Pagerank: Why are Dealerships Wasting Their Time?

Every other day I hear from a dealership who wants to use PPC to raise their Page Rank and each time I wonder where they are getting the idea that this is a valid use of their time. To this day I can only guess that they found a blog post or two (or three dozen) touting the need to raise page rank to get more traffic. While that is fine and dandy if your dream of growing up to be Andy Beal or Darren Rowse or even Jason Falls this isn't going to work for you.

Why?

Well first off your PPC campaign will not raise your page rank. Page Rank is a vote, and each link to your site counts as a vote. Think of this as voting for your homecoming queen in high school. PPC campaigns by their very nature do not add links to your site, so they don't weigh in on the vote. Page Rank is a great way to measure a bloggers success, or how "trustworthy" a site is. However, it is link based and updated maybe 4 times a year so for your purposes it isn't very relevant.

The second reason this is a waste of your time is because you have a brick and mortar store with actual inventory. You have a reputation not only online but in your communities where it really counts. People are going to buy cars from you because you have a great website that is easy to navigate, a clean show room, helpful sales staff and great prices. The average person wouldn't know a page rank if it bit them in the ankle, and even if they did, the customer would absolutely rather buy their new car from the guy offering 3 free oil changes then the pr 6 website. Guaranteed.

As an aside if you know where people are getting the idea that dealerships should be worried about page rank please let me know in the comments! :)

Speak Your Mind At NADA

NADA is just days away and the excitement is building! Everyone I have talked to in the past few days is really excited about what will and won't be discussed/presented this year. So in the spirit of lighthearted NADA fun I offer this advice from my grammy (who probably "borrowed" it from some famous person) "Speak your mind even if your voice shakes". What does this have to do with NADA and your dealership?

Ask questions
Demand results
Don't fall for the hype, get documented proof
If there is something you want ask for it
Demand better delivery
Demand better, more personalized service
Demand solutions that fit your needs, don't bend to your providers mold
and most of all Talk, talk, talk, talk to your vendors and get to know them not only as represenatives of the companies but as people.

Now, go have fun and report back on all the cool things you see.

Reputation Management For Dealership - The Beginning

More and more dealerships are concerned with Reputation Management but the vast majority don't understand the difference between true Reputation Management and damage control. I am not a Reputation Management expert by any stretch of the imagination but this is what I have learned in months of research. I am sharing this in hopes that we can learn how to avoid disasters together. It's always more fun when we can learn together isn't it? If you want to read about this from an expert I highly recommend Andy Beal's new book (mine is on pre order).

First let's take the definition of Reputation Management from Wikipedia. They define it as "the process of tracking an entity's actions and other entities' opinions about those actions; reporting on those actions and opinions; and reacting to that report creating a feedback loop. All entities involved are generally people, but that need not always be the case".

Some SEO providers sell their reputation management services saying " for every negative post we find we will create 10 positive posts.". My fear is what they really mean is that they will go to wherever that negative post is and create 10 fictional user ids so they can make "not me" posts. This tactic was probably fine in 1984 but today's Internet users are far to savvy to fall for this. (In the spirit of full disclosure I don't know if this is how they would handle things or not, but that is what the ad implies.)

High quality reputation management starts long before that angry person starts blogging about how they have been wronged. It starts with creating a positive online presence in a wide variety of online channels. This takes time, it takes hard work and to really be effective long term I feel you should become a quality member of a couple of online communities (Subaru enthusiasts site maybe? Or your local chamber of commerce if they have an online form, and always posting positive customer feedback on all of your websites). The more positive references to your name or your dealership the harder it will be for those negative things to get to the front page of Google and the easier it will be to get rid of them if you do.

No one can guarantee that if something negative is said about you that it will ever leave the front page of the search engines, and trying to bury it is going to cost you thousands of dollars just to try. Isn't it better to hedge your bets and start filling the search engines with positive things today?