YouTube Dos and Don’ts
by Andrew Zielinski
Video Production Manager, Dealer Video Production

The human race has a stunning tendency to add more and more new words to its vast vocabulary; this trend has apparently become more active in the last decade than any before it. Among the most popular made-up phrases are verbs of the Internet age -- Googling, in many circles, has become one of the most common. Quickly rising over the horizon is one for Google’s child program and world-famous time killer, “YouTube-ing”.

On the Android market alone, the YouTube app has just north of 9 million downloads -- and counting. So if over 9 million people across the planet are using YouTube as their number one source of videos (and let’s be honest, who isn’t?), then for automotive sales professionals, it’s far beyond recommended that you post whatever business-related videos you can.

That being said, you have to be careful with how you use the platform, as it can be either your best friend or your worst enemy. Here are two of the biggest dos and don’ts when uploading your work to YouTube...

DO: Take Advantage of YouTube’s Editing Program

 Let’s face it: it’s hard to make most cell phone footage look good. Even with the iPhone 6 and its unbelievable ability to capture 4k video footage (for those not film-savvy, 4k footage is pretty much the pinnacle of digital beauty), it’s still hard to make any ordinary video visually appealing. Shakiness, poor lighting, and lackluster audio are abound on any ordinary phone clip.

Luckily, the brains over at YouTube came up with “in-house” editing programs back in 2010 that help users either polish or cut their projects, ideally for the better. This process certainly helps forgo the need for modern video editing software like Final Cut Pro and Sony Vegas, which can be expensive and require hours and hours of training.

Should you upload a video to YouTube and notice that the image is dark, desaturated, or in need of some pizzazz, then you can go to town on the ‘Enhancements’ page. To access this, enter the ‘Video Manager’ tab under the ‘Creator Studio’ page and click the ‘Edit’ button next to your video, followed by the ‘Enhancements’ button on the following page.

Under ‘Enhancements’, you can adjust the video’s Fill Light, Contrast, Saturation, and Color Temperature. With Fill Light, you can increase the brightness of any murky footage, whereas Contrast will give your video a deep, cinematic quality, Saturation will emphasize the colors or take them away, and Color Temperature will give your footage either a blue or a yellow tint.

In addition to the ‘Quick Fixes’ tab, you can add a variety of tones in the ‘Filters’ tab or blur out faces in the ‘Blurring Effects’ tab. This section is essentially your one-stop-shop for enhancements to really carry your video to the next visual level.

If you plan to edit together one or more personal uploads, or even create a montage, the YouTube Video Editor has a number of features that can add copyright-free stock footage and music, flashy transitions, text elements, and personal images and photos. With all of these easy-to-use features, any automotive sales professionals can cut together a video with an intro, outro, name card, and cutaway clips. These tools will come in handy when reaching out to a customer and needing to make a solid first impression.

DON’T: Let YouTube Stabilize Your Video

 You’ve seen it a hundred times: whenever you upload a mildly unstable video clip, YouTube gives you a highlighted prompt that says it has detected shaky footage and offers to “correct” that issue. Sure, your first thought is almost always going to be “if YouTube wants to improve my video, why not let them?” but in reality, that gift horse is loaded with a few too many Trojan soldiers, convinced that they’re doing the right thing.

Rather than turning shaky footage into a smooth, crisp, visually-appealing shot, the YouTube stabilizer overcompensates in its abilities and tries its best to wrangle the crazy horse with the worst rope imaginable. The footage comes out in a more drastic state, often looking twitchy, frantic, and sometimes excessively warped -- which means that no one will want to watch it. But what happens if you already accepted the invitation to stabilize and can’t change it back?

Good news: you can. Two ways, in fact. By accessing the ‘Enhancements’ feature, you can click the ‘Revert to Original’ button and click ‘Save’ to keep the original look of your upload. The alternative method is (in the same editing page) to click the division line that separates the ‘Original’ and Preview’ portions in the video preview window and drag it all the way to the right, thus showing only the ‘Original’ portion, then save.

Before you immediately race to YouTube and save your videos from embarrassment with these two methods, please bear in mind: if you added any filters or adjustments to the same clips, they too will vanish. Remember to look before you leap, folks, lest you should have to go back and try to match the precise changes that you made before.

Above all else, I cannot stress enough that what goes on the Internet stays on the Internet. Be mindful of what you are putting into cyberspace, be it content- or quality-wise. Even the simplest mistake can offset a customer and turn them into a brick wall. Listen to the content, make sure the shots are clean, and that the audio is intelligible. And for the love of all mankind, keep it tasteful. Laziness and unprofessionalism can slam a door faster than you can say “Jack Robinson”.

Sources Cited

PS3orDie. "HOW TO UNDO YOUTUBE FIX FOR SHAKY VIDEOS." YouTube. YouTube, 01 Oct. 2012. Web. 28 Apr. 2016. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94X0xQicil0>.

Magic Tricks. "Re: Is There a Way to Take a Way the "Shaky Video Filter" Thing Youtube Suggests? I Really Need Help." Web log comment.Google Groups. N.p., 18 July 2012. Web. 28 Apr. 2016. <https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/youtube/sarDbAM1M5c>.

Yume and IPG Media Lab just released a really interesting study regarding how viewers engage with online video ads differently than they do with television ads. To draw their conclusions, they took measurements of facial expressions, eye movement and placement and biometrics to determine the interaction and engagement levels of both TV and online video...and the winner is...

Do Viewers Interact With Online Video Ads Differently From TV?

First thing first: the what, why, and how. They set out to answer three major questions in their research:

SEE ALSO: Attention, Excitement and Video Ad Recall Levels are Screen Dependent?

Do people pay attention to online video differently than they do when watching TV?

If they are different, should an online video ad impression be valued the same way that TV ads are?

What are the quantitative and qualitative differences between TV watching and online video?

It seems that these guys really got it because their basic assumptions included the fact that a controlled environment adds bias to the behavior. Ad avoidance is normal; an ad on-screen doesn't mean a view. How people watch is as important (or more) than what.

Now this was a very limited study, there were only 48 participants who were chosen based on demographic diversity and their viewing of online and traditional TV.

They they showed them an hour of video and did facial tracking analysis and some biometric analysis.

That's as technical as I'll get for you. Let's get to the results!

Online Video Ad Recall Vs. TV: The Results!

It seems that short attention spans and instant gratification needs have teamed up in Americans to show that we can't just watch most shows for their entire length. Or maybe the content of the shows just isn't totally engrossing and so we fill the attention gap with other media. Our mobile phones are the biggest distraction in regards to ad avoidance with 60.4% of subjects using it and DVRs play a big part of that as well with 45.8% using that. Having a laptop in the room is also a major distraction for TV viewers.

For online media, the phone still reigns supreme but surprisingly, 27% of the subjects had no distractions while online. One might say that online video content is far more engaging, or it could have been a fluke (remember, only 48 subjects in the test).

Using a DVR often brought attention levels up, but that was mainly to actively avoid commercials by skipping over them.

Overall, online ad retention and recall were far higher for online than they were for TV. This is mostly because of the DVR-memory gap effect (my term) where people are actively avoiding ads with the DVR, after all, that's half the reason to use one right?

Catch programs you might miss and skip the ads.

This graph is really quite strange if you think about it and shows that DVR memory gap effect. For TV the unremembered ads is increased by the DVR and yet, unaided ad recall is about the same level while aided ad recall is lower than both. It almost seems counter-intuitive. Perhaps what's happening is that people are actually seeing the ad images while DVR ad-skipping and because they weren't completely bored, as they didn't have to sit through the whole ad, they remembered a single frame with branding on it which flashed by as they were fast forwarding.

The New TV Ad Format?

That could be something really interesting to investigate more thoroughly. I've noticed a lot of remotes don't have ad-skip buttons so that means if you're actively ad-skipping you're going to push the FF button until you see a frame of the show you're watching and then hit play.

What if advertisers were to know exactly how many frames were generally skipped, how often a frame showed up on screen and how often a viewer stopped short? Those would then be the ideal places to stick big, branded, static images because then those frames would be seen, even somewhat passively, by the viewers and could be far more effective than fancy live-action ads which don't show the brand much of the time.

This might be the new way to start designing ads for TV.

The Big Win for Online Video Ads

For the online video crowd, i.e. us, this is far easier to deal with. Anytime a video is fast-forwarded over an ad or where an ad would be placed, the ad simply plays when the viewer stops scrubbing or presses play. I've seen this on places like Hulu, who actually show you where the ad will be. Since Hulu is giving me the content free, I don't even bother skipping the ads (see how tolerant I am sometimes).

Here are the big results from the survey if you ask me: online ad recall was twice as high as TV ad recall, both aided and unaided. Check out the chart below.

Perhaps that's the anti-DVR effect. You generally can't get past the ads online whether you're scrubbing or fast forwarding, so it means you'll see them more often. However, I think that the ads also need to still maintain both a short length (15 seconds) or be entertaining and not too frequent.

Because the other thing this research shows is just how easy we, as online video viewers, might simply start multi-tasking far more and mentally blocking out the ads. So advertisers...be warned.

Source: Video Advertising Recall 2X Higher Than TV, According to Study http://www.reelseo.com/tv-online-video-attention-levels/#ixzz2giggkbFw 
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We’ve all heard about how inbound marketers need to get more creative with their content format by incorporating visuals, audio, and images. Heck, we’ve even created a free crash course (with templates) for non-designers tocreate visual content to react to this trend. With all these content types, aren’t we forgetting something?

Oh right. SEO. Even with the new glasses, Google still can’t read and index images, video, and audio content without a little help. Luckily, we have everything you need to know about SEO for non-written content, from images, to video, to audio content. Let's dive in, shall we?

Best Practices for Image SEO

To explain this concept, let's take a step back and imagine we're proprietors of a tasty ice cream shop. You've just created an infographic about the most popular ice cream flavors and toppings, and now you want to ensure it's optimized to show up in Google. Here's what you do.

1) Pick an image that's in a Google-supported format.

Before uploading your beautiful ice cream infographic, make sure it’s in the right format. Google can only index images that are saved as BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, WebP, and SVG. Don’t worry if your image isn’t in that format yet -- most image editors have the capability to save the file as a GIF or JPEG.

2) Name the file using keywords that describe the image.

Raise your hand if you have uploaded an image with a name like "IMG12934.jpg." (Guilty.) Instead of giving search engines a title that has nothing to do with the image, rename the file with a keyword phrase that describes what the image is. Google uses these filenames to index those images and sometimes the file name can even show up as the image title in a SERP. For this infographic, you might try a phrase like, “Popular-Ice-Cream-Flavors-Infographic.jpg”. Isn’t that better? Google thinks so, too. Don't forget to separate words with dashes--Google sees dashes as word separators and underscores as word combiners.

3) Add in helpful alt text.

The alt text of an image not only helps the search engines understand what the content of the image is so they can match it to a relevant search query, but it helps any searchers who can’t view the image understand what they would be looking at. Be as descriptive as possible in your alt text ... without keyword stuffing. Here’s a bad, better, best example for the ice cream example to see what I mean.

• Bad: alt=””
• Better: alt=”Ice cream”
• Best : alt=”Popular ice cream flavors”
• Avoid: alt= “ice cream flavor yummy vanilla chocolate Delicious"

4) Provide context for the image within content.

Remember, your image doesn’t live separately from the rest of your on-page content! Help search engines get a better sense of the story your page tells by referencing the image within your written content. Within your blog post, you might write something like, “On our popular ice cream flavors timeline to the left, you can see that cake batter is one of our newest flavor experiments.” See how I used the same keywords from the file name and alt text, but made it easy for the viewer to read? That’s an SEO win/win/win my friends.

5) Submit an image sitemap.

To make extra-super-sure that your ice cream flavor timeline is indexed by Google, submit an image sitemap to Google Webmaster. Sound scary? Don’t worry. Sitemaps are just an xml file that tells Google about a page on your website it might not discover -- the most simple sitemaps usually list the pages on your website. To create an image sitemap, add image-specific tags to a sitemap or just update one of your existing sitemaps with image tags. We’ll go more into making a sitemap in the video section, but here is exactly how to create and submit an image sitemap to Google.

Best Practices for Video SEO

Now that you’ve got the image basics down, it’s time to tackle video. MarketingSherpapublished a case study that found that videos attract 200-300% more monthly unique visitors who spend twice as long on-site. Sounds good to me! Let’s continue the dessert example, and pretend you want to embed a video on the recipes page with one of your chefs explaining how he makes your famous red velvet cupcakes (am I making you hungry yet?).

1) Save your video in a format that Google can crawl.

Like images, there are only some file formats that Google can read. Make sure your video is saved as a MPG, MPEG, M4V, MOV, WMV, ASF, AVI, RA, RAM, RM, FLV, or SWF. Most video editors will allow you to save your video in different formats.

2) Name your video file strategically.

Just like naming images, save your video file as a name that accurately describes what the file is within the context of the article without keyword stuffing. Luckily, this one is easy. Just save the video with a contextual keyword-appropriate title, like “Red-velvet-cupcake-recipe”.

3) Embrace your keyword strategy in your title, tags, and video meta-description.

You probably guessed it from the images section, but your title, alt text, and meta description should all help search engines understand what the content of your video is. However, keyword strategy from a user perspective is extra important here -- video is very likely to be viewed and searched independent of your website.

Your video title should reflect the keywords that your users are searching for, and that, of course, align with your video's content. Not sure what those are? Use a keyword tool to see what words and phrases people are searching to find your website.

Keywords are especially important to the description you provide for the video. In YouTube, you have up to 5,000 characters to describe your video. Since Google will cut off this description on the SERP to 156 characters, make sure your first sentence includes the keywords you’re optimizing for, but also gives the viewer a reason to click through. Then, continue your description with keywords and context that will help Google understand what your video is about. Finish off the description with alt text, or tags, that help paint a fuller picture for search engines.

4) Try to host only one video per page.

Your website may have a page that acts as a whole archive for its videos. This type of library can be extremely helpful for reference purposes, but from a search engine perspective, it's only a good idea if all the videos are about the same general topic. For instance, you might house all of your recipes videos on one page that's optimized to show up for a query like "dessert recipe videos." But if you want to get more granular, let's say getting found for your series on how to make cupcakes, you might want to create a separate page for videos that would ideally turn up around "cupcake recipe videos."

5) Enable sharing with embedding and specific anchor text.

Social sharing plays a role in SERP rankings for a specific keyword phrase. The Google update story can get complicated with Pandas and Penguins and the like, but one takeaway can be boiled down to four little words: more shares, better rankings. The more people embed your video in their own blog posts or share it on social media, the more the search engines love you (or your content, rather). Help your red velvet cupcake recipe video spread like wildfire by making sure the video is easily embeddable. The option to allow embedding is available on most video hosting services.

6) Create and submit a Video Sitemap to Google Webmaster.

Make sure your video is indexed by Google by submitting a video sitemap to Google webmaster. Like I said in the images section, Sitemaps are XML files with a site’s meta data that inform search engines about pages on their site that are able to be crawled. Bonus points -- submitting a video sitemap to Google Webmaster also encourages Google to include a rich snippet with your video on the SERP.

For the full story on creating and submitting a video sitemap, go straight to the source onGoogle’s Webmaster blog.

7) Include a transcription.

Sometimes, the best way for search engines to index non-written content is to make it written content by adding a transcription. Most video services, including YouTube and Wistia, include transcription services for free or for a small fee. Include a transcription on your page to help search engines and viewers who can’t watch now better consume your content. Even better? Once you have a transcription, you can repurpose that written content into another ebook or blog post. That red velvet cupcake recipe video transcription could easily be added to a recipe ebook with minimal effort or edits.

Best Practices for Audio Content SEO

We’ve talked a lot about optimizing images and videos for search engines, but what about audio content,  like podcasts? Just like Google doesn’t have eyes to view images or video, search engines also don’t have ears to listen in on your audio. But there are still ways to make sure that search engines hear the message. Since all those ice cream flavors and cupcake recipes have got me wanting to cheat on a diet, let’s make this podcast “How to Enjoy Desserts You Love Without the Guilt”.

Many of the SEO standards we discussed for images and video apply here for Google: alt-texts, titles, descriptions, and a unified keyword presence are all relevant for users to find your podcast on Google. However, when people are looking for podcasts, they primarily head to iTunes. To rank high in the iTunes podcast SERP (which often translates to better search engine ranks as well), here are some specific areas to hone in on.

1) Make your podcast easily navigable from the iTunes SERP.

Here’s a quick test to make sure you’re as easily found as you think you are: Work backwards from a viewer who has never heard of your podcast, but is searching for similar content. In this case, try searching “easy exercise tips” or a similar keyword phrase on iTunes. The process of typing in a search into the iTunes store, finding the podcast website, determining the podcast content, and listening and subscribing to your content should be easy as pie for the listener. By testing your own podcast from the beginning, you can identify hiccups from the user experience angle.

2) Optimize your content for strategic keywords.

Like video, keyword strategy is one of the most important parts of optimizing your podcast. Remember your keyword strategy when naming your podcast, episodes and writing descriptions. Research non-competitive keywords that match your content using a keyword tool.

3) Accrue subscribers.

There’s a difference between listeners who play your podcast once, and subscribers who sign up to automatically download a new episode whenever it comes out. When ranking keyword phrases, iTunes favors podcasts with more subscribers -- a higher percentage of subscribers communicates that your podcast is consistently valuable. Accrue subscribers by making it as painless as possible to subscribe (ideally with just a click of a button). Encourage listeners to take the next step to subscribe by clearly outlining the value proposition of your podcast, and include action verbs that encourage people to sign up now.

4) Solicit reviews.

iTunes also tends to favor podcasts with more reviews in their SERP. Podcasts with a higher volume of reviews indicate higher engagement. Ask listeners and subscribers directly for reviews. Include a review CTA at the end of every episode and on your podcast web page. Call out specific reviews in your podcast to show that you're listening to what your listeners and subscribers are saying. Check social media to see if there are listeners who frequently talk about your content and approach them for a product review.

5) Factor in the age of your podcast.

Another factor iTunes takes into account in their rankings is the age of your podcast. Podcasts that have been around longer are more likely to rank higher than newer ones. While there isn’t a lot you can do to manipulate the age of your podcast, the age factor is worth keeping in mind when you're considering starting an additional podcast.

6) Include a transcription.

There are plenty of services, like Casting Words, that will transcribe your podcast for as little as a dollar a minute. Translate your audio content into a written format to better help search engines and listeners digest your content, and to make it easier to repurpose that content for future use.

Best Practices for Non-Written SEO in Social Media

We’ve gone over what the SEO best practices are for individual non-written content assets, but how do those practices change within the context of social media? If you didn't already know, the two are kind of connected. And with social networks becoming more visual, optimizing non-written content is more important than ever.

But let me be clear -- the goal for non-written SEO in social networks isn’t necessarily to be found by search engines, but to make sure you’re using non-written content to its full advantage. Here are some resources for non-written SEO best practices for specific social networks. For a more general overview on optimizing your social media presence, here’s theultimate guide to optimized social media updates.

Pinterest

Since Pinterest is an image-centric network and has just come out with analytics, we thought thatSEO for Pinterest was an article all in itself. Best practices include the following if you're looking for the short synopsis:

• Optimize your account name and description.
• Include links back to your website on every pin.
• Use keywords in the filename and alt text of images you pin.
• Take time with each pin’s description to describe the image and include keywords.
• Incorporate hashtags to amplify the social reach of your pins.

For more details, read this article on everything you need to know about optimizing your Pinterest account.

Facebook

We have original data that indicates photos on Facebook generate 53% more likes than average posts. Images and videos are obviously a huge part of encouraging fans not only to interact with your brand, but also consume content that moves them down the funnel, especially now that Facebook updated its cover photo guidelines to include CTAs. Read this easy-to-follow tip sheet to find the best ways to engage your Facebook fans with images that breaks down thebest practices for Facebook cover images and albums.

Twitter

Twitter is buzzing with new image and multi-media updates. The biggest integration Twitter has with multi-media content is the new Vine video app. With Vine you have the opportunity to:

• Optimize cover photos on brand pages and include CTAs within your profile
  image.
• Showcase multi-media content with featured tweets.
• Identify what keywords your account should focus on.
• Create a Vine account and incorporate it into your video strategy.
• Measure the ROI of Vine and Twitter to optimize conversions and reach.

Google+

The most important thing to think about with Google+ SEO is authorship. Having the author image next to an article’s listing in the SERPs makes it much more clickable than plain text. Here’s a more in-depth article that explains why Google+ authorship is important, and how to apply for it.

What are some of the best practices you use when optimizing non-written content for SEO? Got any great tips to share? Let us know in the comments section!

Image credit: starmist1

Source - http://blog.hubspot.com/search-engine-optimizing-non-written-marketing-content

Marketers across the globe are constantly plagued by the question; “should I spend my dollars on social media marketing, or search engine marketing?” To help answer this question, MDGAdvertising has produced a really nice infographic breaking down some of the various campaign components you would generally look at when assessing a marketing campaign. These include:

Lead Generation
Brand Awareness
Local Visibility
Interactivity
MDG’s review of Lead Generation performance included SEO, PPC and Social Media Marketing as the key metrics. The research which included interviews with more than 500 marketing professionals across B2B and B2C companies produced a single clear winner for lead generation; organic SEO. Although difficult to achieve without a lengthy campaign and a number of outside considerations, organic SEO is a clear winner for lead generation. But one must ask the question, at what cost? Because of the time and expenditure involved in achieving quality search rankings, is this a fair assessment when considering the ROI? Maybe long term, but this metric is very interesting none-the-less.

The Brand Awareness component of this infographic produced social media as the winner according to rankings in terms of objectives. Brand Awareness ranked #1 for social media marketing and #3 for search engine marketing. From my experience, this research is pretty undeniable. Search is great for lead generation, but social is excellent for brand awareness, and certainly a great bet for a quick return on your investment.

With this in mind, although there is still great value in using social media for targeting local users, consumers still rely on search for their local information requests. Consumers will almost always use search to locate information on websites as their starting point, and that includes services such as Google Places. Although social media has great potential in this area, search is still the winner at the moment if you’re looking to reach a local consumer base.

However if it’s interactivity and engagement you’re looking for, marketers will choose social media as their preferred platform, but interestingly not by as much as you would think. Although social media was a winner with 65% of marketing professionals stating they would use social media for increased interactivity, SEO scored 54% and Paid Search scored 34% indicating strong value across both of these channels if handled effectively.

Finally, with changes to search engine algorithms constantly in the mix and strong signs that social signals such as likes, tweets and +1′s affect search performance, the good money when comparing social vs search, is actually on a campaign that includes a mix of content marketing for SEO, and some strong social support for that campaign. As marketers survey the social and search landscapes, we are set to see a large shift toward marketing campaigns that comprise both platforms to achieve a well-rounded result for the content owner.

Source-http://www.jobstock.com/blog/social-vs-search-marketing-spend-comparison/

I agree with the conclusion that organic SEO is the clear winner for lead generation. The first thing that came to my mind was the value that video brings to SEO. When your business dominates the first page of natural Google for different searches you don't give the competition an opportunity to market their business. For example, if you have video in place that shows why your brand is better than your competitor when a consumer does do a search for your competitor your video will dominate the search. Equally important, is that like the article states search is great for lead generation but social is great for brand awareness. I've seen way to many owners that are from the "old school" not understand the value of social media for their business. So many still think that if they build these amazing dealerships that buyers will storm through the door however, that strategy may have worked in the 80's but it's a failing strategy today. In today's market we know that we must fish where the fish are.

At the end of the day consumers still rely on search for local information requests. And your mission if you accept it is to utilize SEO/SEM/PPC, social media and VSEO so that you can capture your consumers at the ZMOT or at their point of interest.

I have just read an eye-popping article from the fine folks over at eMarketer titled, "Auto Industry Braces for Major Shifts in Search Marketing." If you don't have time to read it, I'll point out the highlights and give you some of my own thoughts. 

As all of us know, paid, as well as, organic search helps drive leads, increase a dealership's traffic, and sell vehicles. This remains true. Yet, the emergence of digital marketing and its impact on search is changing the way your customers find your dealership online. Before we get into the nuts and bolts of it, take a moment to check out this graph.  As you can see, there's a myriad of ways your customers, when shopping online, can find your dealership.

Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that MORE and MORE people are going online to search for their next car. (See: ZMOT; See also: it's 2013!! Everybody is going online first to do research before buying!!) So, how do you increase your traffic? Well, in a recent survey of US Auto Dealerships for Cars.com, Datium found that 55% of respondents' digital ad spending went to paid search engine marketing (SEM).

Think of searching online like putting together a puzzle. You dump all the pieces onto the floor, and now you have to somehow make sense of the rubble and construct one collective entity. That's what customers are doing when they go online to search. They are trying to sift through all the information to eventually make a purchase, and hopefully with a sustainable and effective digital and search marketing strategy, it's made at your store!

The thing, however, that blew my mind reading eMarketer's article is this little tidbit of information: "Only 20% of new-car shoppers in the US buy the brand they first searched for, according to Google data."

As the article aptly points out, "OEM brand sites—often developed with major digital agencies, strong media support, and cutting edge SEM and search engine optimization (SEO)—attracted more attention in search results than dealerships." While this is certainly true, things are changing.

Dealership websites are becoming more and more sophisticated, user friendly, and even mobile-friendly. If we had a time machine, we could go back a few years ago and compare a dealership's website back then to what it is today. The difference would be astounding. More and more dealers are recognizing the power of  SEO as well as VSEO. The dealer with an optimized and indexed site is going to show up first on Google and as a result, draw in more traffic. After all, your goal should be to show up on the first page of Google. The recent studies have found this to be case as auto dealerships are in "direct competition for influence over U.S. Car shoppers." 

Lastly, according to a 2012 survey done by a conjunction of folks like Google, Compete, TNS Global, and R.L. Polk & Co., 74% of U.S. new vehicle shoppers visited used dealership websites via desktop. They also surveyed the sties on mobile phone and/or tablet during the buying process. 

This change in auto search marketing, due to advances in digital marketing, isn't exactly going to push OEMs out of the lineup, however. OEMs and other related agencies are still able to push foot traffic to your dealership thanks to such things like video content. 

Where do you see search in the automotive industry going in 2013? Given the advancements of digital marketing, video social, social media, online reputation, the best it yet to come when it comes to search!

(Informal) FREE Webinar On "How To Properly Optimize Your Videos For Your Dealership" - (LIVE) Video SEO from Dealer Synergy on Vimeo.

http://www.internetsales20group.com

(Informal) FREE Webinar On "How To Properly Optimize Your Videos For Your Dealership" - (LIVE) Video SEO

Details: Wednesday January 9, 2013, 12 p.m EST/10 A.M. Mountain Time 

Link: http://www.dealerwebinars.com/vseo.html

Almost every single person goes online before they step foot into the dealership. The highest closing ratio and the highest gross profit are from leads to the dealership website or from organic search engine optimization. So, a dealership should focus on how to DOMINATE organic search engine optimization. It is not enough to merely show up on the first page of Google when someone types in your dealership name. You must show up numerous times on the first page of Google. Not just for your dealership's name but for any and all of your profit centers. New Cars, Used Cars, Fixed Operations. You should even show up on the first page of Google when someone is searching for your competition. Whether it is your same brand or a competing brand. 

In this webinar you will learn how to crush your competition online by creating a powerful VSEO strategy for yourself and or your dealership. We will go over successful LIVE examples as well as detail how you can create and implement immediately after the webinar

"Internet Sales 20 Groups"

Mercadeo Digital

Algunas veces subestimamos el poder que tiene el mercadeo digital. Es interesantes saber que ya no solo existen dos o tres formas de mercadeo digital sino decenas de maneras de hacerlo y con resultados impresionantes. Una de las principales herramientas que podemos utilizar es "SEO, VSEO". El poder utilizar esta herramienta para atraer clientes y futuros compradores de nuestros servicios a nuestro sitio "web" hace del mercadeo digital unas de las cosas mas importantes para hacer negocios.

No hay duda de que el taller de "Internet Sales 20 Group" esta llenando todas las expectativas. Mucho se ha aprendido y mucho queda por aprenderse.

Se han eliminado los acentos para evitar errores de interpretacion de motores de busquedas.