Most car dealerships across the country have a website, and it’s usually viewed by as another platform to advertise inventory and specials. A consequence of this very straight-forward perspective is that many dealer sites are poorly maintained. Since shoppers are spending months on the web searching for information about different brands and models, having a website that doesn’t function properly can kill any chance of engaging with these potential buyers. Worse still, this is one of the most significant reasons why your store’s site isn’t showing up on the first or second page of a search engine results page (SERP). Let’s take a look at some of the basics parts of a website that must be up and running to keep future customers on your VDP.

   Every site has two key components: information architecture (IA) and user experience (UX). IA refers to the actual structuring of the website: which pages are available, which menus are unique to a page, which ones are available everywhere, and so on. If a vendor is maintaining your site, their template supplies the IA. Ideally, every single link throughout your site should have been checked to ensure that they all work. This is a crucial first step when combing through your site for errors. Broken links are a vital factor in why a website is pushed farther down the results page of a search.

    The second component, UX, is the content on the site that is meant to engage with buyers. This includes checking for spelling or grammatical errors, as well as making sure your photos aren’t grainy. One of the essential features that managers should be looking for is load speed and mobile optimization. If your page loads too slowly, no shopper will wait for it. Similarly, at an age when we all have access to computers in the palm of our hands in the form of watches, smartphones, and tablets, there is no reason why a page shouldn’t load quickly and fit any size screen. A bandwidth detector and a savvy webmaster can make all the difference in this case.

   SEO campaigns won’t do you much good unless these elements are running correctly. Let’s say you want to check on your vendor with an external program. We recommend two programs to ensure smooth sailing: Google Analytics and AhRefs. Google Analytics (GA) provides a lot of crucial information for dealership managers and marketers. Besides allowing you to compare how all of your vendors are performing quickly and easily, you’ll also be able to do see where the hiccups are. For example, you’ll be able to see the flow of shoppers and where they drop off in their search. This can give you a clue to a broken link or a page that isn’t loading quickly. Time on site and page load time are also great tools to help you and your team understand where the web traffic is hitting a virtual jam.

   AhRefs seems a little more technical, but the concept is simple. These reports provide critical details for your website’s health. If you’re working with a vendor who uses this report, it would be a good idea to consult with them for tips and ideas on how to improve your domain rank. This number is used by search engines to place sites on a SERP. Basically, the higher the number, the better the positioning. These reports provide that number, as well as details about broken links and the number of backlinks, or shared juice you have with other sites. Like domain rank, the more backlinks you have, the better off your site is.

    While Google Console is an incredible tool to have at your disposal, most dealership stores don’t have the time or resources to work through it. Instead, easy to use and practical tools are the keys to successfully managing a website and any online campaigns. Since your store’s website is the first impression a customer has of your commitment to excellent service, the quality of your inventory, and you’re overall “vibe,” it’s a tool worth investing in thoughtfully. As we move deeper into the digital age, your overall success will depend on the image your site projects.

When was the last time one of your digital vendors offered to go through their traffic’s performance in your Google Analytics?  Never, you say?  

There’s a reason that almost every digital vendor has created their own backend reporting tool.  They want to be able to control which data you see.  Don’t fall for it.  You already have all the data you need to make smart, effective decisions about how and where to spend your digital marketing dollars.

 

Your first order of business should be setting up a View in your Analytics that contains website Goals that are important to you.  Best practices dictate one View that covers only lead conversion actions, such as Contact forms, Click to Call, or Finance forms, and another that covers behavioral interactions, like looking at Hours & Directions, VDP views, and SRP views.  This will enable you to judge the performances of all your vendors using a consistent set of metrics.

 

Once you have all your Goals set up and you have at least one month’s worth of data, you’re ready to start evaluating performance.  Navigate to your main reporting page by clicking Acquisition > All Traffic > Source/Medium.  In the upper right hand corner, choose the date range you’d like to see and click “apply.” Your traffic sources (organic plus vendors) will be listed along the left hand side of the table in descending order based on how many clicks they sent for that time period.  

 

There are multiple metrics that are automatically included on your reporting page, such as Bounce Rate, Time on Site, Pages per Session, and Conversion Rate.  These metrics will help you determine the quality of the traffic that your vendor is sending to your site.

 

The Bounce Rate measures traffic that came to your website but then immediately left without engaging your site at all, so for this metric, the lower, the better.  If you’ve got a vendor whose traffic is bouncing above 50%, it’s time to have a talk with them about better targeting.  If you’ve got a vendor whose traffic is bouncing at 25% or below, youmight have a keeper, depending on how the rest of their metrics stack up.

 

Time on Site and Page per Session are pretty self-explanatory.  Website engagement sells cars, so the longer you can keep a visitor on your site, the higher the chances they’ll convert to a lead.  

 

Possibly the most important quality metric of all is Conversion Rate.  This measures how often traffic on your website completed at least one of the Goals in the View you’re in.  If you’re in a View containing lead form Goals, you’ll have to ability to calculate a rough ROI.

 

First generation leads historically have a closing ratio of between 20% – 40%, so their quality far outshines that of third generation leads, which typically result in a sale at a rate between 5% – 7%.  So how can you use this data to get a program’s ROI?

 

For example, if a program costs $1000/month and your Analytics show that 10 lead forms can be attributed to this source for the month, based on average closing ratios for first generation leads, you can make a conservative estimate that at least 2 cars (20% of 10 leads) were sold as a result of that vendor’s traffic.  Assuming a front end gross of about $2000 per sold vehicle, you are looking at $4000 profit.  Subtracting the $1000 you had to spend on the program, you’re left with a total of $3000 profit, or a 3X ROI.

 

Being the captain of your own Analytics ship might take a little getting used to, but the bounty that awaits you in saved expenditures on junk programs, and increased profitsfrom great programs, will really put the wind in your “sales.”

1. Identify Keywords That Under-Perform or Perform Incorrectly (Negative Keywords) – Google Analytics will give you insight into which keywords are working, which are not, and which broad matches are pulling traffic you aren’t specifically intending to draw. An example of this could be words that have multiple meanings or are demographically undesirable. Knowing which keywords do not work is just as important as knowing which ones do.

 

A quick example would be “Dealer near me”. This could be any kind of dealer right? “Car dealer near me” would be the more specific (exact match) phrase. Adding a modifier like “used car dealer near me” would be even more strategically sound. I would assign “dealer near me” to the negative keywords list in my campaign. Check carefully in the “search terms” section and you’ll see which terms are being used to find your site.

 

For terms that are confusing or not relevant, make sure to add them as a “negative search term”, and you’ll no longer pay for them again. Meanwhile, you’ll also find keywords and keyword phrases that you never thought of that you can add as keywords and assign to the specific Ad Groups in the campaign with the push of a button.

 

2. Your Landing Page and PPC Campaign Need to Jive – If your PPC ad is about your dealership’s wide selection of used cars, when shoppers click on that ad, it better take them to your used car section. Furthermore, the use of keywords in that ad better match the copy of the page the ad clicks to. Failure to do so is met with Google’s wrath!

 

Ignoring Google Best Practices will saddle you with low quality scores, and that means increased ppc costs, and lower ranking of your website and overall visibility. On the flipside, good synchronization means high quality scores, better organic ranking, and lower ppc costs and consistently higher positioning. *Remember, match keywords in ad copy with the same keywords on the landing page at the very least.

 

3. Adjust Your Bid Strategy Accordingly – Along the lines of experimenting with your campaign ideas, targeting methods, and keywords, adjusting your bid and campaign budget during a campaign is crucial. Always check out your impression share and see if you’re spending enough to make your ppc campaign worthwhile. If your pulling a 48% impression share, you may not be spending enough to keep your ads up all day long – although there are other reasons as well why your ads aren’t being shown (see above).

 

Depending on what your products or services are, you may or may not want to allow Google to default Max CPC which means you’re willing to exceed your competitors max bid by a minimum of 10%. If a keyword fetches $3.28 a click, and you set to max bid at $6.20, it will only charge you $3.28 plus 10%, not $6.20. If your website is tight and you have a high quality score and abide by Google Best Practices, you’ll rank consistanty higher at a lower cpc than some guy bidding the same way you are. This is why SEO ES MUY IMPORTANTE!

 

I believe in being #1 in all searches because it’s been proven that you get the best ppc traffic, and although it’s not the most cost-effective means of running a campaign with a limited budget, I rarely take on those kinds of budget-limited clients. For smaller budgeted concerns, Google Analytics will tell you when you’re getting the most traffic, so you can always adjust your ad schedule accordingly.

 

At times, you may want to pause an account and activate it during the busiest hours based on your GAs. I have to plug Tracie at DealerAnalytics.com for providing a great agnostic service that helps dealers make heads or tails out of how their vendors are truly performing based on what Google Analytics clearly and sometimes not so clearly suggests…at a fair monthly price.

 

For those who need help on the ppc campaign front, CarDealerppc.com has a good grip on Google Best Practicessoooo, you may want to check them out as well as some of the great marketers that post on this platform.

 

4. Know Your Market – The most important thing for all businesses advertising online, especially dealerships, is knowing who your customers are, and tailoring the content towards them. If your city or town is comprised of middle-class families, target those who are looking for leases on SUVs, mini-vans, or used, off-lease cars and trucks that you may have in stock. Just like television or radio, when you pay to advertise online you want to maximize your investment. Test your PPC ads and see which ones are most effective.Test and learn is every marketer’s mantra. NEVER assume in marketing.

 

Companies that build PPC campaigns for dealerships have the tools to make the most of targeted advertisements online, and Google makes it easier. Work with your AdWords campaign manager by providing them with as much info about your client base as possible. It’s not a bad idea to point a bird dog towards the bird.

 

5. Do Not Be Afraid To Experiment – When you are creating an effective PPC campaign, you need to be comfortable with throwing different things at the wall and seeing what sticks. As I mentioned before, test and learn. Experiment with keywords, experiment with ad copy, targeting and bidding strategies. I know more than one dealership that dumped all of their classified ad budget (AutoTrader, Cargurus.com, and Cars.com) and put it back into traditional ads on TV, and radio. They went from #6 in their market to #1 in one month. It was an experiment that paid off in a big way.

 

It never hurts to engage in multiple trial campaigns and observe the results. Dump the bad ads, and under-performing AdGroups, and stay creative with fresh ad content and video, see what delivers and what doesn’t. It’s called A/B testing and surprisingly few actually do it. You should be as creative and engaged in this process as you can be. Don’t rely on any one vendor’s word or opinion. There’s a lot of hot gas out there in the consulting world, the kind of gas you hear before you smell it.

 

PPC is an extremely effective way to drive legitimate, bottom of the funnel buyers into your dealership. Make sure you have a certified Google AdWords, and certified Google Analytics personnel on your team to make sure your SEO and PPC (SEM) campaigns are fully optimized, else you’ll be overpaying like someone driving a flaming pie (Ford Taurus) on a subprime loan at 11.75%. There is virtually NO difference.

Just recently, a friend of mine approached me about his dealership and how they had a consultant (SEO guru), do an SEO analysis of his site. He was concerned that he may be losing money on keyword selection based on the analysis. As I explained to him, there is some confusion out there regarding the entire Google platform and that having a balance of both high-level SEO, and an optimized PPC campaign is the ideal. I also explained that you only get charged by clicks, not keyword choices (lol)

 

Let’s cover SEO first. SEO stands for “search engine optimization” which is a practice that makes sure that your website follows all of the necessary rules of engagement to make it easy to rank as organically high on the search engine results pages (SERPs) as possible. It includes having good content in the form of copy, pictures, and video. All material should be relevant to the subject matter and have keywords and key phrases as an essential part of the site copy.

 

People search for websites by typing into the Google search engine exact or broadly matched keywords and phrases. Your site should have those keywords and phrases. The structure of the website is crucial as is the loading time and the ease of navigation. Those are technical issues that help to make the user experience a pleasant one, but it doesn’t stop there.

 

Offsite SEO is still a huge part of the overall SEO mix. Having other high-quality sites backlink to your website is the water that lifts the ice cube to the top of the glass so to speak. Having your dealership properly listed via all of the 300+ indexing sites and the 4 main data companies means that people will know your company name, address, hours of operation, and telephone number. To have incorrect info strewn about the internet will definitely hurt your chances of getting highly-ranked. It will hurt your overall “Quality Score” which is essentially what Google uses to rank you in the search engine.

 

What is the “Quality Score”? Quality Score is Google’s rating of the quality and relevance of both your keywords and PPC ads. It is used to determine your cost per click (CPC) and multiplied by your maximum bid to determine your ad rank in the ad auction process. Your Quality Score depends on multiple factors, including:

 

1) Your click-through rate (CTR) (PPC)

2) The relevance of each keyword to its ad group (PPC)

3) Landing page quality and relevance (SEO)

4) The relevance of your ad text (PPC & SEO)

5) Your historical AdWords account performance (PPC)

 

As you can see, there is a mix of PPC and SEO involved in optimizing a Quality Score which essentially determines where your stores website is going to show up in a typical search operation. Great SEO alone can get you on to the first page of search, but unless you are well-branded, your position may vary from near the top, to not on the page at all. The leads you get from great organic (unpaid) placement are basically free and are high quality. However, to get into the top position and get the most clicks possible, and the best clicks according to numerous studies, you have to pay for placement.

 

PPC guarantees a first page presence. The cost of that presence is based on the quality of the website’s SEO execution. The ads in the pay per click campaign have to be compelling enough to get a good click through rate, but the words and phrasing used in each ad must also match those keywords and phrases (long tail search terms) on the website pages they are linked to. The better the execution and matching of verbiage in ads and on the site, the better your organic ranking, and the cheaper you clicks will be. It’s a seriously incestuous relation ship.

 

Google really has it figured out. It used to be that Google had two columns on every search results page. The left column had the organic listings (best SEO executions and/or brand names). People used to click at an 8:1 ratio favoring the organic or “free” listings over the listings in the right column which were all paid for. Google then eliminated the two column design and started putting PPC campaign ads on top of each SERP which now has only one column combining paid and free results. This cut down the ratio that favored free search results and increased Google’s click revenue.

 

The point is, having as much visibility as possible in any search operation is crucial. It’s termed “page dominance”. In my estimation, the companies that do both well, win. The companies that only do PPC, run inefficient, expensive campaigns. The companies that ignore PPC, are likely too budget-conscious to compete and suffer with inconsistent visibility. Those who combine Google Best Practices, and optimize both SEO as well as their PPC campaigns, dominate their competition.

 

I hope this helps clarify the decade-old question of how SEO and PPC affect one and other, and how using both to your advantage is the best way to the top of the mountain.

 

Kelly Kleinman

Automotive News Car Dealerships Can Really Use