With meta descriptions, you’re trying to target the intent of a consumer searching for information – presumably, to solve a problem (buy a car, get financing, car repair, etc). You want to write information in the description that is direct and relevant to the subject of your page, and also the potential query. When carefully crafted, these descriptions can earn you more clicks and ultimately more leads.
The page title is the text that appears at the top of your browser, and is used by both search engines and users. When it comes to dealer website SEO it is of the highest importance for two reasons: 1) the title is highly indexed by search engines and affects your ranking, and 2) it is what appears on the search engine results page when a user searches with a keyword relevant to your dealership. For these two reasons, you’ll need to spend time focusing not only on including keywords, but also on creating compelling copy that would entice a user to click on your link in the SERP.
This one’s just for the business owners out there. You’re bombarded every week (perhaps even daily) by folks looking to sell you the organic search miracle cure for your website’s relative invisibility in the search engines. Looking at it from a business owner’s perspective, the ideal solution would get me ranked quickly and cheaply so more customers find me and (hopefully) buy from me. Consequently, many of the pitches you hear from folks looking to sell you online marketing focus nearly exclusively on that part: quick and cheap customer acquisition. But before you settle on the online marketing provider who promises the quickest and cheapest results, take some time to get to know the rules of buying (and implementing) effective SEO. In my experience with small business and even big brands, there are 4 main rules you should know: continue reading..
Reputation Management has been getting a lot of buzz lately, especially with Google’s recent updates that use ratings to influence placement in the search results. Good reviews can boost your placement, and bad reviews can lower you – but beyond the technical points, it’s common knowledge that online reviews have an effect on your business. continue reading..
Congrats to the entire team here at AutoRevo! We were named to the prestigious list of the fastest growing companies in America for the second year running! We were ranked number 153 in the software industry, and number 54 among winners in the Dallas area. We couldn’t have done it without the incredible team members we have here, from development to design to support and account management. We’re looking forward to continued growth for the rest of this year and into 2012, fueled by constant product updates (like our recent update to Craigslist) and new service offerings (like our car dealer SEO services).
The full press release is included after the jump… continue reading..
You may have noticed that Google has been testing large, expanded Sitelinks in the search results recently. Earlier today, they made the official announcement – large Sitelinks are here to stay.
Google said the Sitelinks will now be “full-size links with a URL and one line of snippet text.” The Sitelinks look almost exactly the same as standard search results, they’re just indented to the right a bit. Google claims that it will make “it even easier to find the section of the site you want”. The number’s been increased, too – you can now have up to 12 Sitelinks listed! continue reading..
A little over a week ago, our CEO Chad Polk was interviewed by AutoSuccess for their podcast series. He covers several important topics related to car dealer Search Engine Optimization, centering on why local search optimization is so vitally important to today’s auto dealer. With the drastic increase in smartphone ownership, dealers can’t afford NOT to optimize their websites for local search – especially since Google now shows local place results higher than organic search results. continue reading..
Social media dominates online activity, and now has a growing impact on search. Search engines are constantly changing their algorithms to make their search results more relevant for users, and social search is another way for them to do so. By annotating results that users’ social connections “like”, the online search experience is more personalized and trusted.
Recently, Google officially rolled out its social search worldwide, and Bing announced “Friend Effect” – search results derived from the web’s IQ (its existing rankings factors) and opinions of people that users trust most. Some of the social signals included in Google’s search results include content shared or created by friends, content recommended by friends using its +1 button, continue reading..
If you’re constantly on the hunt for best practices in SEO and read a lot of articles about the topic, it may seem like everything focuses heavily on ranking in Google’s SERPs. That’s because the majority of them do – Google dominates 64.2% of all searches in the U.S. It’s obviously important to know how to perform well in the search results of the leading search engine, but do not discount Bing, the fastest growing search engine in the U.S. (according to comScore).
When optimizing your dealer website, it is very important to know (and adhere closely to) the webmaster guidelines of the three major search engines: Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Not following these guidelines could result in your website being penalized by the search engines, which in the worst case scenario, results in the removal of your website from search results. In their guidelines, the search giants outline things that website owners should do (and not do) to ensure that their web pages are visible in the search engines.
To make sure that you’re optimizing and not harming your dealer website through your SEO efforts, I’ve listed the important items in the guidelines. Many of the recommendations from the Big 3 overlap, so under each guideline, I’ve listed recommendations that aren’t covered elsewhere. continue reading..
