Dominating the Search Engine Page: SEO in Social Media for the Automotive Industry

Dominating the Search Engine Page: SEO in Social Media for the Automotive Industry The Cobalt Group November 2010 800.909.8244 | www.cobalt.com © The...
Author: Elvin Craig
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Dominating the Search Engine Page: SEO in Social Media for the Automotive Industry The Cobalt Group November 2010

800.909.8244 | www.cobalt.com © The Cobalt Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in social media is a common topic of discussion among dealers and industry experts, yet a consensus on its proper implementation is difficult to find. A strong social media presence, if done correctly has proven to make it easier for in-market buyers to find your website in search engines. It increases your website ranking and improves your public image by dominating page one or more of the Search Engine Result Pages (SERP). With 62% of search engine users clicking within the first page, it is imperative you strive to get your dealership’s website ranked in a prominent position and push your competitors and negative content about you down or off the first page. This trend brief describes the actions required to maximize the potential of your social media content being found by consumers in search engines. This involves developing a well-planned strategy, integrating SEO best practices into your social media content, and becoming part of the social conversation. Similar to a social media strategy, the goal of SEO in social media is for your website and website properties about your dealership to be easily found on search engines in order to attract new customers, influence purchase decisions, gain shopper consideration, and build awareness.

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the possibility of a website to be found in search engine results by the right customers. This means boosting the position of your website and other positive content about your dealership in the SERP for targeted terms resulting in incremental traffic from in-market car buyers. SEO influences ‘organic’ or un-paid website rankings. Your dealership does not pay for a specific search result placement, instead you need to adjust your website content to naturally place high in rankings.

What is Social Media? Social media are digital networks that enable people to share ideas and opinions about products and services in a public manner. Social media is available in various formats: blogs, video, photos, website content, participating in networks such as Facebook, Linked-in, YouTube, Twitter, or an assortment of community and industry sites. With these myriad of channels, the applications and opportunities seem endless. However, leveraging social media successfully requires a well planned social media strategy. The goal of a social media strategy is to become part of the conversation in order to influence opinion, address concerns and learn from people who are talking about your brand. It requires careful planning, goal setting and following established guidelines to avoid damaging your brand or reputation. By entering the fray of social media with an established plan, OEMs and dealers can promote their brands and help influence what consumers are saying about them.

800.909.8244 | www.cobalt.com © The Cobalt Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

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What is SEO in Social Media? Social Media optimization is the process of executing SEO best practices in the social content you develop and on the platforms you use with the intent of attracting in-market car shoppers. With the right social media SEO strategy, you can: influence the purchase decision of the car shopper to your advantage extend the value of your marketing efforts by reaching new customers ensure your dealership is in the consideration set manage your public image and reputation This results in driving more traffic to your website and dealership, not just for in-market buyers today but also in the future. With social media, you are no longer communicating to just one person, you are now having a conversation in a public forum. Your audience is comprised of members of well-connected, structured, and complex networks of friends, family, and professional colleagues. Yesterday’s viral and word of mouth marketing is today’s social media strategy but bigger and more integrated with the consumer’s life. You are missing opportunities by not implementing a social media strategy that integrates SEO best practices. Without proper SEO, your content cannot easily be found in search engines. At the most basic level, dealers can increase their brand awareness and public image by dominating page one of the SERP. Customers who participate in your social media networks may be aware of your dealership but you fail to reach in-market buyers who rely on Google, Yahoo! or Bing.

The Benefits of SEO in Social Media 1. Builds Awareness. With 84% of new car buyers using search engines during their car buying process, it is critical that your website and any positive discussion about your dealership is visible, ranks high and is found quickly online (J.D. Power Internet Roundtable). 2. Be in Consideration Set. By having more of your content appear higher on the SERP, you push your competitor’s listing to a lower ranking. 62% of search engine users click on a search result within the first page and 90% of searchers never look past the first three pages (Forrester Research). This data shows that it is imperative that you strive to get your website and positive social media content ranked on a prominent position. 3. Influences Purchase. By increasing the share of voice about relevant topics on your business, this can help you gain loyal customers who will talk about your dealership positively in their social network. Having your customers as advocates on your behalf creates trust and influences potential buyers to purchase from your dealership.

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4. Increases Customer Retention. Initiating topics and providing content that’s important to your customers will increase the credibility of your dealership as an authoritative and trusted source. You can influence customers to return to your dealership for life-cycle car maintenance, services and future vehicle purchases. 5. Drives Re-Engagement. Having your website visible in search engines, social media networks, and community and industry sites increases the familiarity of your dealership brand. This will increase the probability of in-market buyers clicking on your listing in search engines and decrease the risk of customers switching or trying competitors.

The Cornerstone of an effective SEO Strategy in Social Media

There are two critical components you need to address in developing an effective social media strategy incorporating SEO: Content and Inbound Link Building. They work hand in hand and if done correctly can be a very strong and successful marketing investment. By creating relevant and quality social media content that link back to your dealership website, you benefit in two ways: you dominate the SERP page and select inbound links will increase your dealership’s website ranking in search engines. Content: Content is king. With relevant and timely content, you will attract the right customers and increase traffic to your website. In today’s Internet environment, there are two catalysts that drive people together to participate in communities: relationships and content. Relationship-driven communities draw members to participate because

800.909.8244 | www.cobalt.com © The Cobalt Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

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they personally know each other. Typically, these groups are comprised of family members, alumni, or just groups of friends who have decided to create a digital network. Whereas, content-driven communities appeal to people who have a common interest, an idea or concern that they would like to share. Even though they share a common interest, they may not personally know each other. This is the type of network that can be beneficial to your dealership. By providing compelling and relevant content, these members will actively participate and can help build your credibility and your brand. Good examples of excellent and timely content are breaking news of the day in the automotive industry, competitive announcements, newly released research, trends, discounts, etc. Inbound Link Building: Developing a successful link building program is a long term strategy. When done correctly, this can be a very effective tactic in increasing your ranking on search engines resulting in more traffic to your website. Search engines factor in some legitimate and relevant inbound links when indexing your website. The more popular and relevant content you develop, the more inbound links to your dealership’s website your target audience will create and share with their friends. For example, you can respond in Yahoo! Answers, Autoblog, Edmund’s Message Board, etc. with links back to your dealership website. Link building is also a combination of quality and quantity. You want legitimate, wellestablished and popular sites to link to your dealership website. Beware of black hat practices such as link farms that link to your site in the short term with the intention of artificially increasing website rankings. Search engines discourage this practice and can penalize your website by decreasing the ranking.

Other Recommended Approaches and Best Practices for your blogs, video, photos, website content, and various social media platforms: Once you have established your social media foundation, you’re now ready to employ the following tactics: Build solid testimonial pages that contain current testimonials updated on a timely basis. Ensure your website is optimized for SEO and contains relevant and unique meta tags. Leverage keyword rich URLs for landing pages. Develop sufficient textual content to help search bots understand the intention of the page or content Use SEO best practices such as descriptive text, tags, anchor text in Facebook, YouTube, Linked-in and Twitter. This will assist search bots when crawling your content and search engines to properly index your social media efforts to provide fast search results.

800.909.8244 | www.cobalt.com © The Cobalt Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Implement a 301 redirect or ‘moved permanently’ code when changing landing page URLs so that the search bots can read and link the content from the original source. If your dealership has images and videos in your media library, it would be advised to set-up Flickr and YouTube channels so that potential customers can find your video or image when searching. It is best for your dealership to dominate these results to ensure you have control over what in-markets customers are seeing relevant to your business. Know your customers, competition and key industry players. If there are top keywords that are relevant to your business and your website is not yet appearing in the first page in search result, get visibility and credibility by commenting on other relevant blogs and provide a link to your dealership’s website.

About Cobalt, an ADP Company Cobalt is North America's leading provider of digital marketing solutions to the automotive industry. Cobalt currently provides marketing services to nearly half of the automotive dealerships in the United States as well as automotive dealers in Canada and Mexico. Cobalt's digital marketing services are endorsed by two-thirds of the world's major automotive manufacturers. Cobalt is a business unit of ADP Dealer Services, which provides integrated computing solutions to over 25,000 auto, truck, motorcycle, powersports, and recreational vehicle dealers throughout the United States, Canada and Europe. www.cobalt.com

800.909.8244 | www.cobalt.com © The Cobalt Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

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