Unhappy Car Dealers

If I had a dollar for every time a car dealer expressed their discontent with AutoTrader and a dollar for every time they claimed that AutoTrader failed to address their concerns, I’d be a wealthy man.

Can Dealers Merchandise Their Vehicles For Free?

They can, but most won’t because it requires hard work and discipline. So instead of mastering the craft of organically ranking their vehicles online they prefer to pay AutoTrader and then complain about the results. My company specializes in helping dealers rank their vehicles organically at the top Google Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) with YouTube videos, but only a select few will actually follow our proven process. 

The Screen Shot Above Is An Example Of Want Can Achieve

That video ranks just below the paid search (AdWords) and above the AutoTrader.com results. Search for 2015 Cadillac Escalade Niagara into Google to view the results. The video has over 55,000 views!

How Do Aggregate Sites Like AutoTrader Work?

This article will show you how to outrank AutoTrader, but first lets look at how aggregate websites like AutoTrader and CarGurus work.

If a car dealer posts photographs and a description of a 2015 F150 XLT Super Crew on their website with the hopes of competing against AutoTrader on the SERP, they will get buried. This is because AutoTrader will feature dozens of similar trucks on their web pages. Google wants to deliver the best possible experience for their users and would rank a site with multiple vehicles that met the searchers criteria much higher than the dealer with a single vehicle.

The genius of AutoTrader is that they get car dealers to pay them to supply and take ownership of two of the most critical elements of their SEO:

1   Content (their vehicles pictures and their descriptions)

2   Backlinks (links to and from the dealers website to AutoTrader).

When AutoTrader combines their entire "partners" inventory on their webpages it drives traffic to their site and forces their dealers to compete against them for SERP relevance. The reality is that it's in the dealers’ best interest to drive traffic directly to their own websites and opposed to paying AutoTrader to act as an interface. Further to that, AutoTrader make their dealers pay a fee to get the leads that their content and backlinks generate.

Do People Start Their Search On Aggregate Sites?

Some aggregate sites would have you believe that you have to advertise with them because most people will actually begin and end their used car search on their sites. My research indicates that nothing could be further from the truth. The overwhelming majority of people will start their search on Google and be served up a relevant aggregate site after they have searched for vehicle they want to buy. If you knew how to rank your vehicles organically on the top of the SERP page you wouldn’t have to pay for your listing and buy then your own leads back from an aggregate.

CarGurus.com

CarGurus.com took a different tact to achieve their exceptional rankings. They identified a need to provide an alternative aggregate website for the automotive space, but instead of making the dealers pay for their listing and selling the leads back to them. They indexed every vehicle they could find online and ranked them according to their value proposition.

AutoTrader Sues CarGurus

By doing this this were able to directly compete against AutoTrader in a short period of time because of the sheer volume of their relevant content. That is until AutoTrader sued them for using the pictures of their "partners" inventory which they actually own according to their dealer agreements.

Some Dealers Didn't Understand CarGurus

Interestingly enough I’ve had dealers tell me that they thought this practice was unethical and actually sent CarGurus a cease and desist order. This is equivalent to a dealer telling his bank that they don’t want interest free financing for their newly imaged building. CarGurus does offer a paid service because they need to make money, but the key to their meteoric growth was their free platform.

How can you get your vehicles features at the top of the SERP?

Google Owns YouTube

Google the largest search engine in the world and it owns YouTube, which is the second largest. YouTube videos almost always outranks photos and text based web results on Google because it’s a much more engaging form of content. As a matter of fact Google predicts that by 2019 80% of all web-based content will feature video, so if your not merchandising your inventory with video you will render yourself invisible over the next two years.

Can you reduce your dependency on AutoTrader?

Absolutely, just follow the steps below. I know what many of you are going to say, “Who I am going to get to do that?” Before I wrote this article I called a number of my clients to see what their average monthly spend was and I typically heard it's in between $4000.00 to $8,000.00 per month. This may make it worth hiring and training an individual to merchandise your inventory with video for you, especially considering the government training grant money that is available to car dealers.

How To Improve Your YouTube SEO In 7 Easy Steps

The following are the steps you must take to rank your videos on the top of the SERP. I didn’t say it was going to be easy, if it was anybody could do it. You have a choice, follow these steps to merchandise your vehicles or get your chequebook out.

1.    Vehicle reviews and in motion driving videos

• Train members of your staff to do a proper video walk around review that’s between 3 and 6 minutes long.
• Distinguish the difference between a feature and a benefit.
• Videos should be energetic and enthusiastic.
• Optimize your video to be found on the SERP using the steps below.

2.    Keywords

• Pick your target keyword for your video.
• Use the free keyword tool Ubersuggest.org or Google’s keyword planner (requires AdWords account) to find highest searched relevant keywords.

3.    Title

• Use the vehicle make, model, year and dealership name or geotag in the title.
• Describe exactly what the video is about in 70 characters or less.
• Use your target keyword in the title to increase the video’s rankings.

4.    Description

• Be informative, creative and compelling.
• Use the relevant keywords you couldn’t fit into your video title.
• Add links to your social networks near the top of your video description.

5.    YouTube Cards

• YouTube Cards allow you to give more detail about things in your videos.
• YouTube Cards can be used to encourage subscriptions, likes and comments. (For more info search YouTube Cards.)

6.    Video Transcript

• Transcribe your video as accurately as possible.
• Use your keywords in your video transcript so Google can index it.

7.    Share, Share, Share

• Embed your video on relevant sites.
• Have employees share videos to increase engagement.
• Promote your video on all of your social media channels.

There you have it, a process that will out rank aggregate websites and save you a lot of money and frustration! I wonder just how many of you will do it or keep paying and complaining?

For assistance, training or help obtaining government grants please contact me:

Jim De Luca

VP Digital Road to a Sale

905 865 8734

Jim@digitalroadtoasale.com