3 posts tagged “sem”
When you’ve worked hard to set up your dealership blog -- or paid good money to have someone set it up for you -- itcan be frustrating when you think that nobody’s reading.
Even though it’s a relatively new technology, automotive marketing shares the same traits with all other forms of copywriting. You have to give people a good reason to read what you’re writing. The best way to get people to read is to give them a great headline.
Headlines are important for two reasons. You wan t to entice real people to read your posts, but you also want your posts to show up well in search engines so that they can find you in the first place. Here’s what you need to know about headlining for your automotive blog marketing campaign.
Search engines require relevance.
Search engines like Google display entries in their results in order of relevance to the original search term. When someone types in a specific make and model of vehicle, the search engine provides the best matches for their search terms, and the words in your headline some of the most important ones they analyze.
Make sure you’re incorporating what people might be searching for. Think about what information your blog post is providing, and title your articles using words that people would type if they were looking for that information. If they’re looking for ‘used car deals in Denver’, don’t title your post with ‘New Pricing’ because that won’t tell the search engines what they need to know.
Human beings require human interest.
Knowing that search engines rank certain pages well because they contain highly relevant keywords, many first time webmasters try to stuff those words in their headlines just to get high placement. What gets forgotten is that high placement does not guarantee a click. If your title is boring people won’t click on it no matter how high on the page you are.
The way to capture reader attention is to highlight what they will benefit from reading the article. Be as interesting as you can without being boring. To use the previous example, ‘used car deals in Denver’ might get you high search engine placement but it’s not particularly enticing to real people. ‘Used Car Deals in Denver: Best prices in the state’ or ‘How to Find Used Car Deals in Denver’ show readers what they’ll get out of reading your article. Telling them how they’ll be helped almost guarantees a click.
It’s estimated that there are over 200 million blogs floating around on the internet. Do you ever wonder how yours stands up to the rest?
There’s a lot involved in automotive blog marketing. Just getting content up and making sure it’s optimized for search engine traffic is hard enough. But how your blog looks and feels is just as important in making sure your readers come back after their first visit.
Do you allow for comments?
One of the key differences between a blog and a static website is that blogs allow your readers the chance to contribute to the conversation. Many people love reading blogs because they’re not an authoritarian media -- it’s not just you writing and them reading. But many blog owners turn off the comment capacity on their blogs, often fearing spam.
Always allow for comments, even when nobody’s reading your blog yet. Give people the chance to contribute. They may join in and they may not, but they certainly won’t if you don’t let them.
Do you have a contact form?
Even if users can comment, some will prefer to get in touch with you privately. Is your contact form or email information easy to find and use? Do you require too much information from users when they’re filling out the form or can they simply leave their email address? Making yourself easy to find is crucial in this interconnected world.
Can your readers navigate by category and by date?
When a new visitor likes what they see, the odds are pretty good that they’ll want to see more. Depending on what they’re looking for they’ll want to navigate in different ways. If you’re discussing local events or issues that are time sensitive, it makes sense to navigate by date and you’ll want to have your archives searchable by month of publication. If they’re particularly interested in a certain topic -- trucks, for example, or maintenance issues -- they don’t want to have to search through every post you’ve ever written to find relevant posts. It makes sense in that case to allow them to search by category.
Is it easy on the eyes?
In many cases, blogs that look great the first time you look at them on the designer’s mockup don’t look great with lines and lines of text. The human eye can only handle so much information at once, so make sure your text is broken up with lots of white space. And speaking of white space -- it’s supposed to be white, or at least very white. Light text on a dark backround is hard to read for an extended period, and readers will click away instead of squinting.
Luckily, most of these issues require only a few clicks to change so if you need to make some fixes, it shouldn’t take too long. With a few simple tweaks to your automotive brand marketing strategy you can end up with readers staying longer -- and coming back for more.
By now, we know that blogs are all the rage. We know that every website and business should have one. We know that it should be updated frequently for improved online brand marketing and search engine rankings, and we know that blog owners should participate in the community of discussion.
But what’s the point, really? Search engine rankings are wonderful and increased page views are great, but there has to be a higher purpose for any marketing initiative. What does blogging really do?
Blogging is the easiest and cheapest way to achieve the status of trusted expert. In any business -- especially industries with high ticket prices on their products -- trusted expert status is a licence to print money.
Creating trust in your auto dealership blog
The first part of attaining trusted expert status is earning reader and customer trust. Blogs are perfect for this because they are not a sales medium. If you only blogged about why people should buy their car from you, you’d quickly run out of both things to say and readers.
Blogs are the place to be honest and transparent. Your blog is the platform on which you can be yourself and add a personal face to your business. The content on your blog should be truthful, real, and valuable. With each post you write, you increase your readers’ trust that you’re not trying to sell them anything -- you’re just trying to help.
Creating expert status in your auto dealership blog
Trust isn’t enough. If you’re trustworthy but have nothing of value to offer your readers, they’ll quickly click away and go elsewhere. This is when you have to make sure you’re providing content that can increase your readers’ knowledge and teach them the things they want to know.
A good example of this comes from the financial planning industry. If you know a financial planner personally, and they continually give you pieces of information that help you in your daily life regardless of whether or not you’re in the market for their services, you will remember that they are an expert. When it comes time for you to hire a financial planner, are you going to open the Yellow Pages, or are you going to call your expert friend? This is what your blog creates -- a personal friendship with an expert.
Give of yourself and the knowledge that your dealership has to offer freely and you will become known in your industry as the place to go for information. Once the people are there, they might just buy a car while they’re at it.
