Reality Check- Practical Tips for Separating the Truth from Sales Fiction with Search Engine Optimization.

It seems like RV dealers are getting hammered these days by marketing, web and search engine optimization companies telling them how bad their website’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is performing and promising them amazing improvements.  Almost daily we’re hearing from customers who went to a seminar or 20 group meeting where another dealer or a vendor pulled up their Alexa rankings or searched for “RV Dealer” and proceeded to lampoon the unsuspecting dealer’s traffic and rankings in front of their peers.  Oh, and for a small fee, they can “fix” all of that for you.  One of our customers pulled inbound phone reports and figured out that they received 367 calls about websites, online marketing or SEO in one year.  That’s more than one call every day! 

So how are you supposed to learn the truth when you’re being bombarded by companies telling you what you’re doing is just terrible and they can help you “fix it” all (for a fee)? It’s actually easier than you think! With just a few fundamentals, you can decide for yourself if you’re on the right path or not.

But First, A Disclaimer & Plug at The Same Time

Since we offer SEO too, it may seem a little hypocritical of us to say “trust us” and “don’t trust them”.  However, the reality is that we do this for dealers all day, every day and we know what works and what is a waste of time.  Also, unlike other companies, we don’t charge for it.  Instead, we use some simple, basic, proven strategies, that when combined with some smart software and a well thought out marketing plan, developed in conjunction with our customers, we can typically achieve relevant page one results for the most effective search terms for our customer’s business. 

More importantly, we don't just focus on traffic, we focus on the right traffic.  Traffic for the sake of saying you’re number on in “RV Dealer” doesn’t mean squat if it is not traffic that converts into sales…which at the end of the day, is what all of this work is really about. 

Relevance Matters

Search term relevance is one of the most often overlooked aspects of good SEO strategy.  It’s also a great way for vendors to poke holes in your SEO as well.  How many times has someone said “If you type in RV Dealer, Kentucky*, you don’t come up at all”?  So you think “oh no, that must be bad”.  Well, is it?  It depends.  If you know that consumers are searching for you by typing “RV Dealer” into Google, then you are right, it is bad.  But if you look at how people really search for dealerships, it becomes clearer what terms are actually relevant to your store.

We would typically consider the term “RV Dealer” an endemic term.  Meaning, it has relevance within our industry – but not with normal consumers who are looking for something more detailed than “RV Dealer”.  For example, like your store name or the products they want that are available in their area. 

Why do we know this?  Because we can measure and track how people find dealership across hundreds of locations in the US and Canada.  We see absolutely clear trends that you should be aware of::

Half your traffic is already looking for you. That’s right! typically about 50% of searches on Google and other engines are for the name of your dealership.

The Rest want something specific near them.  The rest of your searches are typically someone looking for a class, manufacture or brand in your area.  For example: “Fleetwood Bounder, Louisville, KY”.

So, why is the term “RV Dealer” relevant?  Typically it’s not.  What’s relevant is traffic from visitors who are actually interested in what you have to sell.   An interesting note on this specific term, did you know that a simple difference between a search for “RV Dealer” vs. “RV Dealers” (plural) can mean a 100% difference in impressions each month?

* for the purposes of illustration I’m using Kentucky, our home office state

Good Traffic vs. Bad Traffic (Location Matters)

Not all traffic is good traffic.  Yes, you may be page one, position one, on Google, Yahoo & Bing and you may even get a bazillion visitors to your homepage every day.  But is that traffic the right kind of traffic?  Is it all from China?  Is it more than 250 miles from your store?  Will those people visit your store and buy a unit or will they just take up your sales teams precious time (even more precious these days) with questions and comparison quotes and ultimately dilute the perceived value of online leads and emails to the point where no one in your dealership even wants to work those leads anymore?

I hate to burst your bubble, but the guy emailing you from across the country about that used unit on your lot is really just using you to negotiate a better price with his local dealer – sorry.  Don’t waste your time with him. (overheard at RVIA Show)

Location, location, location.  Just like the old real estate adage goes, location matters online as well.  Despite the belief that people will drive 1000 miles to buy a pop up – they just won’t!  Almost all of your relevant traffic can be drawn in a circle on a map around your store (Google Analytics will even do this for you).  Even some of the destination dealerships that we work with show traffic coming from circles around there store….it’s just that their circles are a little bigger.

Consumers typically use the web as a research tool to find what they want. They are saving drive time (by not driving from lot to lot).  Then, they will check out their potential purchases in person. Make sure your traffic and SEO is targeted toward your location!

One of our SEO “tricks” it to include the location of the unit within the page title and even the page url of the unit.  This connects your inventory (which is the majority of the content on your website) to your area.  It also means local search for specific units will find you fist, then will engage with you because you are relevant (you have what they want and are local).  These consumer typically convert faster.

You can take this one step further and target surrounding areas with smart key-wording for each inventory item.

Go with the Flow

There are essentially a series of smaller “gates” that visitors must successfully move through in order to find your site and navigate through.  When combined, these gates actually represent your online marketing funnel and can give you a more realistic and grounded view of your SEO performance and more importantly, your potential online close ratios!  

Visitors.  Unique Visitors are the number of unique computers (people) who have visited your website.   This is very different that “hits” or “Page Views” which is an older measurement of overall traffic.

Bounce Rate. Your Bounce rate measures how many visitors stopped on your homepage (or other landing page on your site) and then immediately clicked away.  This is similar to a “drive by” in front of your store.  You might get them off the highway…but when they drive by the lot and don’t see what they want – they just keep on driving.  An excessively high bounce rate typically means your visitor’s searches are not being satisfied when they arrive on your homepage.  (we came up with a pretty cool way to minimize bounce rates using our IntelliSite technology)

Actual Visitors. The difference between total unique visitors and those that “bounced” is a measurement of your “actual site visitors”.  This is an important number to know as it gives you a better perspective on how well an overall SEO strategy is working.

Time on Site and Pages per Visit.  Less specific to SEO performance but a relevant measurement of how well you site is performing are two specific number to watch; Time on Site and Pages per Visit.  Time on Site measures how long a visitor actually stays on your site browsing around and Pages per Visit measures how many pages a visitor views while browsing.  Continuing with the store analogy – this is similar to how long someone stays on the lot and how many units they look at while they are there.

Engagement. This is the part in the process where a website visitor crosses the line from an anonymous browser to someone with a name and phone number who wants more information.  Filling out a form, engaging in a live chat, sending an email or picking up the phone and calling the store all represent mechanism through which online visitors engage your dealership and become leads.

Conversion. The last step in the process is converting an engaged online lead into a customer through your sales process.  While this typically occurs entirely off line, there are some things that can greatly effect the outcome.  Immediate lead response time and personal attention on the outset of the online sales process is absolutely critical. 

 

Again, it doesn’t do anyone any good to get all of the previous steps correct only to respond slowly or outright ignore “web leads” you worked so hard to generate.

When combined and measured, these key numbers can help you quickly pinpoint how you are really performing with your strategy.

So, What Would You Rather Have: Traffic or Sales?

As we just pointed out; “traffic for traffic’s sake” is not a good SEO strategy.  Unless you can attract relevant visits to your site and show them what they are looking for, then all you’ve done is increased overall traffic.  This is similar to moving your dealership from a country road to a highway.  Yes, more people are driving by…but if they are not interested in what you’re selling, or they can’t get off the highway and easily visit your store, then all of that highway traffic doesn’t really matter any way.

The best way to illustrate what I mean is to give you a specific example:

An SEO Failure Example: For one of our northern customers; things are pretty slow come late Fall and Winter.   Since their dealership had a lot of Fifth Wheels on the lot – the dealer asked their account manager to come up with a way to market these units beyond their normal website.  Together, they researched search terms and figured out that the term “Fifth Wheel Trailer” was searched 29,000 times a month on Google.  Nice highway to build a store next to – right?

So, a new site was constructed re-using the Fifth Wheel inventory, targeted content was created emphasizing fifth wheels and all of their SEO was targeted directly for Fifth Wheels.  Within one month, they were number one on Google for search terms like “Fifth Wheel”.  On the surface they though they had a home run on their hands.  Time to wait for the leads to start rolling in, right?

What they found was quite surprising.  Despite accomplishing such high placement directly in a high volume, targeted search stream, they only realized a handful of visitors (under 400) a month.  Furthermore, the bounce rates for the site where unusually high (80%) meaning only about 80 visitors engaged on the site

What was interesting about all of this was that those 80 tended to be local visitors.  Local people who lived within 100 miles of the store itself.  They had a low bounce rate and high time on site and pages per visit.  So for all that effort to rank number one on a generic term -  WHAT WAS THE POINT?!

The point is - The only thing that ultimately matters is sales. 

So how do you convert traffic into sales?  Well it’s not easy but it can be done.  In fact, in an upcoming article, we will outline our Healthy Website Index, which not only measures the health of a dealer’s site and more importantly, for the first time, allows dealers to see the relationship between relevant traffic and units sales.

Marketing Fundamentals Still Apply

As you can see, there is a big difference between the hype of SEO page one placement and the reality of meeting your business objectives.  I always ask dealers who are totally focused on being number one on a broad search term or national in a targeted term, “Are you planning to advertise this weekend’s sale in USA Today?”  Of course not. So why not apply the same fundamental marketing principles to your online marketing that has made your offline marketing successful for years?

Think about what makes you unique and special.  The obvious choices are the brands you carry and your location. After all, you should be protected in your territory for the inventory lines for which you have committed. Why not leverage that?  There are other elements to consider as well.  Do you have a strong tie to another market demographic like NASCAR or a College Football Team?  Are you on a snowbird route?  Do you have parts & accessories that can drive business from your local trade area?

The fundamentals of online marketing and SEO are EXACTLY the same as the strategies you use today when marketing your dealership in the real world.  

Focus on Business Goals and Measure Against Them

Our last piece of advice is to make sure the focus stays locked on your business goals and not simply traffic, page rankings or other SEO goals.  As you have seen, they are not always one-in-the-same.  At the end of the day, a profitable sale is what we are all working towards.  It is all that really matters.  All the traffic and page ranking and visitors in the world doesn't mean anything if it is not helping your sales team efficiently and effectively sell more units. 

Tools like Google Analytics, your CRM systems, your sales meetings and more can give you incredible perspective and insight into what is working and what is wasting your time when it comes to SEO and how it effects your bottom line.  Focus on the goals that matter and measure everything else you do against them and you’ll be on the path to SEO success.