1.) Sites Made Entirely Out Of Flash As any SEO can tell you, or nearly any web designer with the slightest knowledge concerning the behavior of search engine spiders, designing a website entirely in flash is a recipe for disaster. As search engines become more subtle, the sport of search engine optimization has become a lot of complex....indeed, the method of becoming a highly ranked web site has become quite a complex task. However at the most basic level, sites designed in flash are basically invisible to look engines. A giant component of determining the relevancy of a website by a research engine spider lies within the spiderability (ability of the spider to crawl) of high quality, keyword rich content. In the automotive business, there are literally thousands of keywords which will be built into a web site to dramatically increase traffic. In west palm beach alone, the placement of a second user automobile dealership I'm currently in the process of optimizing for, there are literally lots of car connected keywords that can be used to pull new traffic. This suggests that any new content that can be built into the site, any content that contains keywords that customers could be looking out for, is content that can and should be seen by the search engines. It's content that ought to build it onto the web. If this content is presented in flash, however, it can never be indexed, and will therefore offer completely no worth to ranking goals of the site. The underside line is: 2.) Duplicate Content For those sites not designed entirely in flash, an excellent more ominous problem is typically lurking. Duplicate content is abhorred by search engines. As several may recognize, a nice deal of keyword wealthy spam sites are generated dynamically through scripts that scrape the internet for content that's possible to be explore for by the overall public. With a method designed to create revenue through volume, huge spam networks have been created (thousands of websites are generated) by scraping or stealing content from legitimate websites. Hence, search engines approach duplicate content through a process called canonicalization. What this means is that the the search engines examine sites containing duplicate content and create a judgment regarding which website best represents the content contained on all of the sites. Whichever website is chosen as the most relevant for the content it contains then becomes the only web site that's given any weight by the search engines and every one alternative sites are fully devalued...or de-listed. To illustrate how intensive this downside is, visit any dealer.com site. Then examine any non-flash content, opt for a text string (perhaps a bit of text from the regarding us section), and enter that text into dealership websites google or yahoo with quotes around it. The results are astounding. Google has crawled literally thousands of pages created by dealer.com that contain the exact same content. After all, nearly every page created by dealer.com that is in the slightest bit search engine friendly (that means it absolutely was at the terribly least not engineered in flash), is keyword content that belongs to many pages already on the net. The bottom line is: Many Dealer Websites do great damage to themselves by having their only spiderable content be content that exists in duplicate on the pages of dozens, tons, or maybe thousands of similar sites. Any website containing non-original content can very likely be heavily penalized in the SERPS (search engine result pages), or will be de-listed altogether. 3.)Hidden Sitemaps and Links One amongst the first ways that to garauntee that a web site can be completely indexed (all pages can be crawled and included within the SERPS) is to incorporate a sitemap on index pages or main pages that are sure to be crawled. A sitemap is essentially an inventory of links to all or any of the pages on the location, organized in an organized fashion. The inclusion of sitemaps is seen by several seo's as essential, and could be a step several dealer web site have taken in the correct direction with regard to coming up with sites that have a likelihood to rank well. What they are doing wrong during this regard is the inclusion of sitemaps whose links are either a.) Hidden Behind Flash Movies or b.) Hidden using CSS. Hiding text behind a flash movie is fairly easy considering Flash usually floats on top of any web site content when properly positioned, and is desirably for many designers wishing to make a seamless and immersive flash expertise for their visitors. This has largely been the goal of many dealer designers like BZ results. While often superbly designed, the templates set up by such corporations are usually designed in such a way that links, sitemaps, and usually keyword rich text is hidden from human eyes in an try to lure search engine spiders into indexing deeper pages. This type of style trick could are a work around solution within the past, but it's become a significant no-no in the SEO world. A basic guideline is that search engine spiders have a nice aversion to any tries at trickery. This suggests that if you've got hidden content on your web site, whether it be links to alternative pages or just text, you'll be penalized in the SERPS, or de-listed. Search engines see hidden content as an attempt to trick search engines into thinking a page is about something other than is being showed to that website's visitors. As you can imagine, in the eyes of a groundwork engine, this makes such a web site irrelevant to all or any search terms. The underside line is: 4.)Serious Reliance on Meta Tags In the early days of the net, abundant less refined techniques were needed to deliver terribly top quality search results to users. As the net became an area where revenue was thought-about by several to be directly related to traffic volume, sites hungry for profit began to use the system in place to deliver a lot of and a lot of traffic. In the past, search engines used what are called meta tags to see what a website was about, and therefore what sorts of searches it ought to be shown for. Meta tags are essentially tags written in the pinnacle of HTML documents that contain a listing of keywords relevant to the site (as determined by the webmaster), and a description of the site. This info was once the primary method for determining relevancy in the SERPS. Because of misuse, however, the use of meta tags has become nearly obsolete. Sadly, several dealer websites haven't kept up with the days, and still rely on meta tags in concert of the only ways that they inform search engines of their content. This is often typically done with a very large list of words within the "keyword" metatag. This type of optimization can be seen by examining the supply code of any dealer.com, bz results, reynolds & reynolds, or cobalt site. What is even additional disturbing is that the keywords in these meta tags are often the foremost general and therefore some of the foremost competitive keywords within the industry. As a poignant example, my current consumer's old web site did not contain the words "west palm beach" or "used cars" in its keyword list. These keywords were the most necessary keywords for driving traffic to the present site. Instead, dealer.com selected to incorporate in its keywords an inventory of every automotive manufacturer within the world....while my shopper rarely sells a variety of these brands. Additionally, for the local keywords that were included, there were major spelling errors that during this case held absolutely no worth for my client. The bottom line is: Many Dealer Websites still see meta tags as a viable suggests that of communicating a web site's content, and stay for many sites the sole technique exposure. The utilization of meta tags in SEO is, at best, a rather helpful way of optimizing a page, if the right keywords are chosen, and at worst, utterly worthless as a tool in increasing search engine position or relevance. 5.)Poor Keyword Research/Decisions/Optimization As was mentioned in my treatment of the employment of meta tags, the bulk of dealer websites fail to take into account the massive variety of relevant keywords on the market and optimize solely for the foremost highly competitive and least targeted terms. For sites like the one being optimized for my shopper, a level on the "long tail" is the foremost effective dealer leads technique in gaining quality traffic. What this means in terms of keyword alternative and seo is that the keywords which are of most importance don't seem to be those who get the most searches and are the foremost competitive. What this means is that the foremost highly qualified keywords, and those possibly to bring in shopping for customers are those keywords that are on the long tail, usher in less searches, but are a lot of relevant to our consumers. This implies that selecting the key phrase "used cars in west palm beach Florida" would be abundant additional effective in bringing customers than the term "used cars," which is arguably a terribly competitive phrase. Additionally, keyword optimization for a word like jaguar wouldn't be nearly as effective in our treatment as, say, "jaguar s sort Florida." Many dealer websites ignore altogether the need to optimize both for specific key phrases, and specifically targeting and tailoring keywords locally. The additional specific and tailored the keyword, the better. Though such terms can undoubtedly generate less traffic, they will be a lot of highly targeted. With effort, a giant list can be compiled and will be used to come up with traffic that is cheaper (when used in pay-per-click campaigns) and also a lot of additional effective. The underside line is: Several Dealer Websites are unwisely optimizing for keyword that are too competitive and not targeted (both in terms of attracting customers who are prepared to buy and in terms of attracting local clientel.) Keywords that are not well targeted are useless. They end in high exit rates, wasted resources and WASTED MONEY. 6.)Major Style Flaws (not anticipating the customers desires) As anyone involved in the new Web 2.zero Culture can tell you, the internet is shifting. Internet users are increasingly hungry in their rummage around for information. They are finicky and impatient and are most involved with finding the data they are wanting for during a an economical manner. The times of flashing lights, rotating banners, animated gifs and marquees is far behind us, and the days of flash intros and bandwidth hungry animations seems to fading away as well. To replace the recent web may be a come back to simplicity, a come back to what matters most on the internet; information. In some ways in which, several dealer website have taken this sentiment to heart in that they have begun to incorporate a large wealth of knowledge regarding individual cars on their sites. In fact, this was a serious selling point for my shopper in his initial decision to outsource his website development to 1 of the key dealer website developers. Where Dealer websites have largely missed the boat, however, is in creating sites that are terribly flashy and seem good in their attempt to draw in customers, however are off the mark in anticipating what their customer is actually looking for once they visit a website. Each hit a dealer website receives is an chance for that website to convince the client of the trustworthiness, helpfulness, and value that may be offered by that dealership. In print and tv advertising flashy advertising has worked well, however on the internet their has been a serious shift. People have learned to tune out anything that tries to exhausting to grab their attention. No one clicks on those popups claiming you've got won $10,000, and peoples eyes are now not drawn or stay fixed to text that scrolls. Web users, as the philosophy of Web 2.zero emphasizes, are additional drawn to well organized, simple to perceive information. We tend to skim the pages we have a tendency to scan, switch windows quickly, and ignore content and data that is not readily at hand. I'd even go as far to say that any extraneous material is not solely unnecessary, however is an obstacle in serving to customers to find the knowledge that they are essentially looking out for. Additionally, many Dealers create the error of making an attempt to mirror their real life presence on the net, that means their web site become the equivalent of the typical ways that dealerships have hooked customers in the past. A Dealer Web site should not be giant stickers and balloons in cyberspace. While a loud trying sign and gimmicks might work well to attract drive by customers, it doesn't work well on the web anymore. The bottom line is: Dealers waste their customer's time and insult their intelligence by trying to hook them on the web the same approach you hook them on their lots The majority of web users are less impressed by flashy style and are additional satisfied when presented with the knowledge they're looking for in an straightforward to perceive fashion. 7.) Very little to no use of analytics For any web marketer, the use of analytics (measures of website usage) is essential in making highly effective sites that offer the most effective come on investment. In the past, analytics programs were beyond the scope of tiny businesses or beyond the power of certain suppliers to supply their clients. Nowadays, however, highly sophisticated analytics programs will be obtained at very little to no price, and several dealer website developers supply restricted or maybe additional in depth analytics as a worth added service. For those suppliers who do offer high quality analytics, kudos, except for several out there (like dealer.com)....analytics that are useful in making changes to the site that can actually increase traffic, productivity or ROI are severely lacking. There's additional to website statistics than simply range of clicks. Analysis of page views, exit points, conversion ratios, and much a lot of is crucial to tweaking a site so that the foremost leads can be generated. Looking at a real life example of this lack of analytics comes from my experience with my current client and their use web analytics. When my very own analysis of their website and therefore the implementation of google analytics (which far surpassed their previous measures), we have a tendency to were able to see that their landing page was losing almost [*fr1] of all new visitors. This was astounding, not solely because it meant that they were losing [*fr1] of all of their traffic after the first page load, however additionally with the realization that traffic might be greatly increased simply by redirecting to the main inventory page. (which is sensible considering our model of the new internet client, who is a lot of inquisitive about information than something else.) The underside line is: Dealers are losing large parts of customers to style mistakes that can't be tracked due to poor analytics. Furthermore, Dealers do no typically have the ability to configure their websites to the degree necessary to assist their website improve. Web site design isn't a 1 step process....it needs a degree of testing and trial and error. 8.) Illegal redirections Illegal redirections are the backbone of the spam trade (if it can be called that). Their use through javascript, meta refresh, and many refined ways of cloaking (exchanging one web site for one more behind the scenes) is an art that has been perfected....and also the search engines are perfecting new methods of detecting this sneaky redirects. Now, it can be argued that redirection and cloaking has its edges, and it does. For instance, one might use javascript to detect browser versions and then redirect to the page most easily viewed by the detected browser. Or perhaps a redirect may be put in place so as to do testing on totally different ads or lead generation techniques. If you observe several dealer websites, you'll see this sort of redirection taking place. After all, you may typically see the script run quickly before the page loads....being confronted with a "determining properties" title page before you are delivered to the most site. This tactic is very illegal within the SEO world, the world of google, and is a recipe for disaster if utilized on your website. It is virtually unfathomable that this kind of redirection continues to be going on, particularly with the common data that such tricks are a certain hearth method to be de-listed completely. Another downside plaguing dealer websites could be a lack of correct redirection on sites that carry more than one domain name or exist with multiple sub domains. As was mentioned earlier, duplicate content hurts the listing of your website. The means search engines see it, duplicate content exists if two domain names point to the identical site. So, if a web site like my clients: usedcarwestpalmbeach.net points to the identical IP address as his alternative domain: autoadviceoffl.com, google can see duplicate content because it sees both domains as seperate entities. This can be conjointly true in terms of the utilization of subdomains...particularly the WWW. For several dealers, their site will be accessed at dealersite.com] or dealersite.com. Google treats these as different entities, and a lot of usually then not, punishes both versions of the site for duplicate content. This desires to be mounted with a properly configured 301 redirect, that is a permanent redirect. 9.) Backlinks For Google, one of the most vital measures of a site's relevance is the quantity of links pointing to that site. This can be true for the opposite search engines furthermore, and looks to increasingly be a main live within the ranking of web sites within the SERPS. Quality backlinks from sites that the search engines deem "authorities" are the most valuable links that may be obtained. Additionally, backlinks ought to have anchor text (the text that's hyperlinked) that are relevant to the keywords on the site. Google's infamous Page Rank, relies upon this model of backlinking, and as a result has facilitated the rise of google because the internets most used search engine. Backlinks are arguably the most necessary aspect of SEO. Building backlinks is also arguably the MOST IGNORED seo tactic by nearly all of the main players in dealer website game. Searches for cars in most major cities reveal results targeted to dealership sites solely in the pay-per-click side. Dealer sites nearly never show up within the organic side, and those who do have no doubt focused their efforts on backlink building. This can be a true problem within the industry. Dealers are dispensing thousands of greenbacks a month to websites that are paying for traffic they could be getting for free....with proper backlinking and minimal optimization techniques. The bottom line is; Dealers are losing customers by not doing proper backlinking, therefore isolating one among the foremost necessary methods for increasing ranking in the organic SERPS. Backlinking isn't an automatic process, however requires a set up of actions and follow through. 10.) Poorly Formed URLs Creating URL's that can be easily spidered is straightforward if a few key rules are followed. Initial and foremost, URLs should be properly fashioned and should clearly link to their proper destination. Whether in a flash movie or as a straightforward hyperlink, I am usually shocked to work out how often broken links exist. (these serve only to take away from the credibility of the dealership and causes users to leave your website). Additional importantly for SEO functions, though, is the use of URLS that are created dynamically....meaning they appear something like /vehicle_model?id=12324213. This URL is not search engine friendly as a result of search engines do not sometimes properly crawl dynamically generated URL's, and if you're lucky enough to own a dynamic URL indexed, additional often then not, the dynamic content is bring to an end, leaving you with one thing like: /vehicle_model. This URL can not lead to the supposed page, and will lead to duplicate content being indexed if such links are crawled at all. Any server running apache with mod rewrite access will fix this simply, and ought to fix it. Properly formed URLS that have been additional optimized to contain keywords can go a protracted method in helping the ranking of a web site, and as we have mentioned, getting additional pages indexed properly means that a lot of content and more hits. The underside line is; There's no excuse for broken links, malformed and seo unfriendly URLS Rewriting URLS so they're search engine friendly isn't essentially a difficult process and is one which will greatly improve the ranking a relevance of a site.
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Sites Made Entirely Out Of Flash As any SEO can tell you, or nearly any web designer with the slightest knowledge regarding the behavior of search engine spiders, designing a site entirely in flash could be a recipe for disaster. As search engines become more sophisticated, the game of search engine optimization has become a lot of complex....indeed, the method of changing into a highly ranked web site
Is your dealership spending thousands of dollars per month on 3rd party lead providers? Are you slashing your front end gross profit for your lead prospects
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