Does your web site work for you? Do you only have one?
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Just saw this video in Dealer Weekly Newsletter from Automotive Digest.
There is a great point made there but it needs to go further. The point is that your web site either works or it doesn’t. PERIOD.
Your web site generates people through your front door or it does not. It does not matter how pretty it is, how flashy the graphics. That does not matter. The key is it generates people through your front door or it does not.
That answers the first question but brings us to question number two.
In the online world you soon won’t be able to survive with only one site. Here is why.
For this example you have a Ford dealership called John Smith Ford located in my area (the coal region of Pennsylvania). You rank #1 in Google for John Smith Ford but….
I am a buyer looking for an Expedition (I know there aren’t many of them with gas at $4 + a gallon) and I am going to use the web first to start my shopping. I seriously doubt that the first thing I am going to enter is John Smith Ford.
It is much more likely I am going to search for something like “discounts on Ford Expedition“. See I also know you don’t have many buyers looking for the big SUV’s either. I may have even narrowed it to an area with a term like “discounts on Ford Expedition Central PA“.
Now I have been working on line and looked at numerous web sites fro car dealer’s and other off line merchants. Very few understand and take advantage of the way the web works.
This is the most likely way that people will find you and unless you have multiple pages all optimized for the various permutations that people will be searching for it is unlikely that you are getting the vast majority of people that are in buying mode to a page that you control.
This is why the large vendors like Cars.com and Autotrader.com will show a positive return on investment. They use YOUR inventory which you are paying them to do to cover and own these search terms then monetize it to their advantage with affiliate offers. Don’t believe me check out the white paper at www.Digital20Group.com.
The other reason that you need multiple web properties is that you have to worry about people that are unhappy with you. How much would it cost you if the number 3 listing for your dealer name is YourDealerNameSucks.com. If you want to find out check out this article at ISM In Training.
Using a variety of web platforms like micro sites, Squidoo lenses, blogs and Hub Pages can make it extremely hard for anyone to get on the first page for your name unless they really understand SEO. (That is a person you don’t want to upset 
.
So check and see if your web site is doing its job and if you haven’t started adding other sites you need to before your competitor does.
