Until now, Facebook has allowed advertisers on their platform to target users based on age, sex, interests and location (country, state, and city).  In order to drill down even further, Facebook now allows users to target their ads by zip code as well.

When creating your Facebook ad, just add the zip codes that you would like to target.  Unlike Google AdWords, you can't use a radius to target further, so make sure that you are including any zip codes from which your…

I've been seeing the Google +1 button appearing on more and more websites since it was released a few months ago.  Recently, I've even seen it as an option for paid search ads.

If I perform a search while signed into my Google account, the +1 button appears as a part of the actual PPC ad.

This seems to be the exact same thing as giving users…

There are many reasons why your search engine rankings can drop, and unfortunately, many times car dealers are at the mercy of Google and the other search engines.  Google is earnest in their mission to provide the most relevant content to  their customers, so they provide tips and suggestions for how content providers can rank highly for their relevant terms.  Below are some things that could cause your car dealership website to be…

Google seems to be everywhere lately, especially with their introduction of +1 and Google Plus.  Many people have so many different aspects of their life integrated into the search engine (email, social network, search engine, calendar, document management, etc) that sometimes it is hard to remember how we ever got along without it.

Most estimates put…

One of the SEO sites that I frequently read (www.searchengineland.com) has a VERY interesting post by a  reader, LebSEO Design's Wissam Dandan.  He has found examples of Google Adwords ads appearing at the bottom of the page for some searches.

No one on our search team at…

It is almost hard to comprehend how fast mobile Internet usage is growing.  According to Google, more smartphones were sold last year than PCs.  It's predicted that 50% of Americans will have a smartphone by the end of the year and that there will be 10 billion mobile Internet devices in 2012, up from the 2 billion that are activated today.  A child is more likely to own a cell phone than a book!

How is that going to impact the car buying experience and your online strategy? …

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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