The POMCAST
A digital marketing podcast focused on local lead generation strategies and insights. Your search for in depth discussions, tips and tactics has led you to the right place.
The POMCAST
Automotive SEO: Tips, Tactics and Insights For Dealers
Ready to skyrocket your car dealership's visibility and outshine big players like Cargurus and Autotrader? Tune in to the latest POMCAST episode featuring Mike Shaug and Andres Fernandez from Premier Online Marketing. We'll unravel the secrets behind an effective SEO playbook tailored specifically for dealerships. Learn why a powerful organic presence isn't just nice to have but a necessity in today's competitive market. We promise actionable insights and practical steps to elevate your rankings and digital marketing efforts.
Our conversation with Mike & Andres is packed with vital strategies to optimize your Google Business Profile and boost local search results. We discuss the importance of consistent citations, NAP (Name, Address, Phone number), and regular updates to stay ahead. We uncover common misconceptions about SEO services and share tips on how to avoid low-cost traps that could cost you more in the long run. Expect to gain clarity on local SEO and organic search, including the critical elements like click-through rates, reviews, and map pack visibility.
Dive deep into the practical side of SEO with essential on-page optimization tactics. We break down the strategic use of keywords, geographic terms, and proper use of headings to boost your search engine rankings. Whether you're a seasoned pro or just starting, this episode is your guide to mastering SEO and making your dealership a digital powerhouse. Don't miss it!
Premier Online Marketing helps businesses grow through smart SEO, content, and search strategies. Learn more at www.premieronlinemarketing.com
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Hello and welcome back to the POMCAST. That's right, we're back with another fantastic episode on digital marketing. Today we're going to get into it on search engine optimization yeah, that acronym that we've all been loving for decades now SEO. And of course, I'm joined always by Mike Schaug from Premier Online Marketing. But Mike has brought an extra POM team member today. And who do we have joining us today, mike?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Andres Fernandez is by far the best SEO I've ever worked with us that we've ever worked with here at Premier. He came in as an associate, which is kind of at the entry level, and within one year he worked his way to head of product for SEO and he's the associate director for our automotive and SMB vertical. He just is extremely knowledgeable about SEO local SEO, off-page SEO so I wanted to loop him in for an SEO conversation so I don't monopolize everything. Talking about paid ads.
Speaker 1:Well, that's exciting. Welcome, Andres. This is going to be a great episode. Are you ready for it? Are you excited?
Speaker 3:Yeah, hey everyone. I'm very excited to be here and honored as well. Mike always hypes me up, but I just try my best.
Speaker 1:There's nothing wrong with being humble and extremely talented at the same time, and especially when you don't ever actually read your own newspaper clippings, as they say, or pay attention to your own fame. So that usually speaks volumes about the quality of the individual's talents. So I'm excited about this episode because we haven't yet on the Palmcast, we haven't really broken in on SEO, and I know in conversations that I've had with Mike that there's been a lot of discussion around an SEO playbook that you guys have been working on. I want to dig in a little bit and for the audience that's listening and or watching, that's kind of what we'll be talking about. These primary objectives really, for today's discussion will be around this SEO playbook that you need to know is in the works. It will be a very, very helpful asset for people and there's a lot of focus here for car dealerships.
Speaker 1:So in the automotive industry, premier Online Marketing obviously does a lot of work in automotive, among other verticals, but today there's a strong focus on that SEO as it relates to the automotive industry driving visibility, converting traffic, a lot of the things that some people may think that they've heard before. But I honestly think that we still underserve the audience from an SEO education perspective, people just kind of head nod or they feel like they've heard enough from maybe a few of the people that have been more popular over the years, but it doesn't always mean that the knowledge translates to action in the dealership. So we're going to look at some of the differences between local SEO and organic search, how dealerships can optimize for those things, and we're going to let you guys give us some examples if you want, you can be as specific as you want from strategies, and I know that there will be a lot of what we talk about that will end up in the playbook. I think that will help people get really excited about having a resource. It's been a while since something like this has been available, especially for auto dealers, and I can tell that there's going to be some very, very interested people on this.
Speaker 1:So thanks, guys for joining. I appreciate you guys taking the time for the podcast. I want to start by asking, kind of at the really top of this is what was the purpose or what made you guys kind of think let's put an SEO playbook together? What inspired you to create it?
Speaker 3:So I feel like the general advice for SEO is I feel like the general advice for SEO is, you know, for any industry is to focus on technical and focus on your website load time and just all thiss, and local there's very, there's very little impact, I'm sure, for e-commerce sites and for all the other industries, like enterprise, this technical is really it's great for them, but on our end, we just want to create a playbook that could help auto dealerships take actionable steps, understand SEO, take actionable steps and really move the needle on their organic rankings.
Speaker 1:I think that's great. Dealers are always looking for kind of practical steps. Mike and I have talked to dealers about digital marketing for so many years now I'm sure Mike's heard me say it. I know a lot of people have. But the technology moves so fast that most verticals they have a hard time keeping up with it. Seo has very much been one of those things where people again they think they have an acceptable or working knowledge of it, but they don't realize that it is actually a very dynamic part of the digital marketing strategies and things change. So I want to ask you guys a little bit about some of the definitions around SEO for small and medium businesses dealerships. Some people get confused with that. Most dealerships would be categorized as an SMB, but most dealers are not referring to themselves as small to medium-sized businesses. So in this particular case, how do you define SEO for dealers and why do you guys think it's crucial for dealers?
Speaker 3:That's a great question. That's a great question. Well, first of all, if you, if you're ranking at the top of Google Maps or the map pack and organic search at the same time, you're basically getting free traffic Right, and you know you can definitely, if you have a large ad spend budget, you can spend your money on more specific things like model terms or just, yeah, even trim terms. But I think when you focus on that strategy, you're competing against other ILSs. It's really important for dealerships to have a good organic presence, especially in large markets like Houston and LA, where competition is very rough and it really doesn't take a lot. People think like, oh, seo is like this. Nobody like the algorithm and all this stuff. Like it's just hard to understand the algorithm and all this stuff, like it's it's just hard to understand. But I think, like just having a playbook, having some actionable steps that most dealerships can control without the need of of their CMS support, that that they can start getting good rankings and start getting to the top of their of their market.
Speaker 2:So one thing to add here is that organic traffic converts about three times better at least than paid media traffic. So you notice this often with dealer groups when they expand and they buy a new dealership in a new market and they're like why do I have to spend fifteen thousand dollars over in this new market? I'm spending three thousand over in the other market. But it's not an apples to apples comparison because oftentimes dealerships will have several thousand visits, which is like $20,000 of traffic that they're building their business with.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's an important addition there. I would think this audience also would be interested in some of the more common misconceptions that dealers have about SEO. It's been a topic for obviously a long time and there have been a handful of messengers on the topic and there have been a handful of companies that have gone really strong with their SEO presence, but it doesn't necessarily mean that all of it's been helpful to car dealers over the years. So, um, we'd love it if you guys would share a little bit about what some of those common misconceptions that dealers have about seo might be problem is that um ai is gonna completely like ruin local seo.
Speaker 3:Um, I think, unless forbes or, I don't know, business Insider creates a local directory like Forbescom, slash local, and then they the MacPack always comes first, right, the MacPack is always at the top, and then you have the.
Speaker 3:ILSs the internal listing services down below and they don't have an address, they don't have a local presence. They just list local businesses in there, but really what draws people's eyes is the Mac pack with the reviews, with all of that. So I think that that's the advantage that local has over all of these other by-laces that are just creating AI content and pages en masse. So I think that that's one of them.
Speaker 2:I think another one that we get a lot is why invest in SEO? It's really hard, it takes a super long time and the OEM websites or the internet listing websites like Cargurus or Autotrader will always outrank us no matter what. But we've been able to get really great traction for dealers that are serving all different types of markets, and Google does favor local businesses. They know that when people are looking for cars, they're primarily looking for someone local to transact with, and that's just something that a lot of dealerships don't know. So obviously it takes time to build on these strategies, but you can absolutely outrank some pretty big websites with your local website.
Speaker 1:Yeah, those are really good points. I know for years I think there's always been some misconceptions around because there's been a lot of price discrepancies. You can go to your website vendor and, andres, you had mentioned that there aren't always limitations just because you're with a website provider that has a pretty stout or locked down CMS right, where there's maybe not a lot of permissions given to the actual dealer to do much in the back end of the site, and that's not always a limitation. But one thing that has become a misconception, I think, over the years. I'm curious to know if you guys would either agree or have any additional comment on it.
Speaker 1:But there have been providers that will say, well, hey, we'll do the same level of SEO, it will have the same effect for you, for an extra $600 a month, versus more specific providers that are probably just doing a lot more, that will charge $2,000, $3,000, $4,000, $5,000 a month in SEO, and I think what ends up happening for dealers is they one that's confusing to them, but it creates a misconception for those that maybe aren't going to take the time to listen to, maybe, a podcast like this.
Speaker 1:They're not going to get their hands on an SEO playbook and really understand some of the intricacies, that would probably unlock the door in their own minds to ask questions of a provider.
Speaker 1:How can you provide all of these things that I've learned right, because there's a lot of detail that goes into being effective and good with your search engine optimization? If you gave a dealer enough information that they could ask their vendor the question how are you able to accomplish all of these things for $600 a month? Sometimes that would one dispel maybe a misconception that the value is equal, but also I think would unlock the door for a lot of dealers to realize there's no possible way that we could be getting this amount of value for an extra few hundred dollars a month tagged onto the bill where that is usually probably a place where the vendor it's an easy extra way to get some profitability built in versus really giving great value to the dealer. Anyway, I think that creates a misconception of value for dealers. I think it has for many years and I can move on, unless you guys have any thoughts on that.
Speaker 2:I do.
Speaker 2:I actually I did work for a few of the big auto shops, as you know, and there was kind of one of those situations where we had a very low cost, easy bolt on SEO product was less than a thousand dollars and basically all we were doing was reading Google Analytics back to them and letting them know what happened.
Speaker 2:If it was good, great. If it was bad, then oh well, you know it's the algorithm's fault or whatever. But ultimately, within SEO, you actually have to do a lot of work beyond analysis, beyond reading the same tools that everybody uses, beyond analysis, beyond reading the same tools that everybody uses, and what's really important is that you really look at the scope of what these providers are charging, because small, cheap SEO scopes are extremely common across every vertical that we work in. But when we look at what has actually happened in terms of work and deliverables, typically it's like a light onboarding and then they just kind of move on. I really do think that one of the worst typically one of the worst companies to do SEO for you is your website provider, because they'll uh, at least, at least on the technical side, they'll tend to hide things from you that are limitations with their platform because obviously they don't want to mess up the website and kind of bundle deal, um. But yeah, that's. That's my two cents on cheap SEO scopes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I have grown probably less gracious or kind to the website providers who also provide SEO and try to sell it really hard. And yeah, I know you worked from those shop we worked at one together that did a pretty good job of actually selling it with websites. And one of the things that I am probably a bigger critic of today than I ever have been is, if your website provider is also your SEO provider, the likelihood that they're also your paid media or your paid advertising provider, paid search, if you're doing remarketing, display anything across the Google Ads platform, it's likely that they're doing all of it and maybe you made that decision because it's convenient, right, just keep it all in one place. But the consequences of making decisions like that are really where the problem is and dealers just most of them just don't know to ask questions that would be like hey, website provider, what's my average conversion rate of all the traffic that comes to this wonderful website that I get from you? And they tell you well, it's around 2%. That's the national average, that's the automotive average and it has been for about 30 years, which is pathetic. Then I go back to say, well, okay, if 2% is as good as it really gets, and there are some industries where it's really hard to get out of single digits. I understand, okay, but if you're my SEO provider as well and I'm spending all of this money and you spend no time trying to make the conversion environments actually pay off better, I want to have really serious conversations with the provider that wants all of that business and does nothing to work on better conversion outcomes. Like if I take my business to premier online marketing outcomes. Like if I take my business to premier online marketing.
Speaker 1:Right Now, I'm working with people like Andres and Mike Schaug, who have a vested interest in the outcome of what happens with all of this effort. Does it get dropped off in the desert there's nobody there, it's just left or is it being put into environments where it has its best chance of turning into a sales opportunity or a business opportunity? I think that's really, really critical, and I could go on and on and on about some of these things, but let me get back on track with you guys. All SEO is not the same and as much as it's been a conversation for a long, long time, I think it's really prudent to cover this and get your guys' perspective, because all the SEO isn't the same. That means that local SEO is different than technical SEO. It's all SEO, right, there's water, there's ice, there's vapor, but it's all SEO, local, technical and beyond. Where should dealers focus, and maybe a secondary on that is what will the focus of your playbook be relative to this topic of seo, not all being the same?
Speaker 3:yeah, that's a good question. So, um, for, for car dealers, I mean, local seo is the. It's the name of the game, you know. I think that a lot of dealers think that, oh, I just want to rank on top of Google in the blue links, which are the traditional blue links that you see when you search for something.
Speaker 3:As I mentioned earlier, most people's eyes are drawn to the map pack.
Speaker 3:It has a higher playthrough rate if you're ranking in the map pack than in organic search results, especially for queries that have both of them, as in the search results.
Speaker 3:So it's really important to just maximize your local SEO, maximizing every ranking factor that local SEOo has in order to to get better rankings, and it's a completely different game. I mean, there are some similarities in terms of what factors help you rank in the map pack than in organic search, but it's it's just a different algorithm. I mean, relevance is one of them local, local relevance, prominence. So just any type of reviews, not just Google reviews, but also third-party reviews, help you rank in the map pack. So, yeah, it's a completely different game with some similarities, but dealers should invest into local SEO more than organic search and, as Mike mentioned, traffic coming from the map pack is highly likely to convert than just going straight to your website and clicking on a form and whatnot, like if you get phone calls from GVP. That's a higher chance of converting or getting a demo or getting into your dealership than someone that just fills a form on your site.
Speaker 1:So let's talk a little bit about the importance of visibility in search engines. I know a lot of dealers kind of start with that. They're like, okay, I understand the concept that I need to show up when people are searching I um, there's not my line. Um, I'll credit sasha strauss. He, uh, I think he still is a professor at usc and ucla's business schools. He's an amazing brand marketer, just brilliant guy, and he famously says I can't buy what I don't know exists, or I can't buy what I can't find. So search is really the tip of the spear in most cases when you're thinking about well, I'm a car dealership and where do I want to win first, when I start talking about all these digital marketing options, or when I start to talk about SEO and I think that's at the top of mind for most people like visibility. So how does SEO drive organic traffic? And maybe specifically, how does it drive traffic that converts.
Speaker 3:For example, for car dealerships, we see a lot of OEM content, just generic content that's not targeting any geos or any specific models.
Speaker 3:We just see the cookie cutter content on most dealerships that are not doing SEO, and this type of content is just the same copy and paste that you see on most of their ships. And so what we focus on we create specific content that targets the geos that they want to target or that are nearby, that they're interested in, that they get the most clients from, and we also focus on creating pages that are relevant to what users are searching for. So if you know, in their geo in Ohio or whatever, people are searching for Ford Bronco a lot more than the EV Mustang then we will focus on the Ford Bronco and beef up those pages, make it informative, make sure that the inventory is displayed, that when the user lands in that page, that they have all the information that they need to schedule a visit or to call the dealership, and so a lot of dealerships lack that and I think it's something that is undervalued as well.
Speaker 2:Andres is very, very humble, but I actually.
Speaker 2:There's a situation in mind where he had a Toyota dealership that wanted to rank in a city very, very far away and I laughed and told him no, I don't think this location page is going to work, and a few months later we were ranking in that city that was hours away. So it's definitely possible with specialized content for the users. I mean, I think a thing that a lot of dealerships, especially new car dealerships, forget is that they're not just repping Ford or Toyota, they're repping that for their market and oftentimes on websites you don't see very many geographically specific pages or the keywords that they would really like to show up for. Another big area that tends to be a blind spot for new dealerships is they don't show up for new terms like or sorry use terms, and they don't show up for finance. They really are just completely optimized for whatever the 2024 new car lineup is and they're missing out on, you know, the vast majority of buyers which are actually used car buyers. So that's another huge area of opportunity that we've been working on with our product.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and one more thing to add to that is well, it's a funny story. This happened recently One of our clients I worked with them for more than two years. We created a bunch of content, a bunch of pages, targeting models, targeting different geos, and they had to migrate their site to another CMS and part of the deal was to migrate their SEO over there. So they unfortunately canceled. And then you see their analytics nowadays and they tanked like 30% in one month because the new website provider deleted all our content and just put generic content in there, and it's just, you know. Start to see our content, you know, go to waste.
Speaker 1:And start to see our client, you know get or ex-client get, um, get, uh, worse results I had the very same thing happen this year, where, on the b2b side, where some of the things we were doing and we were not, from an seo perspective, we weren't doing exactly what you were doing, we were due, but it was having a huge seo effect in terms of the content we were making and then applying it to interior pages on their site, and they decided that they were insane. So they switched strategies like a hard left turn and it's been a steady decline into who knows what they're trying to accomplish now. Sometimes you can't help people from themselves. You can't save them from themselves, and I think that's why having conversations like this and creating podcast episodes like this allows people to get into it, and sometimes even people that are consuming the podcast episodes on a regular basis. Now you don't always have, uh, an hour to sit down and watch the whole episode at once or listen to the whole episode at once. Sometimes you do, but nowadays we can even take podcast episodes like this and chop up bite sized pieces of this content, so the people get a little bit of Andres explaining a concept like oh, that's great, and then that leads them to go and listen to more, and a concept like, oh, that's great, and then that leads them to go and listen to more, and I think again, this kind of just points back to why it's great that you guys are putting a new playbook together. I think that that's long overdue for the industry to have something that's fresh and, just in general, educating on the topic is huge. So, in keeping with that, keep the conversation going.
Speaker 1:I know this has been mentioned already a little bit in the episode and I think this can confuse people. It may not be a misconception, but I don't think a lot of people talk about the difference between local SEO and organic search. That because there is a difference. When you talk about things like map pack and google business profile, right, there's a lot of local things relative to you know, your business is considered to be a local business, not a national or a global business by google, and so there's, strategically, things that you do differently. Tell me from your. What's the difference between local SEO and organic search? Why should dealerships care about either or both?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so um yeah, for for local SEO, you're competing against other businesses in the area, right? I mean, it's just you against the other dealerships, whether they're other. Uh like, if you're, if you're a Hyundai dealership, you're competing against other Hyundai dealerships, but you can also be competing against used car dealerships buy here, pay here, dealerships, and so you're only competing with, with local competitors. For organic search it's a little bit tougher because you're competing against, you know, I, carscom, carfax, autotrader they have huge SEO budgets. They spend millions of dollars on that every year. Here you are a local business trying to compete against them.
Speaker 3:Those are the main two differences. One of the differences would be competitors. The other one would be how Google ranks or promotes you to be at the top three in the map pack or the top three in organic search results. They're completely different algorithms, as I mentioned earlier. And the third difference I would say would be the click-through rate. If you're on the map pack, it's just a higher. It has a higher click-through rate than the organic search results, simply because of visibility, but also having on the map pack, you have the reviews, number of reviews and review ratings. So there's a little element of social proof in there, just by knowing that the dealership that you're dealing with is trustworthy. And the last thing is that reviews can also or a snippet of the review can show up in the map pack. So if you're selling a honda Civic and you're looking for that and one of your reviews mentions Honda Civic, then Google will promote that listing over the.
Speaker 1:Nice. So you touched on this a little bit, so I'm not going to get too much into ranking factors and algorithms, but I think that's an important distinction for people to remember. I think that's an important distinction for people to remember For years before. What did they call it, mike, back in the days of mobile geddon? Is that what it was? Everyone was like, oh no, mobile geddon.
Speaker 1:When Google always they will tease about things that are coming about, things that are coming, and the mobile algorithm was such a hot topic for so, so long, website providers thinking, hey, are we responsive? How will our sites look? Are we ready for this? But that also does speak to the fact that Google looks and operates differently from desktop searches, mobile searches and all of the you know ranking factors that are a part of these determinations of where you show up and how you were, how, how well you're going to perform from a local seo perspective are actually. I think it points back to the comment I made earlier, which is seo has and always will be dynamic. Every year there's always some carnival barker saying seo dead, like it's dead, it's dead, links don't matter anymore, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then all of a sudden it's like whoops, there's a little bit of a leak and now all of a sudden, joey Hawkins and Rand Fishkin's talking about it again, getting himself all in trouble again, but he's kind of been vindicated for a lot of the things that he was concerned of for years.
Speaker 1:All that to say, though, my point is and I think that this conversation is really illustrating it well is SEO is a dynamic part of digital marketing strategy, always has been, always will be, and it is very difficult for business owners. Let's just stay focused on car dealers and not a criticism. It's difficult for a car dealer to be up on all of the knowledge necessary to know. So there is an angle, it's not even an angle. There's an element of trust that's really really important in terms of well, who are you working with? How are you trying to make sure that I'm educated, so I at least know what's going on, and then I can have some ability to inspect and know what's happening, and I think some of that is just teaching people.
Speaker 1:So, again, I'll just come back to the fact that you guys are, you know, putting all of these elements together in a playbook, I think also will be be really, really helpful for people, not only your own clients. There will be other people, I'm sure there will be people who will say, man, nobody's being quite this transparent and honest with this. We want to talk to you guys, but I think that's really, really critical. So, moving on from that, could you explain a little bit of these pillars of local SEO? I know some people are familiar with proximity, but that's another part. I love just hearing you talk a little bit more about those pillars of local SEO and why proximity is so important.
Speaker 3:Yeah, great question. So, as I mentioned earlier, local SEO has different ranking factors in organic search. A lot of people think that, oh, if I just fill up my website with content and links, I'm going to be good, and part of that could be true. But there are other factors that affect how your website is promoted on the map pack, and those factors are prominence, proximity and relevance, and I'm going to dive into them a little bit. But relevance is just means how, uh, how, your content or the or your google business profile, how, how relevant is it to the, to the user's search or query, right? So if, uh, if you're a flower business or a car dealer and uh, and you're and the user is looking for a car dealer or a used car for sale and you happen to sell that, then they're going to find you. But if you're, if you're, a hyundai deal client is looking for a new ford f-150, like, uh, it's very unlikely that you'll be showing up in the map pack. So that's relevance. Prominence is basically how trustworthy you are, how authoritative or how much authority you have, and that comes down to reviews. Backlinks have some level of impact on SEO, on local SEO, but over the years that's been slowing down a little bit. It still works. I'm not saying it's dead, by the way, but I'm just saying that Google just uses other factors and a lot of times they just trump prominence. So, for example, as I mentioned earlier, reviews are very important and the type of reviews that you have are also very important. So if you have a bunch of naked reviews, so just five-star reviews with no testimonial or anything, those have not as much impact as a review that a written review that may include a keyword right, because, as I mentioned earlier, if your reviews contain, like, some keywords in there, then Google will pick up on that and use them to promote your business in the map pack. And then video reviews, like reviews that have continued video or photo, are also super important and they increase click-through rate as well. So there's levels to reviews and also having reviews on other sites like Yelp, because a lot of people are using Apple Maps more and Apple Maps pulls reviews from Yelp, so they don't have their own review system. So having reviews there is important, and so that is the prominent aspect of local SEO.
Speaker 3:The third aspect would be proximity little bit deep into this, because this creates a lot of confusion for GMs or, you know, marketing managers in car dealerships. Right, proximity is how close is the searcher to your business location? Right, and this is a big factor because you might be in, you know your business might be in. You know your business might be in San Diego, for example, but it's more like on the edge of Chula Vista, and they're like, oh, why are we not showing up, like, why are we not getting all this organic traffic if we're the only San Diego dealership? But then the other San Diego dealership could be in Carlsbad, or it can be La Jolla, which is closer, and then they might get like they might be closer to the audience that they want to get if they're high-income earners and such. So proximity is a big factor and it can trump the other factors down Just because the searcher is closer and Google is trying to give the user the best result.
Speaker 3:Also, what we get a lot is car dealers that are like, hey, I'm sitting at home and I'm in San Marcos, right, and my dealership is ranking above me, like what's going on? Or like a family member says that, right, and you're like, well, I mean, I wish there was something we can do about that, but you're, if you're at home and you're not close to your business and there are other closer business closer, there are closer businesses to you, then those are, those are the ones that are going to get promote, and that is that is something that we get a lot right mike, yeah, absolutely so you can't really game distance with the map pack.
Speaker 2:If I'm understanding you correctly, you can do it with organic search or the non-map pack listings, so, like if you create a geographic page. Using that example, it would take a very long time for a san marcos dealer to rank anywhere in austin, but it is hypothetically possible with the right amount of content and links. But the map pack will only show people that are really kind of in that area and it's really important that dealers try to focus their SEO, their local SEO, on where they are actually physically located, because that is where they're going to have the best success and the best momentum. I had a question for you, andres In terms of local SEO, how important are citations? Are citations dead or are they still important ranking factors for local SEO and just standard SEO?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I love that question. I mean citations have always been to me, have always been a pillar for local SEO and I don't think that that's changed. I think that citations have slowly, as I mentioned, any off page, any like building and citations they kind of lose a little bit of relevance over time. But I mean it's proven when we have a client and we create citations for them and we optimize them to the best of our ability, we put as much information in them and we refresh them every month, uh, keep them up to date, uh, we get good results. And citations is only the first thing that that a local business should have, which is just local listings, uh, being being in a local directory or even a niche directory. But um, that's um. But citations to me are still important. Google still thinks they're relevant and I mean you can get a little bit of referral traffic for them.
Speaker 3:But that's not really what we're trying to achieve with citations. We're just trying to get more authority if we, if, if we use citations properly and also a big part of citations is keeping them indexed. If you create citations and they don't have a photo, they don't have opening hours, they don't have, like you know, all the relevant information, like for the user to make a decision. It's very likely that Google will not index them and when that happens, it's basically like just Google ignores them. There's no authority transferred from the citation or the directory to your to your website, so you're really just doing work for nothing, basically, if you're building citations and not indexing them. So our job in the SEO department is just to make sure that we take advantage of citations and include them in our strategy, include them in some of our content, like just keep them indexed, keep them rolling, keep them relevant at all times.
Speaker 2:So just to clarify that, you can create a citation or do a push through like Yext, but a lot of those won't actually be indexed, so there is more work that has to be done to get those indexed and basically, when they're indexed with Google, then they have a lot more SEO value for your website, and that's a pretty advanced strategy that Andres enlightened me about. It's yielded really, really great results.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I was just going to say. You know the NAP, the name, address, phone number part of you know citations has been important for a long time. But again I'll say it, seo is dynamic and it's not just technical SEO, it's not just local SEO. There are so many different components. One of those is all of the instances of your business that include a name, address and phone number, and if your business has changed locations, which some dealers end up changing locations, and that ends up being an issue. There's lots of buy cells that happen, and so there's changes with the name, address, phone number. But it's a good segue into something that I wanted to ask about the optimization of probably the granddaddy of all places where your name, address, phone number exists, and that's the Google business profile. I well, I'll maybe ask some questions after I ask this one, and that is how can a dealership optimize their Google business profile for better local search results, or at least to complement the local search results?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So where do I start there? I would say I mean, I would start from the top. Right, if you open your Google business profile, the first thing you're going to see is your business name. Right, if your business name um and you know, google has tried to disprove this but, um, if your business name contains a keyword or the geo that helps you a ton, right, um, now you cannot. You cannot add that it's against, is against TOS if that's not your real business name. But a little tip if you sign a DBA or doing business as in your state, that you can use that, and then Google cannot take it down or suspend you because you're registered as as that business or before you buy or rename a dealership, make sure the geo name is in there.
Speaker 2:It's just, it's absolutely incredibly effective and your main product, like honda austin, is going to help you rank for honda austin more than you know dick myersyers, honda of Austin or something like that. It's just, you definitely want to have what you're selling and the geo in there if possible, because that's going to get you a lot of. It's going to make it a lot easier for you. It's not going to do everything, but it's definitely going to make it easier.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and then another factor would be categories. Right, and this is something that a lot of people don't use, and I have a story about this. I'll tell you in a second. But your primary category has Use Honda dealer, because that has such a lot more weight than the additional categories. Now, in the additional categories, you can add car dealer, you can add used car dealer, used truck dealer, you can use even car loan and financing company, because that's your literally like providing loans, so might as well use that. And those don't have as much weight as the primary category, but they will help you.
Speaker 3:And to illustrate this, I was looking for a coworking space in my area and the ones that I liked were really far. And so one time I went to the gym to look at the memberships and the space and all that, and they told me like oh, like there's a co-working space under us and it's like 10 minutes from home, like this gym and co-working space 10 minutes from home. And I was like oh, wow, I did not know that. How long has it been around? Like a year. And I'm like, okay, so I go to Google Maps and I'm like co-working space and I'm like standing in front of the door and it's like they're not showing up.
Speaker 3:And so I type in the name of the business and in their categories it says executive office, something like executive suite rental agency, something like that. And then corporate office like executive suite rental agency, something like that. And then corporate office like those were their categories, and I'm like you're a co-working space, like a year like you're shooting yourself in the foot by not using, like the, the right categories, right and so that, like that. That was a real example that that just just baffled me, because I'm like what are you doing? You're trying to sound fancy but at the same time, you're losing so many customers.
Speaker 1:I would imagine there will probably be a little section there in your SEO, your forthcoming SEO playbook, on Google Business Profile, profile optimization and making sure you get this role of keywords lined out correctly. And then categories and this has actually been something that's come up several times in the I mean really since people have been paying attention to Google, my Business, now Google Business Profile in this kind of serious manner over the last handful of years that if you get these categories wrong or you get too cute, try to add yourself into too many or irrelevant ones, that just that alone can have kind of a catastrophic effect on your local SEO success. So I think that's important. I have, just as an add-on with Google business profile, in the last at least four, maybe five years, the growth and clearly strategically how Google wants to utilize the Google business profile. I have just and assuming that Google is telling us the truth, although you can independently verify this based on your own Google business profile traffic, but Google has said that it's like. I want to say it's nearly 70%. It's a very high number of traffic that goes through your Google business profile that interact, interacted with it, results in a visit to your website. It's a very high percentage. I think they grabbed that from an average across multiple verticals. Perfectly fine, but curious to know, if you guys have any thoughts on this, whether you think that one dealers car dealers should be paying attention and probably power sport dealers to RV dealers should pay attention closely to to the amount of traffic that they have that comes through their business profile. That ends up being a touchpoint at the website. I think all that's really important and for me, I have told dealers consistently for the last couple of years optimization at the Google business profile level yes, think about keywords, all the things you guys are talking about, your categories but keeping it fresh with the content that allows you to place there as well has been something that I'm curious to know if you guys think I'm giving dealers bad advice, but updating information there so that you do have pictures, visual content, but also offers A lot of people I know you guys offer this, I'm sure, through your agency for people, people, if they want to, you know, be putting in, you know, cars for sale.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of different ways that you can be optimizing your Google business profile, but even outside of you know, okay, well, you should plug in cars for sale, Putting offers in that might be seasonal offers. Or maybe you're trying to really raise the level of awareness on deals that you're willing to make on electric vehicles because maybe you're overstocked, you got too much of that in inventory. Or maybe it's hey, you want to route people through your trade-in tool because you know that your trade-in tool does a really good job of generating leads for the dealership and they converted a higher percentage than maybe other lead sources, and so those are all things that can be added to a Google business profile. You can link your trade-in tool there, have a little blurb on it.
Speaker 1:So there's a lot of things that can be done there, and I've always told dealers optimize a lot there, because I haven't found that there is a point of over-optimization on the Google business profile. I have found that there is consequences to trying to be cute with categories or getting things wrong with keywords. But I guess my question for you guys would be and it's not one that I had planned on asking can a dealership over-optimize their Google business profile to their own detriment, or is it more of a keep trying? We haven't seen it yet. That's been my experience. Curious to know your guys' thoughts.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's an excellent question. So I think for car dealers you cannot really. There are certain things that will get you suspended if you add them to your GDP profile and if you abuse it for the for the majority of the fields available, I mean, when in doubt, just fill it out, you know. Like that's, uh, that's the best advice I can give to dealers. Like, add your payment methods, add whatever you need, because at the end of the day, that will increase your click-through rate at some point. Right, like if you there might not be ranking factors, like google's not going to be. Like oh, this, this, you know they accept visa and this other business doesn't. Like you know it's not a ranking factor. Or like um having, um, it's not like that big of a ranking factor as much as um categories does. But yeah, I think that that there think that there is no wrong way to do it.
Speaker 3:But there are some things that are against TOS. For example, adding a phone number to GVP posts. We had a recent client that did that a long time ago and it's just bad for you because if you look at terms of service and they were updated a few years ago you cannot add your phone number to them. I mean, it doesn't say address, but I would not add the address either. I would just make it informative. Avoid adding address, avoid adding phone number. But definitely getting your phone number in your GDP post or GDP image can get you suspended. So I would encourage all dealers to avoid doing that. And then, yeah, I mean there is no. There are no other things that come to mind that can get you suspended, other than overly stuffing your business name with keywords that I mean gold will not suspend. They might give you a soft suspension by asking you to verify your business, but if you can't verify, then they'll suspend you. Yeah, those are the only two that come to mind.
Speaker 1:So don't do the crazy stuff, but definitely optimize in ways that get people to one interact. Stay on your Google business profile, perhaps even do something that actually represents a conversion activity. All of those things are good. Let's jump in. I got a couple. Oh, mike, sorry about that.
Speaker 2:Service areas or locations is really important too. Most people just fill in one. I think you can put in like 20, right, andres.
Speaker 3:Yeah, service areas are very important. It's been kind of like our secret sauce for a while and a lot of SEOs have dismissed them, thinking that they're not relevant, and recently they've regained popularity again. I think Darren Shaw from White Spark made a post about it recently. But we've been doing service areas since the beginning of Premier. We always fill out the service areas. We add any relevant geos, zip codes, counties, like as long as it's within two hours and it's not like irrelevant to the business, uh, and it's not like super far away, we we add it and uh, it's another way to to, to show up that. That's one way to not I'm gonna avoid that word uh, that's another way to increase your, your visibility. Uh, when it comes to proximity, basically like if you're, if your service areas includes a certain city that you want to appear on, when you know people search for that, uh, for a search term with a geo, then um, it's yeah, that increases your chances of of appearing in the map pad for that chart Interesting.
Speaker 1:Okay, guys, just a couple more questions. This episode's been flying by. Guys, let's discuss on-page SEO. I've heard you guys mention this. I don't know what it means, so I'm curious. You guys have my curiosity piqued with this, so I've got to ask about it. What's your and I love duct tape. What's your duct tape approach to target page optimization?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so yeah, I mean, who hasn't used duct tape to fix things like?
Speaker 1:Everything.
Speaker 3:Yeah, fix everything. That's part of my toolkit every day. I actually just bought this film camera and the battery door is not shutting, so I just duct taped it. So yeah, so you're placing it. I'm like, no, I'll just put tape on it, you know, of course.
Speaker 1:Um that's a sign of your brilliance, andres thanks, um, yeah, so, so the.
Speaker 3:I would say that the duct deductive approach and this comes from, I mean, there's a the best way to do a quick on-page optimization for a page that you want to rank, whether it's an inventory page, a service financing homepage, whatever you want is to include the keywords that you want to rank for in certain elements of your page.
Speaker 3:Remember, google ranks pages, not websites, unless you're Forbes or Reddit. But yeah, google will rank pages that are optimized, that are relevant to the user's query. So if you want to do that for your dealership, then you want to include the primary keyword, with the geo First of all, if the geo or the primary keyword with the geo, first of all, if the geo or the primary keyword is in your domain. So I don't know, amarillohondacom or something you already got like a great ranking factor working with you, which is the domain, the URL, right, but you want to include the, the, the primary keyword, uh, on your, on your url, or the keyword that you're targeting in the url. You want to make it, you want to make it short, uh. So you don't want to include, like, if it's amarillo honda dealership, like that's, that's your main keyword. You don't want to like, add, uh, like, honda dealership Amarillo, texas, which is quite longer. You just want to make it shorter for people to read and for the user to read.
Speaker 3:The other one is the page title. So every page has a meta title and a meta description, and so adding the primary keyword to your page title is another ranking factor. Those two are the most prominent ones. And then the third one would be the heading. When you have a website, when you imagine yeah, when you have a website, you have something called headings. So you have your H1 heading, which is the most prominent one and usually should tell the user what your page is about. It's the largest heading and it's the one that most people misuse because they try to be fancy and cutesy with it, and so adding your keyword in the H1 heading is another big factor. Those three would be the most important factors in a font page, like adding your keyword there. There's two more, which is adding the keyword in the copy, like at least once. I would say once depends how long your content might be.
Speaker 3:You can also use variations. You don't have to use the exact keyword on all three of them or on all four elements. And the last one is to add some sort of variant of that keyword or you know another supporting term on your headings, on your H2, h3, h4 headings, which are, you know, if you know HTML, those are like the terms that you use, the tabs that you use, and so by doing that, which is super simple, you're already covering most of your bases. You're already 80% of the way there. There are more things that you can, they can do to optimize your pages, but that involves creating more content, localized content, internal links, like there. There's the other 20 of it. That requires a little bit more expertise and understanding, but if you cover those um, how many? Did I mention five elements? You're, you know, you're well ahead of everyone else.
Speaker 1:There's a theme throughout if the listeners and or viewers are picking up on this, but I'm guessing that it'll be something that will also be a theme from your forthcoming playbook and that is there are some common things relative to SEO about a business that have always been important from the beginning, and it's who you are, toyota dealership, what you sell new Toyotas, used Toyotas, tundras, tacomas, camrys, 4runners, blah, blah, blah and where you sell it. And I have one last question for you guys search strategy. That's really much more expansive, far beyond local factors. There still is this very important the optimization of your google business profile and its effect on local seo. All of these things are so critically important, but they all happen to be also uh easy, easily fall apart if you're not focusing on well who are. Who are you, what do you sell, where do you sell it? And I think that this is all really practical and helpful information.
Speaker 1:I'm excited that you guys are heading in this direction of putting this playbook together, and I actually think we'll be able to actually do some more episodes on the topic. There's just so much always to cover, and we've burned all the way down to the last thing that I wanted to ask you guys on this episode which was relative to the documentation uh leak um a few months back now, uh, where there was this kind of Google search documentation that uh leak that everyone started to talk about. I think I first saw maybe Michael King was talking about it and then Rand was talking about it and then Joy Hawkins did an episode I don't know if they did it as a podcast or a webinar where she had both of them on and they were talking about those things. Curious to know if you guys had any particular thoughts, if there was anything that surprised you or didn't surprise you, and maybe was there anything in there that you think the dealers or any businesses should be aware of.
Speaker 3:So the leak was very interesting because I mean, there's two sides of the coin, which is you know it's fake, you know it's fake. And then the other one is, like you know, this, this is, um, you know part of like the API, of like some kind of like warehouse project and whatnot Like, and then there's people that believe that there are real ranking factors and, um, I mean, I just take it with a grain of salt. Uh, to be honest with you, there's a few things there that that really highlight, like links, backlinks. Who's going to say in this, links don't matter, of course they do Like, come on, they've been creating that for a while and SEOs know that if you get backlinks, if you do link outreach, if you do PRs, that increases in the long term not immediately, but in the long term, it will increase your visibility, your rankings, and if it's done right, of course.
Speaker 3:The other one that caught my attention was the clicks right, the rules being denied that clicks don't matter right.
Speaker 3:The world's been denying that clicks don't matter right, but there's so much documentation and I firsthand witnessed this on the last Brighton SEO conference where Dan Sullivan was talking and someone asked him if links matter and he tried to tip the door on the answer, but everyone came to the same conclusion that clicks do matter, right?
Speaker 3:I mean, if people are clicking on your search results, google's going to promote that, right. So it's very important to have good titles, good meta descriptions, schema that enhance your visibility on search results so you can get the most amount of clicks and that will help you eventually rank on the search results. But also for Google Maps or the Map Pack, right, if you have good reviews, people are more likely to click on it. If you get a batch of bad reviews and your score goes down, people are less likely to click on your listing, and that's proven to be like. We've had a few clients where they had bad management and then, unfortunately, got bad reviews and then they started to lose a lot of rank. They started to lose rankings and organic traffic and so on. So, like that, I'm convinced, anecdotally, that it is an important factor.
Speaker 2:Time on site was an interesting one too. They were also saying that that was not important. Clearly it was also a little bit about exact match domains. If you have the keyword in the domain, it helps. Google said it doesn't necessarily help, but it always helps. So a lot of interesting deflections, I mean.
Speaker 2:I think here at Google, probably because of the ad side of our business, we get so much sold to us Like use the setting, use enhanced CPC, maximize clicks, use max ROAS, even though you don't have dollar amounts coming in. You know, because you're not an e-commerce business, because we're primarily Legion, they'll tell us to do a lot of things with tremendous amounts of conviction and a lot of them have blown up in our face. So we kind of take everything that Google says with a grain of salt, especially if they say it doesn't work. On the SEO side it might still work for a while, but to the point of what you're saying, it's dynamic.
Speaker 2:Google is always trying to change things, so you can't game the system. They know that. You know 75, 85% of all people that do searches click on organic listings, not ads. So everything that they can do to shake things up shifts more searchers to their ad units. I mean, I remember when we started out, the way we would game the system is we would like bid for position five, remember, because it was top-line, yeah, and you get basically the same amount of conversions. Then they kill that and then they have four ads. So all you can see is ads. You have to scroll past the ads and people still do it.
Speaker 2:So, again, anything Google can do to make ads look more natural to change, move the goalposts around. So businesses have to invest more with ads because they don't have the reliability of a lot of organic traffic. They're going to do all of those things, and that's just something that you have to work with a good partner for, and you definitely cannot. A good partner is not going to be someone that takes everything that Google says at face value. You have to have a lot of tests and experiments going across your portfolio of clients, which is what we do, and then when we find things that work, we double down on them for as long as they work, with the understanding that Google is going to change something tomorrow and we're going to have to pivot again.
Speaker 1:It's interesting that you know, over the years and I will just speak relative to the automotive vertical because it's the one I know the best it's been paying my bills for many decades. You know, google's entrance into the automotive vertical was at first, gentle, cautious. The early players that were serving car dealers from an AdWords perspective, google was largely not involved. Not giving advice, not giving tips, it's just. This is the black and white of how the ad setup work in AdWords. Go for it. And they never, ever spoke about SEO when they started to come to conferences in automotive with speakers when they started to build out and had an automotive team, even those people, while they were informative in what they were there to deliver, they were always uncomfortable in fielding questions around anything organic, anything SEO, and some people gave him a hard time about that and I don't know that that was totally fair. But at the same time, I've been in this for a long time and I've never seen a representative from Google on a stage anywhere really just being candid, but, more importantly, stage anywhere um really just being candid and but more importantly, um, informative about seo, like sharing things. They just and I I understand that that's not where they're going to make any money, but it's interesting that all of this time has gone by and so much change has happened and covid happened and you know people changing up budgets and even ginormous companies like Google going back to the drawing board around strategy. And it's companies, really, and experts like yourselves that now I feel like the position that you take with your existing clients and potential clients is. We've been in this so long. We've seen all the changes. We were here when it first started and we've been literally standing in the stream before the dam broke and we weathered the storm of all of the craziness and we're still here. And why that's important for businesses. Let's just say why that's important for car dealers is having someone that has that experience. Um can be the and really are the perfect people to say we know what was done in the past and how you needed to do paid search, seo, all of these things to get results.
Speaker 1:We know what's also changed and what's going on currently, and I think Google needs the help of businesses like yours. Maybe they don't, they're probably not going to acknowledge this, but they need that help, that guidance, that expertise that then can also explain to the end consumer of such advertising products what they need to know, because google doesn't do what they used to do. Mike, you and I've talked about this before and that's probably constraint of resources, probably you know. Just you know managing profitability of their own business, whether everyone else likes it or not, whether it really does ultimately end up serving the end user customers as well. I think all that's questionable, but as far as operating the business, I understand it. But I think what I'm trying to say is, at this day and age, I think that companies like yours you're dead set on we're going to make an SEO playbook, we're going to start to have these conversations. You're also saying we have the experience, that we know what's been done previously and what's happening today, and you need somebody that you can trust, that's seen that before, that will advise you to make great decisions that will give you the best yields for the investment you're going to make in these areas.
Speaker 1:And there was a time period where I felt like I don't know what's going to happen with that. But now more than ever, I think businesses should really be looking for people that have that experience, that have literally been living in the trench. They get it, they understand it, because if you don't have that, then all of these things that happen, even unintentionally, when Google says, hey, do this, making these ROAS recommendations, making all these things that you are so good at articulating, mike, and then it's like, ah, that wasn't great because maybe they didn't have enough time to test it, but a lot of times it's just there's not enough time to take something. That's a blanket, like let's put it over every single circumstance, every single dealer, and it's not one size fits all in most of these cases, from brand to brand, from buyer to buyer.
Speaker 1:Subaru buyers are not Chevy buyers, they just aren't. Are they a car buyer? Yeah, but they're just not the same. Somebody that wants to buy a Crosstrek is not the same person that wants to buy a Silverado. Somebody that wants to buy a Crosstrek is not the same person that wants to buy a Silverado. And so you have to be able to take the similarities of the car buyer and then the differences and then understand and apply all these things relative to an SEO strategy, to a paid search strategy and navigating it. So I think all that's great. Anyway, this has been a great episode. I want to thank you guys for your time. I know how to find Mike on LinkedIn and andres, are you on linkedin?
Speaker 3:where's the best place people can find you? You're gonna have a fan club now. Uh, yeah, you can find me on linkedin. I actually don't know my handle because I don't install linkedin but well, I'll help people.
Speaker 1:So just go look up, just go to yeah, just uh, my uh, let me see yeah, just look me up.
Speaker 1:Do you have in your profile? Do you have your current role at premier online marketing in your profile? Yes, so if you can't find him andres fernandez at premier online marketing look up premier online marketing and then search by employees. Find that company page and employees and you'll'll find them there. You'll find all the Palm folks there. I always encourage that just because LinkedIn is a great place for this type of B2B marketing, exchanges and linking up with people, and every time you meet somebody new who can be of educational assistance, brings you insights, brings you helpful tips. You definitely want to connect with people like that. So look up Andres and Mike on LinkedIn. If you cannot find them individually as Mike Schaug or Andres Fernandez, then look up Premier Online Marketing and then look up their employees and go find them and connect there.
Speaker 1:This is a great place to park this episode to the listeners and or viewers. We always appreciate your comments and questions when you view this content, either in bite-sized pieces we put a lot of it into LinkedIn, youtube as well but wherever you're consuming it, if there's a comment section, throw that down there and also do not be afraid to ask questions. Sometimes we get really good ideas from those insights of people sharing that feedback. And dark social is impossible to track. So we go in there and look at it and we want to know if you have things that you really like or you would want us to go deeper on. Your feedback helps us deliver really relevant episodes. So thanks for tuning in. We appreciate your time and never want to waste it, so we'll see you again real soon right here on the podcast.
Speaker 2:Thanks, john Thanks.
Speaker 1:John. Thanks guys. All right, we'll hit the stop button.