Any Suggestions for Building an SEO Friendly Auto Dealership Website?
-
Does anyone have suggestions for re-designing an auto dealership website? Is it possible to build a WordPress website that accepts an inventory feed from VinSolutions? I've been building websites and provided SEO services for years. This is my first time working in the auto industry.
The issue I am facing is that our dealership currently have two websites. Both are built on 3rd party platforms and I am seriously considered rebuilding our website from scratch.
Our first website was been provided to us by our Hyundai and the website is managed through Cobalt. While I like that the website is directly affiliated with Hyundai, it's very difficult to manage and I have yet to be able to get the techs to grant me access to the FTP server or provide help with installing Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools.
The owner of our dealership never liked the Cobalt website so they decided to launch a second website that is created and managed by a company called Dealer Specialties. The site is also very difficult to administer and I only see problems later down the road.
Is anyone familiar with working with auto dealership websites? I would love to hear your comments on the best way to proceed with our new web presence.
-
We had exactly the same problem as this. We then quoted the client to rebuild from scratch - but the cost was inhibitive for them.
The thing about these 3rd party platforms is that they get the client hooked onto them and they get comfortable just paying a nominal fee each month.
This particular client would spend the money to re do the website from scratch.
The problem with their systems is that you cannot do too much customization of the pages in terms of the SEO attributes or change the page names etc,
I am certainly not endorsing or recommending this company - but we have had more success with www.ebizautos.com in terms of the issues I have just mentioned.
With their system you can change the page names etc and have the ability to create numerous pages with their own custom URLs that then can be as optimized as you want. URLs are ertainly better than the Dealer Specialties ones.
Not as good as building your own system - but the results we have had from optimizing some of these ebiz ones have been better than using some of the other systems out there. IT also helps if you have a client with serious budget constraints.
Downside:
Still cannot get FTP access or them to even upload an XML file for GWMT.Might be worth a go. Hope this helps.
Carlos
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
SEO and Conversions from a C-Level perspective
Hi guys! Do you have any suggestion about articles about how to work with conversions and SEO from a C-level perspective? I know it is very open question, but there might be articles like (https://moz.com/ugc/how-can-pr-seo-and-ceo-people-work-together-for-link-building) that are great and written on this subject. Could you please share if you have any examples? I'm thinking for these perspectives: What knowledge and insight does a management team need to take control and drive the SEO and CRO related work (from a executive level)? How do the management team connect business strategy and goals with the SEO and CRO area? Have a great day!
Conversion Rate Optimization | | OscarSE0 -
Server-Side A/B Testing - Okay for SEO?
Hey Moz Community! I've been digging into the differences between server-side testing and client-side testing and had a generic question. Is it safe to run server-side A/B testing? For example, if I want to Split Test the home page of a site and show 50% of my traffic one home page, and show 50% of my traffic a completely different (read: new template, new content, new CTAs, etc) home page, are there any implications to SEO and organic search? I've spent about five hour researching and from what I can find A/B testing is acceptable as long as you don't show Googlebot different content or run A/B tests on Googlebot. Matt Cutts, head of Webspam at Google, has stated that A/B testing does not impact search rankings. "A/B or split testing or other forms of testing web sites is okay by Google as long as you don't test GoogleBot or don't treat GoogleBot differently." The biggest concerns for SEO cloaking, so from my understanding, for server-side testing, you'd need to do user-agent based redirection so that Googlebot (or any search bot) gets the normal version of the home page. The bots shouldn't be part of the test. Technically that is cloaking, but intention-wise, we're not trying to be sneaky. I've also read through this article about experimentation from Google developers here. Am I missing anything here or is there a definitive answer? If we serve a “B” as a different site for user testing, just exclude google bot by user-agent and we’re good? THANKS!
Conversion Rate Optimization | | andrewmeyer0 -
Google Adwords Offered to Redesign My Website & A/B Test... Thoughts?
I received a call from the Google Adwords team today offering to redesign major pages of my website & A/B test their design against mine. The rep said that this is not a standard service they offer and that we had been "selected". Despite it's overt marketing overtones, I would hate to pass by the opportunity to apply Google's conversion insight to my site. Has anyone experienced this before? Good experience? Bad experience?
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Glathrop1 -
Conversion Rate boost - Website Feedback
We are a relatively young company with an Okay conversion rate of around 2% across several different sales channels. I am mentioning this because our website with the same type of products has a very low conversion rate of under 1%. I know this is a deep topic, involving different analytic metrics, but would like to ask MOZ community members if there's anything obvious that needs improvement on this website www.cherrywalls.com that would help to increase conversions. I will be happy to answer any additional questions or to clarify things! Thank you for your time! Any suggestions and/or critique are greatly appreciated!
Conversion Rate Optimization | | CherryW1 -
Does adding a well scripted and produced video help significantly in conversions from visits to my divorce lawyer website to calls for my services?
Should the addition of well scripted and produced video to my divorce lawyer website increase my conversions and, if so, to what extent?
Conversion Rate Optimization | | hildebrandlaw0 -
Tips on marketing actual "Products" rather than "SEO Advice"?
First of all I just want to say that I love SEOMoz, it's by far the best no-BS resource for SEO and online marketing information in general on the entire Internet, and well worth the money. HOWEVER, one beef I am starting to have with it recently is... Most of the content being generated is becoming about "how to market to marketers" or "selling SEO" rather than actual advice or focus selling general products or services. By this I mean that all the new trends towards pumping out content based on research, making fancy infographics etc. etc. are all well and good for those who are trying to market their marketing or SEO talents in general but not THAT applicable to traditional online storefronts. I work for a fairly large company that sells tickets for theme parks/attractions/tours etc. and SEOMoz was a huge help initially for a recent site redesign, but now every time I log on to check for fresh content it's seemingly a repeat similar advice on how to get links or traffic for an SEO business. I don't mean this to come off as a whine because as I said SEOMoz is wonderful, but I've conducted endless site searches for (recent) information on traditional online marketing etc. and the ratio just seems to be...off. Anyone else feeling this way?
Conversion Rate Optimization | | ExperienceOz0 -
Any SEO tips for optimizing / driving traffic to category pages?
Hello! I listened to Adam Audette at Linklove in Boston this month and he spoke a little on creatively linking product pages back to their respective category pages - as it had an effect on the SEO... However, I don't know much about "internal" linking... Any other SEO tips for optimizing / driving traffic to category pages? Thanks!
Conversion Rate Optimization | | BGroup0 -
Is it advisable to use meta refresh for Google Website Optimiser?
We'd like to track conversions using Google's Website Optimiser, but the conversion page is hosted on a different sub domain so Google won't allow us to use this as the conversion page. The plan was then to add a blank page on the original domain that contains Google tracking code and a meta refresh to the page on the sub domain. We would then block this page in the robots file so Google doesn't try to index the page with the meta refresh. Does anyone see any harm that may come of this? Or any other way around the issue? Thanks in advance
Conversion Rate Optimization | | heatherrobinson0