It was one of the most used made-up words of 2012 (and in many cases, one of the most annoying). Just about every marketer in and out of the automotive industry used some variation of "SoLoMo" (Social/Local/Mobile) in a blog post, video, presentation, or declaration of things to come. The underlying concept - that many people and the sites they visit are becoming more social, more localized, and more mobile based - is likely here to stay for a while, but is it something that dealers should embrace in 2013 or something that they should wait on until it either explodes or fades into the same obscurity that QR codes and SMS marketing seem to be heading?

Before anyone jumps on that last statement, I'm not downplaying the effectiveness of either QR codes or SMS marketing. Used right, they can be very effective. They simply didn't materialize into the "next big thing" that many thought they would back in 2011.

I have three questions which I'll answer briefly just to spark the conversation, but I really want to hear from the ADM community.

Q1: Should they really be grouped together or should they be treated as independent marketing and communication forms?

There's a certain beauty in SoLoMo. With the rise of smartphones and tablets, the improvements by Google and Bing in serving consumers localized results, and continued expansion of social media into our daily lives, it all seems to tie together nicely. Social is accessed most often from mobile devices. Mobile devices and their operating systems are generating search results, apps, and other tools that tie in perfectly with localized engagement. Local interactions are becoming more prevalent in social media and through review sites.

It would seem that grouping them together is easy enough and presents the ability to save time and resources by consolidating strategies. However, each of the three components also have their own nuances and attributes that may require an active automotive marketing professional (both at the dealership and vendor level) to split the strategies into more focused campaigns and separate styles.

Should they stay grouped or not?

Q2: Is the time and effort required to make them "hum" worth it from an ROI perspective?

Let's get local out of this question immediately. Few would argue with the clear trends and data that shows the value of localized focus. Reviews, search traffic, retargeting - all have shown benefits that make the question silly in regards to local.

Mobile and social are different. Mobile is a tough beast to tame. It requires the right software, platforms, and strategy to get the desired effect, but is the effect worth the effort? Is there a large enough difference between good and great to make it worth the wholesale changes necessary to get to the highest level? Social is always a question from an ROI perspective - enough has been written for and against it so there's no need to rehash here.

Is there enough ROI to justify going to the next level?

Q3: Will SoLoMo grow in relevance or decline in 2013

I'm going to leave that question open. I have very firm beliefs about the direction of SoLoMo in 2013, but I'll hold my opinions until others are posted so as not to spoil the conversation prematurely.

* * *

What say you, ADM?

There is a very distinguishable difference between SEO content and content that brings SEO value.

The easiest way to look at it is that SEO content is what you put on each page of your website to let both visitors and the search engines understand what the page is about, while content that brings SEO value isn't necessarily there to help the page rank but to help other pages on the site rank better. The easiest way to create content that has the ability to bring SEO value is to make sure that the content is engaging and that people will be willing to both link to and share the content itself.

This is Part III in the series about “Killing Birds With Content Stones”. Read Part I and Part II first.

It has to be real.

When most internet marketers think of using content for SEO, they think along the lines of using the appropriate keywords in the html content on the page to demonstrate the keywords for which they want the page to rank. This is, in many ways, harder than writing engaging content. There's a lot less science and practically no risk in writing engaging content. It's what Google and Bing want. As a result, giving it to them gives you little chance of triggering anything negative as a result, at least not from the search engines themselves.

With modern SEO, content has gone from being a tool to being the hub. If you use content marketing properly, you can enhance your SEO while still bringing value to the website and social media sites at the same time. Here's how:

How Engaging Content Works for SEO

If you are trained in search engine optimization, get one thing out of your head for the rest of this article. Keywords don't matter in engaging content. Our goals with writing engaging content have nothing to do with getting that page ranked for any particular keywords. It will rank because it's valuable and the keywords that it ranks for do not really matter. The goal is to get traffic, links, and social signals. These types of pages do not have to rank for the keywords that you want and they don't have to convert visitors.

It's hard to understand for many marketers. It's almost unnatural, to want to put out a piece of content that has no direct value from a search or conversion perspective, but it's the indirect value that can be so much more powerful when done right.

These engagement pages are designed to stay loosely on topic with the goals of the company or website, but only so much as to have a reason to exist. Using a car dealer as an example, the vast majority of the site might be geared towards selling cars, servicing cars, or highlighting the dealership, but the engagement content will only touch on the appropriate topics. It could be an article about the local area or even the state itself. At that point, it becomes an opportunity to highlight landing pages that are area specific.

When you create the page, it will be about a topic that allows you to work in links (or in many cases, a single link) to the target landing page. In the example below, the page is about iconic images in Wisconsin while the landing page it links to is specifically geared to rank for the term "Milwaukee Ford Dealers". Do what you can to make sure the link is naturally situated within the content.

The goal is to build a page that is engaging enough to be shared on social media to generate social signals for the domain as well as have the potential to be linked to by other websites that find the content interesting or useful.

Write What Your Visitors Would Want to Read

I've always thought it was easier to take a writer and train them on SEO than to take an SEO and train them to write well. Don't get me wrong - a strong SEO content writer is still valuable, just not as much as they have been in the past. Natural writing is prevailing in the search engines, so as long as someone knows how to properly describe what's going on with a particular page or the website/company as a whole, they should be able to piece together good SEO content.

Writing engaging content is harder and potentially more valuable from an SEO perspective. The example above was designed to appeal to people around the state itself. The subject should always tie in with the target landing page in some way. Since our landing page is targeting Milwaukee but the dealership isn't in Milwaukee, we posted about the entire state and worked in references to the bigger cities in the state - Milwaukee and Madison. Let's say our goal was not to target the brand and a city but rather a model and the local area. We might have posted something like "Most Used and Abused F-150's in Fond du Lac". A piece like that would require much more research and help from either the service department, locals in the community prompted by social media, or both. In that case, the landing page that we would create would likely be an inventory search page for F-150s or even a landing page highlighting the vehicle.

You know your area. You know your brand. You know your products. There's plenty of valuable content available to post about. It doesn't have to be an article or a list of images like the one above. It could be a video, an infographic, a review (written, not scraped or syndicated), or any of a dozen different types of content.

Always think about it from a sharing perspective. Would YOU be interested in sharing the content on social media sites if you didn't work there? Would you be willing to link to the page as a resource or piece of interest if you had a website about the subject? In the example above, the page could be sent to local newspaper websites (particularly if the images were unique to the business), a tourism site, or any website that had an interest in the state of Wisconsin. Schools, government agencies, travel sites - all make for a good potential link. They don't have to link to your target. Your page takes care of that for you. Your goal is to get links and social signals to the engaging content that links to your landing page. It's not as good as getting a direct link or social signals to the target itself, but the vast majority of landing pages do not have enough general interest to make them sharable. This is an alternative to direct links and if done right, it's the most effective way to move the needle in your search rankings.

In the next part, we will describe in detail how to get the most social media benefit from the same piece of content. Stay tuned.

There's really no way around it. The only technique to truly maximize the effectiveness of your content to be engaging on your website, relevant for SEO, and useful for social media is to think three-dimensionally.

This is Part II in the series about "Killing Birds With Content Stones". Read Part I first.

It's hard. It's not impossible. Here's how.

Asking the Right Questions Before Producing the Content

Before you can produce the content, you have to make sure that the proposed piece is going to fulfill the goals appropriately. For this portion, we're going to use the example of a car dealership who is diving into content marketing. They want to produce content for their website that is engaging to their visitors, that assists in improving their search engine optimization, and that can effectively be used as content to spread through social media.

Some content is born from brainstorming or simply pops in one's head as a good piece of content to post. Other times, inspiration comes in the form of an event. For example, a Ford dealer in Seattle might have a purple Ford Focus drive into the service bay that inspires a marketing manager. They decide that they want to do a picture post about the different colors of Fords. Before coming up with the plan surrounding the content, they have to ask themselves a few questions.

• Will this be a piece of content that's interesting to people who visit my site? In this case, the fact that the topic is Ford vehicles makes it interesting enough, but they can add an additional touch to it if they can keep it localized. Rather than just different colors of Fords, they may decide to make it different colors of Fords around Seattle.
  
• Can this help with SEO? This is the easy question to answer. For this particular piece of content, since the topic surrounds vehicles themselves, they will be able to link to pages on the website that sell those vehicles. Under the image for the Ford Focus, they'll be able to link to an inventory search for a Focus and anchor it, "Ford Focus for Sale in Seattle".
  
• Is it interesting enough to be shared on social media? It might be, particularly if the images are strong enough. Getting it shared on Facebook will be pretty easy if at least one of the images is strong. Getting it retweeted will require some clever titling. Since social media in general and Twitter in particular love trending topics, the marketing manager may decide to latch onto a semi-current topic and title the piece, "15 Shades of Ford Across Seattle", playing on the 50 Shades of Gray phenomenon. It's a little risky considering the subject matter of the book, but it's also been played with enough to allow certain discretion.

Force it Now or let it Simmer?

There are two options for a piece of content like this. Since it's only time-sensitive based upon the popularity of the title, it's possible to let the piece simmer and grow over time. More on that later.

The first and most common option is to go for it now. We have the concept. Now, let's put the piece together. We should have the image of the first purple Focus (with permission from the customer, of course). Now, we need more. There should be at least a couple more vehicles on the lot that have interesting colors that make the vehicles look great. This is important - by mixing in some in-house images, it makes the overall story more compelling as it pertains to the business itself. Let's say we have 4 images total. Now, we need more.

Most will go to the internet for this, and they may get lucky and find some good images by searching for "Ford Seattle" in image searches. Even better, they may search for "Ford Mustang Club Seattle" and find images there. Wherever you find the images, always attribute the actual source. If you didn't take the picture, give credit to those who did.

There may be a desire to cheat a little and include images of Fords outside of Seattle, but that would be too risky. If there simply aren't enough available to make a valid piece, they may want to append the title to say, "15 Shades of Ford Across Seattle and Beyond". It's a cheat and not ideal, but efficiency is more important than perfection. If you don't have enough content, don't force it.

In this hypothetical instance, the marketing manager has 9 images - four from the dealership and five local cars they found online. Nine is good but doesn't have the oomph of 15, so if they absolutely must get the piece out now and they don't want to settle for non-local images, it's time to find them in the real world. It could be as simple as sitting at the corner and shooting pictures of a couple of cars at stop lights. This seems cheesy, but there's nothing wrong with it as long as you don't have license plates visible. The marketing manager may drive around searching. This is not ideal, but again, this is assuming you want the piece to go out immediately.

What would be ideal is to go with option two: patience. The content will come. Tell the service writers what you're doing and ask them to keep their eyes out. You may even want to be specific - "I need green, maroon, and light blue to fill out the spectrum."

The other technique is to reach out through social media itself. If your Facebook page is vibrant and has a lot of local fans, ask them for help. Tell them what you're doing and ask them to send in pictures of their own Ford vehicles if they have something that matches your needs. Over time, between what happens at the store and what happens on social media, your patience will pay off and you'll have a much more impressive piece of content than if you force it. This is the difference between good 3D and bad 3D. Both deliver the desired effect but one is more memorable than the other.

Make it Three Dimensional

You've asked the right questions. You have the right content. Now, it's time to make sure that it fulfills all of the goals.

• Engaging Website Content - If you have a "fun" section on your website such as a blog, this is where you'll want to place the content. The worst thing that can happen is to take someone who wants to do business and distract them with frivolous content, so by placing it on the blog or in an area designed for "fun" topics, you'll keep the serious visitors serious while still engaging with those who are visiting for other reasons. Keep the spin of the content localized - people love seeing what's close to them on the great big internet. It helps to highlight their surroundings, gives them pride in their city, and offers a way for them to get involved with comments such as, "I saw that F-150 at Target the other day."
  
• SEO Content - There's nothing wrong with linking to internal pages that are about business. People expect it. While they might not click directly to a search for Ford Fusion inventory, the search engines will definitely follow the link and attribute additional weight to the page as a result.
  
• Social Media Content - With a proper three dimensional piece of content, there will be an inherent desire to share it. The content must be interesting enough to share and then must be exposed to locals so they can share it as well. This is most effective on Facebook, of course, where the degrees of separation between people makes an image much more likely to be seen by the owner of the vehicle. Have your employees share the page. They can highlight individual images in their Facebook feed. If you reached out to a local car club, contact them or simply post it on their wall with credit going to them as deserved. The art of exposing the content properly on social media is another blog post entirely, but I think you get the picture.

In an ideal world, we would have the time and resources to create four types of content: converting website content, engaging website content, SEO content, and social media content.

Throw in public relations content, supporting content, and consumer resources and now you have a ton of content needs without a ton of time to create it.

This is where the bird-hunting content producers of the world can shine. Thankfully, just about anyone at a business can kill multiple birds with each content stone if they know how to do it right.

Understanding the Importance of Each Type of Content

Content that is placed on your website, blog, supporting sites, and social media is normally done so for a reason. Sure, there are people who love to write, take pictures, or shoot videos as a hobby, but in the business world we normally want to get a benefit from our efforts. One of the biggest speed bumps that businesses often make is that they don't know how to properly define the goals of their content. With a proper definition, the content has less of a chance of being successful.

For now, we're not going to look at conversion content, PR, support, or consumer resources. They are much more focused types of content and while it's possible to hit them with content that achieves multiple goals, it's best to attack them individually. For example, you can say that a press release is something that can help with SEO as well as get shared on social media, but it doesn't replace the real SEO content or content that is designed for social media engagement. It's an addition and therefore is normally not crafted to accomplish the other goals as well.

Let's focus on engaging website content, SEO content, and social media content. Done properly, the vast majority of the pieces of content you create for one can apply to all three.

• Engaging Website Content - This is the content that is designed to bring people in who are not necessarily looking for your product at that particular moment. They were a nice-to-have type of content prior to the Google Penguin update of April, 2012, but now they are absolutely essential thanks to Google's adoration for content that can be enjoyed, that brings value to the visitor, and that can be shared through social media as well as being the target of inbound links. Engaging website content does not sell a product or service. It supports the sale of those products in some way. It might be as direct as showing clever integration methods between an iPhone and a car, showing how the new Ford Fusion has systems that SYNC nicely with your smartphone. It might be as indirect as a gallery of images from different angles of the Seattle Space Needle. For a Seattle Ford Dealer, both of these examples would work nicely to accomplish the goal of making their website engaging to their potential customers.
  
  
• SEO Content - The days of writing content on or off of your site or blog for the sheer sake of manipulating your search rankings are far behind us. 2011's Google Panda update and the several tweaks and improvements since then have forced businesses to take a longer look at quality over quantity. It's about manual and unique versus automated and duplicated. Today's SEO content brings value to the table. This ties in nicely to the other two types of content listed here.
  
  
• Social Media Content - It's hard for many businesses to understand the levels of quality that are required on social media because of the camouflage created by all of the bad content that's shared every day by others. It cannot be understated that well-crafted content posted on social media can bring more value than dozens of low value posts. In fact, these low value posts can actually do harm. Crafting the right content for social media is the only way to tie it in directly with SEO and website engagement.

In the next post, we will go into details about "Thinking Three Dimensionally" to help you select the right topics and take the appropriate steps to post. Stay tuned.

Let's face it. Websites are becoming a commodity in the automotive world. Most quality website vendors are putting out solutions that are good enough to work well. Few are coming up with innovations that can differentiate them, and those differences are relatively small in the whole scheme of things. The difference between a good and a great website is minimal when translating it to increased sales.

The reason for this is that consumers are becoming increasingly impatient when in car shopping mode. It's not that they don't spend as much time doing it as before. It's that they are doing most of their research on websites other than a dealer's site and only visiting when they're ready to look at live vehicles. At that point, they're going straight to inventory or specials and deciding from there whether to consider doing business with a dealership or not. If you have the right inventory items that they're considering, a bad website isn't going to keep them from contacting you. Conversely, if you don't have the vehicles they're seeking, an amazing website isn't going to coax them into doing business with you.

Websites are websites. Some are better than others and have strong conversion tools, but the real arena through which dealers can move the needle is in the quality of their digital marketing efforts. One of those efforts, search engine marketing, is arguably the greatest opportunity for advancement because it translates into more visitors, more leads, and potentially more sales when done right.

The biggest challenge that dealers with OEM-mandated search marketing products face is in defining competition. From the OEM's perspective, a Ford dealer's competition is the Chevy dealer down the block and the Honda dealer around the corner. They want search exposure that can take sales from the other brands. This is a good and noble cause, but unfortunately it's not the most practical target for individual dealers and dealer groups.

From the perspective of the Ford dealership itself, their primary competition isn't the Chevy dealer and the Honda dealer but rather the other Ford dealers in the area. It's how they're graded; we all see reports every month that tell us how we're doing against other dealerships in the area that sell the same brands. It is for this reason that OEM-mandated search marketing, as affordable as it is, simply isn't the best way to improve sales. At the dealership level, the lowest hanging fruit for increased business is by taking sales from the real competition, namely the other Ford store a few miles away.

As mentioned, there is one advantage to the OEM-mandated search marketing: it's cheaper. It's often paid for in whole or in part and can act as a check box on your marketing. "Yep, we're doing SEO and PPC. The OEM is taking care of that for us."

Unfortunately, that's really the only advantage. It's designed in most cases to keep every dealership inside their own little box. Reaching outside of the direct market area is a no-no for companies that work for the OEMs. In fact, they're goal is to keep the boxes neat and tidy.

When the search marketing is focused at the dealership level, it's a completely different strategy. The goals have changed; it's not that a Ford dealer doesn't want to take market share from a Chevy dealer, but that's a heck of a lot harder than taking a deal from the Ford dealer down the road. Let's say there's a dealer in a small town a few miles from you. They're the only Ford dealer in that town. Everyone in town knows them. When they want to do business with that dealership, they'll search for the dealership by name.

Consumers who search for the dealership by city are looking for an alternative. They know about Bob Ricky's Toyota in the heart of town. If they do a search for "Somewhereville Toyota Dealers" or "Toyota Dealers Near Somewhereville", you'll want your dealership to pop up. People that do searches like that are trying to find someone else from which to buy their Toyota. If they wanted to buy from Bob Ricky's Toyota, they would have searched for "Bob Ricky's Toyota". They didn't. They want someone else. They want you. If you're ranked for that search, there's a good chance they'll check out your website to see if they can do business with you instead of Bob Ricky.

Unfortunately, the OEM-mandated search marketing products aren't designed to help in this regard. In many ways, they're designed to prevent this from happening.

If your goal is to beat the competition, your competition, then don't look to the OEM's search marketing company. Don't just check off the search marketing box and call it a day. Explore your options and see if there's a way to improve your search marketing to focus on helping your dealership the best way you can, by being aggressive and getting your dealership in as many relevant searches as possible.

When the topic of SEO comes up, many people envision HTML code and meta tag adjustments. They think of keyword stuffing. They consider the bounds set by the OEM of what they can and cannot do with their websites and how far they can push the boundaries to extend their market reach.

They don't usually imagine finding cool images and videos of epic cars or amazing places, but that's one activity that dealers and SEOs can do to affect their overall search rankings as well as reach out to their communities with amazing and sharable content.

Today, social has become a tremendous SEO tool. Content is the key to true social interactions. The best content is informative, fun, or both. You should see where I'm heading with this, but just in case...

Step 1: Find Content that YOU Enjoy

There are two connections between our virtual world and the real world that need to be noted. On one hand, you have the "sell sell sell" mentality that often prevents dealers from adding content to their website that isn't totally on point with the goal of the dealership: more sales. On the other hand, we're car people. If you're in this business, you love cars (at least you should). As such, thatconnection should definitely come through to the online presence of the dealership but it's often absent.

Above, you'll see an image of a 1956 Ford F-100. It's one of the coolest trucks (in my humble opinion) that was ever built. Why not pay tribute to it on a Ford website? That would be fun, right?

Perhaps more importantly, it can help your search rankings as well as your social outreach by doing so. Find content you love. Then...

Step 2: Put It On Your Website

The most important part here is attribution. I'm not a fan of stealing content. Whenever possible, use images that you've taken. If you must use the internet, there are sites such as Shutterstock that allow you to pay for content images and they have tons of pictures of both cars and locations. If you're going to rely on Google to get the images, be sure to attribute the source with a link to them. They are supplying you with content that will help your website. The least you can do is help them back by supplying them with a link.

With that out of the way, let's talk content. The reason that you're supposed to find content that YOU enjoy is because you'll be able to write much more easily about it. If it's something that you don't care about, it'll show in your writing. If you adore it (just as I adore the '55 and '56 F-100's I used in this project) then it'll show.

There doesn't have to be a ton of written content. If anything, that can be a detriment to have too much. Let the images or videos speak for themselves. With that said, you musthave some unique content on the page or it won't last. One, two, maybe three paragraphs is plenty.

Make it personal. This doesn't have to be the Wikipedia version. It can come from your heart. At your soul, you like cars, right? Let that shine through in the writing. Speaking of Wikipedia, you have to fight the urge to copy and paste. The content must be unique.

Check out the page itself on Holiday Automotive's 1955 Ford F100 page.

Step 3: Make a Couple of Quick SEO Decisions and Apply Them

It's great to have fun with your content, but you want to be able to get a benefit out of it without risking loss of a customer. The first benefit is to help with your search rankings. While it's possible for the page itself to rank for terms associated with F-100s, unless you're a classic truck dealer you're not going to benefit from this.

Instead, use the page to help your domain rank better in general and to help another page rank better for a specific keyword. In this case, we're going to work on getting the homepage ranked for "Wisconsin Ford Dealers", a keyword that they're currently not hitting with on page one. There are two other SEO benefits that we'll talk about below.

The other decision that you'll want to make is whether or not to include the page in your navigation. In most cases, one-off content like this should not be in your navigation. You want to drive traffic to a page like this through social media. No need to distract your normal website visitors with a "fun" page.

The exception to this rule is if you're going to create a lot of pages with amazing content. In such a case, you may want to consider having a section of the website dedicated to this type of content. It can be "Amazing Ford Vehicles through the Decades" with collections of pages similar to this one. It could be "The Best of the Best in Chicago" with pages dedicated to the amazing things and landmarks within the city. There are many options, but a time commitment is required. If you go with occasional one-off pages, you should probably keep them out of the navigation.

Step 4: The Social Buttons

Most pages on most dealer websites have social buttons. Some even go so far as to have toolbars at the bottom or "Share This" widgets. These are acceptable for most pages because, let's face it, nobody's sharing your site anyway. These toolbars and share widgets are smoke and mirror tactics used by some vendors to sell... nevermind - that's another blog post in the future.

The share buttons you'll want on a content page like this will be the ones supplied by the sites themselves. We recommend Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and Pinterest, though some may want to include others such as Tumblr, StumbleUpon, etc.

This is the second (and arguably most important) aspect to helping your SEO. Both Google and Bing have acknowledged that social signals play a role in the search rankings of a domain. For the most part, the content on dealer websites is unsharable... until now. These types of pages can be shared if you have the right content and the right social accounts in place to share them.

This is where the disclaimer must be made. This isn't A Field of Dreams. Just because you build it, that doesn't mean they'll come. At KPA we have accumulated some incredible social media experts that give us the resources to make sure our dealers get the social signals they need for success. Some would say it's the unfair advantage that keeps us at the top in SEO. It's definitely possible to get social signals without the "power accounts" that we have in our arsenal, but that, too, is another blog post altogether. For now, do what you can and even "fake it 'til you make it" by having employees, friends, and even family share the page on social media. After all, it's a content page. It's not like you're asking them to spam their social friends with a car for sale. This is an epic Ford F100. Share away!

Finally, you'll notice the "Embed this Image" code. This is best for infographics but it works for images as well. This is to assist in helping to get links to the page, which brings us to...

Step 5: Get Links to the Page

The concept of "link bait" is still a valid play in the SEO world and this type of page qualifies. However, unless you're able to drive massive traffic to the page, you won't get a ton of links organically. It's time to share it yourself.

Find content sites that would like to see this type of content on their pages. You have blogs (even your own blog), Tumblr, and other content sites that love compilations. In this case, we used Buzzfeed as well as some blogs.

As you can see in the image, we link again to the target keyword and include the images as the content on the page. The text content is unique - no copy and paste here either. It will only take a couple of links to get this particular keyword ranked if you're using the right sites.

Google's Penguin update is looking for link spam, so don't participate in those types of tactics. If you're going to be building a lot of links, make certain that it's natural and organic. Building links that all have the same anchor text is one thing that can trigger the algorithm's filter.

Do it the right way or don't do it at all. To much is at stake. In this case, the handful of links that we built will not hurt the domain and will help to get it ranked for our target keyword. It will also help the overall link authority of the domain. Whenever participating in link-building, always think quality over quality.

Step 6: Social Outreach

Now that you've got the page and supporting pages built, it's time to share it. If your social media pages are strong, it's as simple as sharing it by creating an image gallery. Keep in mind - this will not count as a Facebook like or Google +1. You can share the link from the page itself on your social channels but they will not get as much exposure that way.

Photos rule.

I did, however, link to the page in the comments.

The goal here is to drive some traffic. It won't be much, but if your social media presence is strong you'll get some traffic to it, particularly from Twitter and Pinterest. The goal is to "double dip" with the content so that you're allowing it to help your social pages to flourish. It's great content. Share it!

Step 7: Rinse and Repeat

Set a schedule for yourself. It could be once a week, once a month, or once in a while, but be sure to set aside some time to creating these types of pages. A content-rich website supported by links and social interactions is the key to overall success on both the search and social fronts.

A final note - this is fun and once you get good it can all flow very efficiently, but it does take understanding. If anything at all in this was unclear, please reach out to me. This isn't one of those things in automotive internet marketing that can be done partially well. You either do it right or you do it wrong - there's very little grey area and there's even less room for error.

It may be the biggest change in the Google algorithm that very few people noticed. The reason they didn't notice is that the change has been slowly happening since February, 2011. Between Panda, Penguin, and the rise of social signals, word count of content is not something that you should ever focus upon when writing content for search engine optimization or social media marketing purposes.

Here's a quick breakdown of the loose timeline. One of the first changes that happened when Panda, Google's low-value content algorithm change of 2011, rolled out was that the total number of unique words in stories had a predictable affect on SEO value. Stories with fewer words were deemed less valuable. This lasted for about a month. I cannot say for sure how the conversation went at Google, but at some point in the early days of Panda Google noticed that there was some great but very short content that was being hurt, while low-quality content with a lot of words was getting favorable treatment. This is where links and social signals started making a quick comeback into the realm of understanding the importance of a piece of content.

The example in the image above is what Google likes today. That's not to say that they don't like long, comprehensive content, but in the case above an infographic with a coupe of paragraphs of content but strong social signals to the page was able to easily trump much longer pieces of content on the same subject. It ranks exceptionally well for the target keywords despite the lack of words.

The content that you post should have a purpose. It should then fulfill this purpose in as few words as possible. This is a dramatic change from the days of old in SEO where more was better. Now, quality trumps quantity (as it does in so many other ways and in other arenas) to the point that giving your readers what they need without loading it with fluff is ideal. They will be more likely to share it, to link to it, and to interact with it if it's something that fits into their schedule. That's not to say that you should only write a couple of paragraphs on any subject and call it a day. It simply means that you should write your content to fit the need, to fulfill the goal, and to become a resource for your readers.

It's quality that makes the difference. You're better off focusing on a topic that is important and of interest to your readers, then bring the value to them quickly.

I do not want to be misunderstood on this: if a topic needs 1500 words to cover it properly, then write 1500 words. The point is that if a topic takes 300 words to cover it, don't think you have to fluff it up to any of the "magic numbers" like 500 words for it to be valid to Google. It doesn't. They know. It's better to have a short, concise, and valuable 200 word article with a graphic that gets shared on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Pinterest, and other social sites and that people are willing to link to from their websites than to have a piece that's fluffed up to hit a particular word count.

Write what you need to write, no more, no less. Focus on quality and get the concept of word counts out of your mind for good.

I had the pleasure of watching a very informative webinar last night that really brought home the importance of having a robust dealership presence online.  I truly enjoy studying the shift in advertising from the traditional way of doing business to the modern way of doing business.  I've seen dealerships that had all the right brands under one rooftop but sell 70-90 units a month while their competition sells over 200 units a month; due to the fact of poor leadership, nonexistent online presence, horrible culture and negative online reviews about the dealerships service dept. (a service customer is 7 times more likely to buy at the dealership that he/she uses for service) just to name a few.  The days of just building a multi-million dollar facility and waiting for the customer to come is over!!  We know that by the time the consumer actually gets to your store (unless a real pro made contact during the ZMOT and you never seen the consumer) they are no longer at the point of interest but now at the point of sale.  Look at these alarming numbers:

1. In 2006 the average consumer visited 4.1 dealerships and conducted 68% Internet research.
2. In 2011 the average consumer visited 1.3 dealerships and conducted 84% Internet research and some conducted over 90% Internet research depending on the brand.
3. In 2000 dealer ad spending was newspaper 52%, Internet 4.6%, T.V. 15.5% and radio 14%
4. In 2010 dealer ad spending was newspaper 22%, Internet 23.7%, T.V. 20.1% and radio 16% (and of course we know that Internet ad spending is much higher now in 2012). 

And when I have sales people that are friends of mine call me and tell me how slow it is and how they only got 5 cars out and it's the 25th of the month; yes some are LAZY however, some are at a store that in 2012 the owner and GM does business like it's 1980. 

SEM and SEO is such a interesting subject that if you want to bring value to your store it's imperative that you study these ideas because when you begin to talk with your owner or GM about what you're studying you will become a valuable asset at your dealership or the competition will hear about you and start calling you.  Good luck and good selling....    

Every few months, marketers around the blogosphere start the next batch of chants that search engine optimization is dying or dead. It's like clockwork; Google makes a change, their pages rank poorly, they declare that the party's over. I think I've written about the topic at least once a year since 2008.

The chants are starting again and I'm here to tell you that, as usual, they are premature. I'm not so naive as to make a statement like "SEO will never die," but the thought that the death is here is silly. It's not dead. It has changed. It changes frequently - perhaps more frequently in recent months - but it's not dead yet. In fact, those who are doing the right things are finding that their rankings are actually improving.

Why They Always Pronounce it Dead

Since the dawn of SEO, there have been tricks that work for a short period of time. We've always taken the stance that anything that smells like a "trick" will not last and should be dismissed. This concept has helped us to stay on top of our searches and the keywords of our clients.

For example, 2007 saw a major increase in the effectiveness of social news and social bookmarking links. It was almost too easy - if you submitted a piece of content to Digg, it would rank for easy keywords within a few hours and for tougher keywords in a few days. Smart marketers refused to play this game knowing that Google would catch on and instead learned to use sites like Digg and Reddit to drive real SEO juice by posting powerful content and exposing it to the social news world. This still applies today for many sites, though they are fading quickly from relevance (except Reddit, which is growing).

Any time one of these tricks stops working, the SEOpocalypse is declared.

The most recent change that has everyone up in arms is the devaluing of automated links. Footer links, sidebar links, link farms - Google and Bing both have found ways to not only discredit these links but to make them harmful when done too much. SEO is dead... for those who couldn't keep up with these changes.

Why SEO isn't Dead

Thankfully, smart marketers did not participate in the automated link-building programs. Personally, I'm shocked it took as long as it did for Google and Bing to figure it out. There was a time in late 2011 that I was starting to doubt my choice of not having our SEO team get in on the link-automation trend. I was getting questioned by some within the company because the path we chose, one of unique content and contextual link generation, was much more expensive to operate than the automated ways.

The corner was finally turned with the Penguin update and subsequent tweaks and my choices were vindicated.

Today, content is no longer a tool for SEO. It is an overarching concept that includes SEO as part of its mandate. In other words, the tool is now the goal and the goals of SEO, reputation, branding, and social media marketing all revolve around quality content.

When you're out there reading about the marketing trends of 2013, take note of those who are pulling away from social media or SEO and those who are pushing forward. This is easy for me to say since it's the direction that my company is heading, but it happens to be the truth. Quality content that people can enjoy, proper link-building and social signal practices that revolve around this content, and social media marketing that doesn't rely on funny cat pictures - these are the real trends that will drive proper marketing in 2013.

Let there be absolutely, positively no mistake here. "Tags" have completely different uses depending on the platform on which they're used. We're going to take a look at three of the most popular platforms and how tags affect them: Wordpress, Ning, and Tumblr.

Before we dive into each, let's get one thing out of the way. Those who say that tags are old and no longer useful are simply being lazy and encouraging the same. It takes less than 30 seconds to come up with a handful of appropriate tags to go along with any blog post and therefore it falls under the category of "why not?" Nobody outside of Mountain View, CA, knows for certain how tags benefit search engine optimization. They do, however, definitely have an opportunity to benefit the reader. It's a best practice that is getting pushed aside by many. Don't fall into the laziness trap. Tag away!

Tags for Wordpress

Depending on how you have your site indexing set up in the back end, tags allow search engines to find similar articles. The two major types of taxonomy, tags and categories, are intended to help people navigate a blog. As a result, Google and Bing will follow tags and categories in order to see what level of understanding a blog has on each individual topic.

The tag pages themselves, once visited, will give the search engines a depth-of-content picture. For example, if you have a blog for a Nissan dealership that often uses the tag "Altima", the search engines will be able to see that you have written a good amount of content on the topic. Many would argue that they know this already and that semantic indexing is designed in part to replace tagging as a method of establishing authority, but again, "why not?" It definitely doesn't hurt to tag. It probably helps on Wordpress, even if only a little. There's not reason to skip the few seconds it takes to add them.

Tags for Ning

On the Ning social platform, tags work in ways similar to Wordpress, but with an added bonus. Blog posts on Ning do not have categories the way that discussions do. As a result, tags become the primary taxonomy that search engines and readers use to navigate a site when they want to see similar articles.

Some have also speculated that there is a direct SEO value to the individual post, that the search engines look at tags very similar to how they look at highlighted content and will give a post a lift in the rankings as a result. This is unconfirmed and I've never tested it myself, but I would speculate that it is true.

Tags for Tumblr

This is an entirely different ballgame. On Tumblr, tags are everything. The community lives off of tags in a way that is similar to hashtags on Twitter, but there are certain ones that are eternally "trending", so to speak.

Tags are Tumblr users' primary method of discovery. Tumblr has devalued them a bit in recent months and focused on "Spotlight" that highlights individually influential tumblogs rather than the community-rich "Explore" page that lets people surf tags, but they're still extremely important and can help a new tumblog get found by the community. Getting found on Tumblr is the key to both social exposure and search; reblogs by other Tumblr users are extremely important and can mean the difference between having an invisible tumblog and having an extremely popular one.

Tags for Humans

At the end of the day, the real benefit of tags should be for the readers. Google and Bing may or may not pay attention to them, but allowing your blog visitors to latch onto a particular topic and follow it all the way through is a way to make your blog stickier.

Again, it takes second. Why not?

For the past several years, content has been a component of search engine and social media marketing that fell far below the tricks and techniques that helped achieve business goals. It was possible to be successful with limited or low-quality content. In fact, there are those who were able to succeed with no content at all, fooling the search engines and social media sites with methods that proved to be more fruitful than actually creating content that the audience wanted.

Those days are finally behind us. It has been a long time coming, but now that search engines, social media sites, and people themselves have seen through the tricks, it's a whole new world in marketing. Today, content rests at the top of the marketing funnel with search engine optimization and social media marketing reduced to components of an overall content marketing strategy. Here's what it all means:

Why Content is Finally King

Despite the proclamations of many marketers over the years, content has not been "king" until very recently. It was always useful, but great content without supporting inbound links would not rank and great content without strong social media promotions would not go viral. Things have changed.

Amazing content that is useful, entertaining, or both now has a better opportunity to be seen through both search and social. Google is finding the content more easily, making it possible for it to be found without having to artificially inflate the inbound link count. Today, link-building is still an extremely important component of a proper search strategy, but it must center around quality content rather than boost up poor content.

Good links are still powerful and high-quality content can help to generate these links. With a little seeding, the links can come in more easily than in the past when most of the links that marketers created were bulk rather than quality.

From a social perspective, there's still a distinct need for some promotions. Unlike Google, Facebook and the other social media sites will not actively find your content. However, by getting it a little promotional exposure by sharing it and focusing on it from the website homepage or landing pages, the content can be found. From there, it's a matter of allowing the content to be easily shared.

Rising social sites like Pinterest and Tumblr are ideal for seeding the promotions of content. It can be shared on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ as well, of course, but the tighter communities on Pinterest and Tumblr actually create an easier path to take content viral on social media than the larger sites. There's a need for a strong account or two to promote them, but it's not as involved as building power accounts on Facebook or Twitter. One can be exceptional at Tumblr and Pinterest very quickly.

Content is at the top of the marketing food chain. It's the spark that generates search marketing links and social signals. It's also the source of social media sharing. Rather than use content for SEO or social media marketing, smart marketers will switch it up and use the content as the central point through which search and social marketing can flow.

Despite the rise of social signals and the continued prominence of content as primary search engine optimization tools, high-quality inbound links remain one of the three big components in improving rankings. The automated processes have been devalued; low-quality posts, footer links, and sidebar links are a thing of the past and in excess can actually hurt a website.

Strong, contextual links are still valid. In fact, some have shown that they're more important than ever.

In this infographic by Digital Net Agency, they examine the two different types of link-acquisition strategies. They talk about the six major bad strategies to avoid and then highlight five techniques that work. One in particular, "contributing", should be fleshed out a bit. The idea is that by creating and sharing content that brings value to others, it's possible to generate high-quality contextual links by the sheer merits of the content and its promotion. In essence, if you're bringing value, you'll get value in return.

Click to enlarge.

"Links" image courtesy of Shutterstock.

I've learned that coincidences don't really happen. There's always a reason. As I worked on my story today regarding content, I stopped to check Facebook and found exactly what I needed, courtesy of Jeff Glackin.

What you say in all of the media types - television, radio, print, social media, search marketing, billboards, etc. - has an opportunity to reach people. Often I'm asked questions about spends and ROI.

• Will $10,000 spent on social media give the same or better yield than $10,000 spent on television?
  
  
• Should I sink everything into online marketing or keep my offline marketing going strong?
  
  
• Should I minimize my internet spend to just a website and classified ads and move the rest of my budget offline again?

This topic deserves much more research and examples than I can put together today, but it's important to get in the right frame of mind before exploring this topic more fully. To do this, I'll rely on a pretty good video on the topic. It's not a superb video but it evokes emotion and gets the basic point across.

For years, marketers and search engine optimization gurus have been preaching something. They've been telling the world that "content is king" and that if you put the right content on your website, that it will rank well. After all, who would deny the king, right?

The reality was different. Up until April 24th, 2012, content was not king. It was a queen, maybe even a jack - a face card to be sure. However, it wasn't king. Inbound links were king. Other factors such as exact-match domains, site age, and offsite attribution were aces.

Things have changed all the way around. Thanks to the Penguin update, links are now more challenging to come by. Don't misunderstand this - links have not been devalued. If anything, they are more powerful now than they were before the update. Low-quality, automated, spammy links have been completely devalued to the point that they can actually do harm to your domain. For this reason, inbound linking strategies have been forced to clean up their act. Only the highest level of pure links work the magic now. More on that in a moment, but first, let's talk social...

One of the "hidden" changes that happened on or around the same time as the Penguin update was the increased value given to social signals. Google has been considering social signals in the ranking algorithm since December, 2010 (publicly, at least), but they really started pumping up their significance this year. It's very likely that the timing of the change was intended to coincide with Penguin; making two major changes at the same time - one public, one behind the scenes - is the perfect way to keep people like me on my toes.

This brings us to the content. As I mentioned, links of the highest caliber are still powerful, possibly more powerful than ever before. Social signals are equally powerful. The inaccurate but easy math behind it is that links, social, and onsite content account for 30% of the ranking algorithm with the other 10% going to outside or uncontrollable forces such as domain age. If all three major components are equal, how can content now be king?

Today and going forward, there are three types of content for dealer websites. There's the "money content" - the pages that are there to generate leads such as inventory pages. There's the SEO content - the pages designed to target specific keywords and drive traffic to your site from various search terms. Lastly, there's "sharable content" - the pages that are of general interest to visitors that come to your website for reasons other than to do business with the dealership.

Many will avoid the third type as "cool content pages" such as a picture gallery of modified Honda Civics or a video of your dealership's participation in the March of Dimes walkathon do not directly generate leads. This is their biggest mistake and an opportunity for you to shine.

You see, these are the pages that can generate organic links. These are the pages that can be shared on social media to generate the social signals. These are the pages that will allow people to interact with your site even if they're not buying a car. The effects of links and social signals do not just hit the page itself. They help the domain. If you're posting content on your site that is bringing in links and social signals, the other pages (including the "money content" pages) will rank better in search and gain more exposure through social.

It's not an easy process without the appropriate understanding, but once you get the hang of it, there are few things that come more naturally to us. We're all "car people". We got into this business to make money and be around vehicles (at least that's the hope). If you generate the type of content that should come naturally to you and expose that content through the proper channels, you'll have an advantage over your competitors. Despite the ease in which this can be accomplished, few will attempt it. Even fewer will do it right. You have an opportunity to get way ahead of the competition in internet marketing with a little knowledge, a little practice, and a little help.

For a while now we've been discussing the concept of posting "sharable" content on your website to support your "money pages" and "SEO pages". Here's a quick breakdown of the three to act as a refresher:

• Money Pages - These are the pages that are designed to generate leads. Inventory details pages, specials, landing pages, contact pages - the places where leads are formed.
• SEO Pages - An SEO page is one that is designed specifically to target specific keywords. You may make a page called "Chevy Camaro Milwaukee", for example. They usually have content of some sort to help them rank but are rarely sharable.
• Sharable Pages - These are the "fun" pages that very few dealers or vendors ever build. They are designed to draw traffic from sources other than search such as social media. The goal is to create content that people will enjoy and that they're willing to share.

We've discussed why these sharable pages are important, but in a nutshell the goal of a sharable page is to support money pages and SEO pages by driving social signals and organic links to your domain. The sharable pages help by linking internally to important pages but they also increase the domain's overall rankings through these social signals and links.

It's all well and good, but people have asked me for an example of the content that a sharable page might have, so here it is. Below is content that was posted on a Dodge dealer's website. It is about classic Dodge Chargers. Most dealers would think that it's useless since they don't have a lineup of 1969 Chargers on their front line, but because of the potential popularity and sharability of such a post, it could help to drive inbound links and social signals in ways that standard dealer website content cannot.

As you look at the content notice a few things:

1. Big images. People love to share large images.
2. Universal appeal. Even non-Dodge people can admire the beauty of this beast.
3. Unique, relevant, but not-too-much content. It doesn't have to be a novel. This is the bare-minimum text content that you would want to post, but it works.
4. Social buttons at the bottom. You want to use the native buttons. Share tools are often ineffective and are not read as easily by the search engines as the native buttons.
5. Embed code. This allows people to quickly and easily share the content on their own site.

Please feel free to ask questions about this content example.

It seems as though YouTube is usually left to the waste side due to Dealers feeling as though it takes too much time or effort in keeping up their channel, or even more so coming up with a subject to talk about without making it sound like an advertisement. Getting inspired to make a video can be as easy as capitalizing on the people and customers that surround you daily, even your inventory can make an appearance, but how?

You need to evoke emotion.

You can make a YouTube video using your smartphone or digital camera; it doesn’t need to be a fancy production, just a clean one. Try to keep it steady or invest in a tri-pod to be your camera person. Have your sales reps be advocates of the dealership by sharing which car they love the most or by sharing their story of how they became a part of the Dealership.

Tap into loyal customers and ask for reviews on their vehicles or to have them share their customer service experience on camera.

Showcase your inventory by telling a story about the car, more like what the car can do FOR you than how much it will cost or quickly going over its specs. Instead, share how to use the Ford Sync or why your form of the mini-van is great for families, walk them through it as a friend, not a salesperson.

In the following video you can learn more on how your Dealership can use YouTube with three easy steps in 3 minutes.

BY Erin Ryan

TK Carsites

Source: DrivingSales.com

My previous blog post, Google's New Car Lead Program: The Basics, I discussed Google Cars, which is Google's New Car Lead program that they will be rolling out in the coming months. It's currently in Beta testing. Once again, Google has made a huge splash with the inclusion of LiveChat, powered by ActiveEngage, into Adwords. 

Here's how it works:

As we all know, each time we enter something into Google (Chevrolet, Toyota, VW, etc..), at the top of the search results, there is the adwords sponsored result. With this new addition of LiveChat engagement, you'll see the words LIVE CHAT next to the URL. Once you click on that, a dialog box will pop up (See below)

As you can see above, it's all very neat and clean, easy to navigate. Once you enter your name & Start Chat, you'll be in a chat with a representative from that brand and prompted to enter your Zip Code, so the consumer will be able to find the dealership in their city/town. 

Have you been following Google's steady migration into the automotive world? As I mentioned before, they announced a New Car Lead program last month, and now this inclusion of LiveChat into Adwords. What do you think of Google's dive into the Automotive sales world? What are the benefits that you see? 

*Original Photo from Brian Pasch

http://www.dealersynergy.com

SEO For Startups In Under 10 Minutes - Search Engine Optimization - Google