The process of maximizing the amount of traffic and leads that your website generates from Google can be daunting.  Here are some basic things that our SEO team at DealerOn recommends focusing on if you are either changing website providers, contracting with a SEO or PPC vendor, or simply taking the pulse of the performance of your site and marketing efforts.

Determine Which Keywords You Should be Targeting – Working with your…

In a follow-up comment to a post I wrote last week about social media web tools, Jared Hamilton asked me about other free tools I’d recommend for dealers and internet managers to be as effective as possible in their daily marketing efforts.  Below are some tools that various team members at DealerOn use or have used in the past.

Compete.com --By entering your website and those of your competitors, you can see site traffic history,…

When I’m talking with dealers about various aspects of their online marketing strategy, the reason that they most frequently bring up for why they aren't more involved in social media is that they or their teams don't have the time.  I'm a strong believer in the theory that time is the new money, so I agree that sometimes there just aren't enough hours in the day.  At DealerOn, we believe that there is a definite benefit to devoting time and effort to…

Last week I wrote a post about Google Local Portal in Portland, available on DealerOn’s blog.  If you’ve already read it, you might have seen mention of Google's new service for businesses: Google Offers.  Google Offers appears to be similar to Groupon and other discount offering services -- it allows you, as a small business owner, to get your business "in…

Since Google+ is so new, I asked everyone on our team at DealerOn to put together a list of resources for car dealers trying to wrap their minds around this new way of social networking (myself included).  Here’s a list of links/sites that we’ve put together.

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Looks like Facebook is getting in on the reviews game. While checking in on the DealerOn Facebook page today, I noticed a new tool that I think auto dealers may want to keep an eye on.  Expanding on the simple "like" button that seems to be everywhere, Facebook now lets users leave recommendations for business pages.

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No matter how sophisticated or rudimentary your website provider‘s reporting platform is, having Google Analytics on your website is a “no-brainer”.  You want to “trust, but verify” your website provider’s analytics by making sure they are similar to those in Google Analytics.  At DealerOn, we have made it a standard part of our process to create a Google Analytics account for each of our customers’ websites. 

Luckily, if your auto…

Have you seen the new offering from Google for local search?  Unless you live in Austin, Portland, Madison or San Diego, chances are that you haven't.  Google's new “Beta” Local Directory Portals are a bit of a mix between their place pages and Yelp.  They let users look at all of the businesses in a city in one place (similar to Yelp’s model).

Here is a screenshot of Google Portland:

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