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.

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

Buy Low Sell High - CPC Revenue

The basic premise of traffic arbitrage is to buy traffic and resell it for more than it cost you.  Sounds pretty simple.  For most just starting out in affiliate marketing setting up a PPC campaign can be a daunting task.  My company does automotive seo for car dealers and now we are in full force creating assets to buy traffic to.  This does two things for us.  It allows us to drive traffic to their properties like we do for a Ford dealer in Cincinnati, we create an asset using their inventory that would otherwise go to an Ohio auto auction.

We buy this traffic by using our time to optimize the sites in the search engines.  Time has a monetary value so in essence we are trading time to generate traffic.  Just like we are doing on the Texas direct auto auctions.  Once the listings are indexed then the site gets a life of its own and creates immediate attention from the search engines and draws in a continuous stream of traffic.

Technorati Tags: automotive seo, auto auctions, ford dealers

Selling Services Using SEO

My firm is an automotive seo provider. We pretty much have moved completely away from affiliate marketing. Now our properties are driving plenty of leads from out optimization and networking efforts. I just published a post about "Dynamic SEO" that will probably cause me some flack.

The thing is the auto industry is so competitive and it usually means the vendor with the biggest marketing budget usually wins. Through our organic growth and providing stellar service to our clients it looks like our business will be able to survive any future economic downturns. Our business was built in one of the weirdest times to be involved in the auto industry and many would of told us we were crazy for entering that vertical.

I will be converting the content more away from traffic arbitrage to more on how to build a services business using the web as your only marketing tool.  Stay tuned.Technorati Tags: dynamic seo, auto industry

Stacking Content for Traffic

With the changes that are happening in search it is going to take a ton of content that can pass link equity to money sites to stay competitive.  From monitoring traffic stats we can see that long tail traffic is converting better every day.  The question lies on how to build up link equity to help take advantage of these long tail searches.

A project that we are working on will allow us to push links with great content, to other great content to money sites.  A good example of one of the sites in development now is The Automotive Nexus, where we will push traffic to affiliate offers and back to clients money site while insuring that the visitor receives value for their click.  Meaning they can find their answer when they get there.

This is part of a large automotive seo project that will be able to deliver link equity on demand, a very task oriented undertaking.  It requires more work than many are willing to under take.  Feel free to ask any questions you may have in the comment form belowTechnorati Tags: automotive seo, automotive marketing, link equity

What do you do when this happens?

I do very little out bound marketing for my business.  Over the last week I started reaching out to car dealers in my local market.  A dealer that is real close to my office has never returned phone call so I stopped by their store.  I was treated very unprofessionally by one of their managers when I stopped by their store.  The real sad part is I service my vehicle there and will never do that again.  (Why I will never service my vehicle at Bennett Chrysler Dodge in Kingsland again.)

I just have a hard time dealing with these interactions.  I know it has nothing to do with traffic arbitrage but it just gripes me when people in the car business are less than professional in their interactions.  I was wanting to offer them the ability to reach the local markets and beyond their market area like I have done for a Cincinnati Ford dealer and a Greenville Chevy Dealer.

I was actually going to give them a super deal on my Car Dealer Craigslist Posting service.  Guess they missed out on that and I will look for another local Dodge dealer who wishes to pull customers from Camden county..

Driving Traffic on Competitive Terms

I have been real busy and have not had time to really update this blog much lately.  I have been working on some things that will help drive SEO traffic.  This has already proven very successful for a Cincinnati Ford Dealer and now we are working with a Greenville Chevy dealer and a Rocky Mount Chevy Dealer to do the same thing.

The things we are doing to help facilitate this are creating very content rich landing pages that push traffic back to the dealers main website.  This is the next level of Automotive SEO that will provide immense value to our clients. 

Its to bad that many vendors in the automobile industry really do not have a clue on how to drive traffic or SEO.  Right now I am working on a white paper that will deal with Dealer.com's Social Media Fail an on how it could negatively affect all of their clients.

Technorati Tags: automotive seo, dealer.com social media, traffic arbitrage

The wordpress SEO experiement

I have been in the process of launching a sea of dealer microsites for a Cincinnati Ford dealer and now we are pulling in some great search traffic on a multitude of long tail search terms.  The type of traffic is slow converting traffic while at the same time high traffic offsets low conversion rations,

The goal for this dealer will to make it impossible for someone looking for a Cincinnati Ford dealer online to miss them.  I am sure that the Cincinnati Chevy dealers will also wonder about how to execute the same type of strategy. 

The best thing they could do is contact me to inquire about my Automotive SEO services and we can help set them on the right path to market domination.  It is a great thing to do if you are seeking non competitive localized terms.

Technorati Tags: automotive seo, dealer micro sites, dealer microsites

Time to prove a point.... Again

Not long ago a dealer.com executive made a comment about seo taking ages that looked like a back end way to market shoddy automotive search engine marketing software.  This was in an attempt to down play a comment I made about seo for him to look authoritative.

Within 4 hours I was ranking very well for dealer.com seo and many other derivatives of their name and product descriptions and still am.  When the article was first published another executive called me to "educate" me in automotive seo.  I will let you draw your on conclusions on who got schooled.

Now there is another automotive seo "expert" who makes plenty of automotive seo mistakes.  The biggest one is publishing content about very non competitive keywords and how well his clients are ranking for them.  Because he lays out his clients "game plan".

Now I am going to lay out my game plan to show how easy it will be to pwn these keywords in local and national markets by creating tons of affiliate lead sites.  The good thing is my clients will even benefit from these properties. 

To bad none are Infiniti dealers yet...

Technorati Tags: automotive seo, dealer.com

Utilizing Different Platforms for Traffic

If you want to leverage exisiting traffic to other websites you really need to take a close look at squidoo.  Squidoo is one of the top traffic sites on the web today and you can leverage this traffic by making lading pages for affiliate products or even brick and mortar business promotion.

Here is an example of or a page I made for a Cincinnati Ford dealer.  What is good about using squidoo is you can also find some great long tail terms that people are looking for online when searching for information about your business. 

So if you find a term that people use frequently then you can create other landing pages around those terms targeting in on those queries.  You landing pages should target the terms as close as possible as the traffic being delivered to them.

This is one thing that is missed in automotive marketing.  I have noticed increased conversions by tailoring landing pages in this fashion.  Automotive SEO has a lot of room to improve in this regards.



Technorati Tags: automotive seo, automotive marketing, cincinnati ford dealer

Technorati as a SEO tool?

Recently I have been helping a friend of mine on a couple of projects and have been optimizing some blogs in the different search aggregation services like Technorati.com and notice that my blog about Automotive SEO has lost all of its technorati authority.

This is really puzzling because it has has over 100 blog reactions, but I have noticed that the service seems to be going through some pains as of late.  It shows my last three post as being added three days ago and they finally have the right preview image up after over a year of waiting.

Hopefully it is an algorithm change they are going through and things will pick back up over time.  Technorati is almost wikipediaish but it just really puzzles me that this has happened.  I just hope that it does not hurt my site long term.

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.

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.

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