Recent Trip to New Jersey

A couple weeks ago I made a trip to see clients and to discuss my craiglist service for car dealers with future business partners.  It was an awesome trip because I got to connect with some top tier automotive SEO practitioners in addition to meeting with clients.

One of the stops I made was with a Greenville Chevy Dealer who is doing a phenomenal job with their online marketing efforts.  It looks like they have scaled back on most antiquated forms of advertising and turning their efforts to the web.

In New Jersey I met with a NJ Infiniti Dealer who feels like they have been taken advantage of by the marketing of another automotive seo provider.  It is realkly amazing to find out what others really think of my competition. 

While my personal marketing sites are lacking in their current state, something I am working on, I have found that the best clients are the ones that come from referals and recomendations from others.  The growth I have experienced has been completely from organic growth and I have yet to do any outbound marketing.  I am greatful for this but now I have to kick it to a higher level.

 Technorati Tags: automotive seo, chevy, dealer, infinit dealer

Proving a Point and Making Money

I have recently taken a special interest in Pasch Consulting Group, mainly because they are duping dealers into thinking what they are doing is effective and Brian Pasch has a shady past.  Most dealers do not have a good benchmark to determine if what is working for them is genuine or smoke and mirrors.

What is nice though they, Pasch Consulting Group, likes to publish "case studies" and give away the keywords they are winning and their clients names.  This has prompted me to create some test sites to see if the keywords he publishes have any value.

What is funny is now these sites are winning terms like New Jersey Infiniti G37 and NJ Infiniti dealer and are robbing his clients of significant traffic.  Both sites are are just over a week old and are recieving around 40 hits per day of highy target traffic on high converting keywords. 

The only real benefit for creating these sites is it is a weak search market that he is claiming mastery of and I can monetize the traffic.  At the average wholesale price of $12 per lead one site has already made $144 and the other one is sending enough traffic to Ebay for a total of $65.88 in commissions on top adsense clicks.

All in all these two sites have made close to three hundred dollars in under 10 days.  To bad I do not have enough time push all of his clients down in the SERPS.

Technorati Tags: automotive seo, online marketing, pasch consulting group, nj infiniti dealer

Getting back in the grove..

Well I have not updated many of my blogs over the last month.  Mainly because I have been busy providing value to my automotive seo and craigslist solution clients.  That is the name of the game provide value to your customers and love what you do.

Every project I take on is a labor of love.  Not in the romantic style but it the pride of seeing a job well done and seeing results.  For instance I have started a large microsite campaign for a dealer and a fresh site is already ranking for F-150 quotes nationally.  The site is only a few days old and is already generating leads.

Some other things that have really surprised me is how big vendors in the niche are mostly full of it.  Just like when I was called a couple months ago by an executive with a big website vendor and he has failed to follow through on the commitments he made to me personally.  Guess the 15 million dollar shot of cash was more important and that is understandable.

Oh well such is life and  I really don't have time to entertain people who do not keep their commitments.  I have plenty of paying customers who value my efforts for them and don't need to entertain arrogant offers of an education.

Technorati Tags: automotive seo, f-150 quotes

Casual observations mid month Janurary 2009

My business is really picking up to a point where it is getting hard to keep up so I have hired two people to work for me and am so glad I did. Two of the biggest projects I am working on right now are for the same dealer. I am building them microsites/blogs. New Jersey Hyundai Dealer and New Jersey Used Cars

On another note I am redirecting the content of my flagship site to incorporate more automotive seo content just because there is so much smoke and mirrors out there in regards to this topic and also have an Internet sales manager that is going to collaborate with me now.

I also am helping a competitor to improve their rankings for automotive crm software and have had people tell me I am crazy for doing it. Our products are so diversely different and we just have one offering that overlaps so really with the reciprocal help we are giving each other it is a no brainer.

On another note dealer.com has not followed up like they said they would after they got upset about my article on dealer search engine marketing but I really did not expect them to follow through with anything. They are to bloated to make changes and two arrogant to listen to a voice of reason.

Ooops - It Happens

I did a recent post that caused an uproar with an automotive vendor about Dealer Search Engine Marketing and had an interaction that was less than professional on both ends.  Since then there has been a meeting of the minds of sorts.

Well after the first interaction with them I blocked their IP address from my content and thought I had removed it.  I did on one property and forgot to do it on another so they were still getting a custom error message.  Well I have now fixed this error but it may have done irreparable damage to any future relationship.

Now what is kinda funny is they are stalking all of my content in an effort I guess to figure out how I was able to out rank them for dealer.com search engine marketing

dealer.com search engine marketing < LINK TO FLICKR

It is child's play to win these non competitive keywords it is even even easier to get them to stick if I really want them to.  They are spending an exorbitant amount of time stalking my content and trying to figure it out.  What is even better is they are taking time to correct my spelling my mistakes on a very obscure blog that really is more an exercise in search engine reputation management than it is anything else.

I appreciate the traffic and they really do not understand what that does for search engine optimization of a property.  As much time as they are wasting trying to figure out how I did it they would be a head of the game just to contact me and help them really learn SEO.

The Importance of the Long Tail

Trying to rank for competitive search terms is difficult however many place great emphasis on trying to shoot for the sun moon and stars on highly competitive terms.  One of my friends that runs a used car blog has been successful in ranking for some very competitive terms, but in my opinion it was due to the fact that he started out going for the long tail and the competitive terms came as a result of the long tail rankings and traffic.

Automotive SEO is not rocket science it just requires a lot of work in both content and link building.  That is what is missed in the everyday car dealer website.  I firmly believe that you can use a blog to capture traffic for some very competitive search terms and if people decide they want to do business with you they will visit your inventory.  Car dealers really need to learn about blog marketing.  That is why I am excited about one of the projects I am working on now.

A blog tied in with other forms of user generated content will kick ass and drive a tremedous amout of traffic to a dealers website.  To bad I could not get the Kingsland used car dealer to understand this.  Someone can chip away at their non competitive search terms and own the serps for anyone looking for used cars in Kingsland or even the whole state of Georgia.