Web Presence: Tips for Taking our Web Site to the Next Level

It’s a new year, and maybe your dealership has resolved to switch up the advertising budget. Perhaps that means investing in your online presence.

If your dealership has a Web site, but you’re looking to see what can take it to the next level, you may want to take advantage of one of these affordable online marketing opportunities.

SEO

So you have a Web site, but what good is it if the site traffic is low? If you haven’t already checked where your site pulls up in the search results in Google, Yahoo! and Bing, be sure to start looking at least once a month. If you are unsatisfied with your page rank, there are solutions, including focusing on search engine optimization.

First, it is important to understand how search engines come up with their results. Search engines determine a Web site’s page rank based on their secret algorithms. These algorithms give preference to certain design and site qualities, and ultimately determine how to rank pages compared to others in the same category. ‘Spiders,’ a computer program for search engines, are sent out to index Web sites and their content. These indexes and algorithms are the framework to come up with page results when someone searches for a term like “buy here-pay here financing in Denver CO.”

While it is a job in itself to learn, perfect, and keep up with changes in the search engine algorithms, there are a couple things that you can do yourself besides hiring an SEO professional.

Exchange links. Does your company consistently do business with other businesses that have Web sites? Ask them if you can exchange links with their Web site. They will put a link using your full URL (ex: http://www.dbjweb.com) somewhere on their Web site, if you put their link on your site. The purpose behind this is, with more links to your Web site on the World Wide Web, the search engine spiders crawl your site more frequently, allowing your content to be indexed to ultimately show up in search engine results for a related search term (ie “buy here pay here financing in

Denver CO”)

Update Web site content. Just as the search engine spiders follow links that lead to your Web site, they recognize how frequently content is changed on your Web site. People want the newest and most relevant information when they search. Instead of showing Web sites that the searcher does not find up to date or relevant, the search engines give a preference to sites that have content updates.

Of course these are just two of many tasks that can be done to improve your site’s page ranking. For professional assistance, and to save time doing it yourself, either contact the builder of your site or search for an SEO specialist in your area. Of course the tech jargon can be confusing, as they spout out ways to improve your site’s page rank. Without being an SEO expert, be sure to ask for a list of sites they’ve worked on to help you make your decision. Search each by the business name, as well as by the industry and location. For example, if the business’ Web site they did SEO for is named Arnold’s Transmission Shop in Decatur, Ill., it should pull up on the first page of Google results when “Arnold’s Transmission Shop” is searched for and preferably the first or second page when terms like “transmission repair Decatur” is searched for.

Pay Per Click

Another way to show up in search engine results is with pay per click campaigns. When somebody types their search into the search engine, along with the organic (the site’s page rank being attained by search engine optimization rather than advertising) page results, a couple of pay per click ads or “sponsored links” appear above or to the right of the page. As the term describes, you only pay when somebody clicks into your text ad’s link.

There are thousands of pay per click providers but the most popular include Google AdWords (http://google.com/adwords), Yahoo! Search Marketing (http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com), and Microsoft adCenter (https://adcenter.microsoft.com/). A lot of consultants are making cold calls, offering how they can set up a pay per click campaign. But the truth is simple: it’s easy to do yourself, and you can adjust it to fit your budget.

For the three pay per click providers and their Web sites mentioned above, you can get started immediately. Each site allows you to target your ad, write your ad, select keywords, and set the budget for your campaign.

Instead of showing your ad to customers who are located too far away to purchase from your dealership, you have the option to target by geographic location. Each pay per click service allows you to target your ad to local customers by cities or even zip codes.

With each service you will write a short title, and description, and include a Web site link (ie. URL), that will take them to your site if they click on your ad. You can use the URL from the home page of your Web site, but if there is a more relevant page to send viewers of your ad to, consider using that URL. It should be a smooth transition from the ad to the Web page, to prevent customers from getting lost, confused or clicking out of your page.

The keywords that you select will, in part, determine when your ad pulls up on a Web searcher’s result page in the sponsored links. Include terms that your customers are searching for, such as “used cars,” “buy here-pay here financing,” “dealer financed,” etc.

The final piece of all pay-per-click programs is determining the budget. The per click budget that you choose is the maximum bid that you would pay for one click that leads them into your Web site. You can determine the budget to be as much as a few cents or several dollars for a click onto your Web site. The higher your maximum amount per click is, the more competitive your ad will be amongst popular keywords. The second budgeting consideration is the maximum amount that you are willing to spend on your pay per click campaign in a month. You can start small or large with your campaign’s budget and always adjust over time based on its

results.