the automotive industries weak internet presence will be way a head of the game when the industry starts to recover.

Just the other day I was speaking with a Hyundai Dealer who does not have a clue about the Internet and they were wondering why their website traffic was flat.  It is because affiliates were kicking their ass for their own name.  it is the dealers that are taking advantage of this soft spot that will win at the end of the day when the market recovers.

On another note the lens my protegie made to generate leads for Tusla Chevrolet Dealers is already showing in the search eninges on page five.  It will not be long before it is on page one.  I will estimate the time that it will take is about 2 weeks.

hyundai dealer, tulsa chevrolet dealer, drivingsales

A test in traffic and optimization

I have a "student" that is learning to use squidoo for affiliate marketing.  Since it is a given that automotive SEO is fairly week we are going to time how long it takes a lens about Tulsa Chevrolet Dealers to show up for those terms.  It is doubtful that it will get much traffic seeing how there are only around 400 searches per month for "tulsa chevrolet dealer" and the deriviatives.

Squidoo has almost instant built in optimization but we are going to test with 5 anchor links and using a book marking tool that I have to drive a total of around 200 links over the next 5 days.

I will post here daily on the results as we wach it climb the SERPS...

tulsa chevrolet dealer, squidoo.com, automotive seo

Getting Your Game On - DrivingSales online

DrivingSales to your offline business may be tough to do online unless you develop a disciplined approach in capturing and following up with leads. Lately I have been working with a new company called DrivingSales that does exactly that help those in the car business to build their business.

We discuss many different aspects of the automobile business and Internet marketing is one of the biggest discussions. We are a valuable resource for those that are looking to expand in the automotive industry. Make sure you check us out..

drivingsales

Testing for Conversion

Currently I am working with an "apprentice" on maximizing squidoo lenses for conversion.  Our first niche we are concentrating on is "special auto finance Tulsa".  The reason we chose this was for the fact that the competition is very low, the conversion payments are ok and to help build a case study to use to sell these services to auto dealers. 

Affiliate marketing is fun but developing a business around serving others for me is more rewarding.  So combining the two is a natural thing for me.  I do ok as an affiliate marketer, know the car business and have deep contacts from being involved with an automotive social network.

Just recently I was even publshed by one of the larger print publications in the auto industry with an article dealing with using social networking to sell cars and services.  Lots of exciting things I just hope the calls quit comming in from people trying to hire me as an internet sales manager.

Trading out = leverage of assets

I am in the process of creating a new site to market business to business internet marketing services too.  I need some graphics made so I traded some squidoo lenses out for graphic design.  Now she is runing away with the content and will slowly take away Tulsa Bad Credit Car Loan and Tulsa Chevrolet keywords.

Sometimes you just find niches to exploit in interesting ways.

tulsa bad credit car loans, bad credit car dealer tulsa, squidoo

Getting out of Mainstream Niches

One of the most often overlooked niches by affiliate marketers is the B2B niche.  I am not starting to launch some campaigns that will run to target business to business sector most notably small local businesses.

With the economy is as bad shapes as it is in now it is the time to capitalize on these on these markets to help them expand their reach.  I have been researching some affiliate networks that will help accomplish this goal while at the same time be affordable enough for it to be a minor investment for them and achieve ROI at the same time.

It will be fun to see if I can pull this off and make it profitable both for me and the businesses that choose to engage these products and services.

b2b affiliate marketing, affiliate networks, business to business niche

Reviews Sites as a Traffic Source

I cannot believe I have been ignoring this blog for so long and really do apologize to people that have visited looking for information on traffic arbitrage.  First let me start by saying that PPC traffic is way over rated in sponsored search results.  If you are going to "buy" traffic with ppc you are better off to stick with the content network unless you are still working on Search Engine Optimization for your keywords.

You will realize way more value from SEO than PPC.  PPC is a crutch for a poorly optimized site or fresh landing page.

One thing I have have ben playing around with using is rating sites to drive traffic.  These can be huge tools to drive optimized traffic for your keywords and building up your SEO.  A topic though that gets some attention though is why are dealer reviews mostly negative.  And a there is a good discussion going on at an Automotive Forum regarding this.

Maybe it has a lot to do with how people that work for car dealer employees respond when the dealership makes a mistake.  That industry has a lot to learn still...

review site traffic, automotive forums, dealer reviews

Usergenerated Content - Squidoo.com

I love using various user generated content sites, while this is not traffic arbitrage it is still worth noting here.

I use Squidoo.com to make landing pages that are very keyword targeted and use them a lot in my job as an Internet Sales Manager, One of my favorite ones is geared to a competing dealership name, Golden Isles Nissan.

Yesterday the General Manager there complained to my boss and it was funny after taking the time to explain to him what I have built. It basically presents some of the used Nissan cars and trucks I have in inventory. The two GM thought I was actually messing with Golden Isles Nissan's main site. Funny stuff..

These sites are basically Dealer Micro Sites that provide a huge branding message for me.