I just got finished with a fun session at the Innovative Dealer Summit in Denver and as promised to the DE community, I'll be doing a video on the topic. We decided to do it in the form of a webinar to keep it on pace with the original presentation, so I'll post it here once it's done on March 28th.

In the meantime, there's no need for suspense. Here are the daily activities that will allow you to make a difference in your SEO. One of the participants at the session asked me afterwards why we would show dealers how to improve their SEO when we offer SEO services. I told her that the "heavy lifting" is still something that should be handled by a professional because of the establishment of a pre-existing network, abundance of resources, and the responsibility of monitoring the changes that the search engines make (Google makes 500 per year!) but that dealers have it within their power to enhance it.

It's not a necessity, but it's better than sitting around waiting for ups.

Here is the overview. Again, I'll be doing a full webinar on it next Wednesday and posting it exclusively on DE once it's complete, but this overview will give you an idea of what we will cover:

• Monday: Build a targeted page on your website. It should be singularly focused on a good keyword. No need to go after the truly challenging keywords such as "Minneapolis Toyota" but going after "2012 Toyota Camry Minneapolis" is well within your reach without assistance. Create a page with the target as the title tag and add content to the page that is designed to highlight the area and model if appropriate. This is the hardest of the tips for some depending on what website provider they use, but it's at the core and is a necessary component. Here's an example. It may look hard but with the right content management system and dependent on your website vendor, it should still take 10 minutes or less.
• Tuesday: Sending the social signals. Following the hardest activity on Monday is the easiest one on Tuesday. Take your landing page and talk about it on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. That's it!
• Wednesday: Blog or otherwise post on a general-interest topic. Here's an example. You'll see at the bottom there's a link to the landing page. You can do this with your blog or if you don't have a blog, add a quick page to your website itself and link to the landing page with the appropriate title tag.
• Thursday: Send more social signals. Just as you did on Thursday, you'll want to take the content page your just created and get it out on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. However, since it should be a content page of general interest, you can also submit it to sites like Pinterest, Tumblr, Digg, and Reddit, depending on the quality of the post.
• Friday: Review and decide on what to do next week. Check your rankings for the target keyword. If you're satisfied with the results, prepare to start with a new page and a new keyword on Monday. If it's lower on page one than you'd like or if it's on page 2, you should give it another week. Go ahead and move on to another keyword on Monday. If it's nowhere to be found on the first two pages, plan on adding more content to the landing page on Monday, then repeating the process as outlined on Tuesday through Thursday.

Remember, some keywords will be harder than others. There will be times when you see that you're ranking well for your keyword in a day or two, but that doesn't mean that you don't complete the process just to make sure that your rankings stick. There will be other times that you're not showing up at all for the keyword after two weeks, in which case either the keyword is too challenging or something else went wrong.

Either way, feel free to contact me jrucker(@)tkcarsites.com and I would be happy to review your efforts and offer advice.

SEO is something that should be left to the professionals in most circumstances. Some dealers are blessed with a super-savvy internet person with the bandwidth to do all of the SEO. Others have time to help but not to do it all themselves. Most are best letting a company perform the SEO. Regardless of where you stand, it's good to have the type of education that is available on Dealer Elite at your disposal.