Automotive SEO: Tips, Tactics and Insights For Dealers

Ready to skyrocket your car dealership's visibility and outshine big players like Cargurus and Autotrader? Tune in to the latest POMCAST episode featuring Mike Shaug and Andres Fernandez from Premier Online Marketing. We'll unravel the secrets behind an effective SEO playbook tailored specifically for dealerships. Learn why a powerful organic presence isn't just nice to have but a necessity in today's competitive market. We promise actionable insights and practical steps to elevate your rankings and digital marketing efforts.

Our conversation with Mike & Andres is packed with vital strategies to optimize your Google Business Profile and boost local search results. We discuss the importance of consistent citations, NAP (Name, Address, Phone number), and regular updates to stay ahead. We uncover common misconceptions about SEO services and share tips on how to avoid low-cost traps that could cost you more in the long run. Expect to gain clarity on local SEO and organic search, including the critical elements like click-through rates, reviews, and map pack visibility.

Dive deep into the practical side of SEO with essential on-page optimization tactics. We break down the strategic use of keywords, geographic terms, and proper use of headings to boost your search engine rankings. Whether you're a seasoned pro or just starting, this episode is your guide to mastering SEO and making your dealership a digital powerhouse. Don't miss it!

Premier Online Marketing helps businesses grow through smart SEO, content, and search strategies. Learn more at www.premieronlinemarketing.com

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello and welcome back to the POMCAST.
That's right, we're back withanother fantastic episode on
digital marketing.
Today we're going to get intoit on search engine optimization
yeah, that acronym that we'veall been loving for decades now
SEO.
And of course, I'm joinedalways by Mike Schaug from
Premier Online Marketing.
But Mike has brought an extraPOM team member today.

(00:24):
And who do we have joining ustoday, mike?

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Absolutely.
Andres Fernandez is by far thebest SEO I've ever worked with
us that we've ever worked withhere at Premier.
He came in as an associate,which is kind of at the entry
level, and within one year heworked his way to head of
product for SEO and he's theassociate director for our
automotive and SMB vertical.
He just is extremelyknowledgeable about SEO local

(00:49):
SEO, off-page SEO so I wanted toloop him in for an SEO
conversation so I don'tmonopolize everything.
Talking about paid ads.

Speaker 1 (00:59):
Well, that's exciting .
Welcome, Andres.
This is going to be a greatepisode.
Are you ready for it?
Are you excited?

Speaker 3 (01:06):
Yeah, hey everyone.
I'm very excited to be here andhonored as well.
Mike always hypes me up, but Ijust try my best.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
There's nothing wrong with being humble and extremely
talented at the same time, andespecially when you don't ever
actually read your own newspaperclippings, as they say, or pay
attention to your own fame.
So that usually speaks volumesabout the quality of the
individual's talents.
So I'm excited about thisepisode because we haven't yet

(01:37):
on the Palmcast, we haven'treally broken in on SEO, and I
know in conversations that I'vehad with Mike that there's been
a lot of discussion around anSEO playbook that you guys have
been working on.
I want to dig in a little bitand for the audience that's
listening and or watching,that's kind of what we'll be
talking about.
These primary objectives really, for today's discussion will be

(02:01):
around this SEO playbook thatyou need to know is in the works
.
It will be a very, very helpfulasset for people and there's a
lot of focus here for cardealerships.
So in the automotive industry,premier Online Marketing
obviously does a lot of work inautomotive, among other
verticals, but today there's astrong focus on that SEO as it

(02:22):
relates to the automotiveindustry driving visibility,
converting traffic, a lot of thethings that some people may
think that they've heard before.
But I honestly think that westill underserve the audience
from an SEO educationperspective, people just kind of
head nod or they feel likethey've heard enough from maybe
a few of the people that havebeen more popular over the years

(02:44):
, but it doesn't always meanthat the knowledge translates to
action in the dealership.
So we're going to look at someof the differences between local
SEO and organic search, howdealerships can optimize for
those things, and we're going tolet you guys give us some
examples if you want, you can beas specific as you want from
strategies, and I know thatthere will be a lot of what we

(03:06):
talk about that will end up inthe playbook.
I think that will help peopleget really excited about having
a resource.
It's been a while sincesomething like this has been
available, especially for autodealers, and I can tell that
there's going to be some very,very interested people on this.
So thanks, guys for joining.
I appreciate you guys takingthe time for the podcast.

(03:27):
I want to start by asking, kindof at the really top of this is
what was the purpose or whatmade you guys kind of think
let's put an SEO playbooktogether?
What inspired you to create it?

Speaker 3 (03:39):
So I feel like the general advice for SEO is I feel

(04:07):
like the general advice for SEOis, you know, for any industry
is to focus on technical andfocus on your website load time
and just all thiss, and localthere's very, there's very
little impact, I'm sure, fore-commerce sites and for all the
other industries, likeenterprise, this technical is
really it's great for them, buton our end, we just want to
create a playbook that couldhelp auto dealerships take
actionable steps, understand SEO, take actionable steps and

(04:31):
really move the needle on theirorganic rankings.

Speaker 1 (04:35):
I think that's great.
Dealers are always looking forkind of practical steps.
Mike and I have talked todealers about digital marketing
for so many years now I'm sureMike's heard me say it.
I know a lot of people have.
But the technology moves sofast that most verticals they
have a hard time keeping up withit.
Seo has very much been one ofthose things where people again

(04:56):
they think they have anacceptable or working knowledge
of it, but they don't realizethat it is actually a very
dynamic part of the digitalmarketing strategies and things
change.
So I want to ask you guys alittle bit about some of the
definitions around SEO for smalland medium businesses

(05:18):
dealerships.
Some people get confused withthat.
Most dealerships would becategorized as an SMB, but most
dealers are not referring tothemselves as small to
medium-sized businesses.
So in this particular case, howdo you define SEO for dealers
and why do you guys think it'scrucial for dealers?

Speaker 3 (05:40):
That's a great question.
That's a great question.
Well, first of all, if you, ifyou're ranking at the top of
Google Maps or the map pack andorganic search at the same time,
you're basically getting freetraffic Right, and you know you
can definitely, if you have alarge ad spend budget, you can

(06:01):
spend your money on morespecific things like model terms
or just, yeah, even trim terms.
But I think when you focus onthat strategy, you're competing
against other ILSs.
It's really important fordealerships to have a good

(06:34):
organic presence, especially inlarge markets like Houston and
LA, where competition is veryrough and it really doesn't take
a lot.
People think like, oh, seo islike this.
Nobody like the algorithm andall this stuff.
Like it's just hard tounderstand the algorithm and all
this stuff, like it's it's justhard to understand.
But I think, like just having aplaybook, having some
actionable steps that mostdealerships can control without
the need of of their CMS support, that that they can start

(06:56):
getting good rankings and startgetting to the top of their of
their market.

Speaker 2 (07:01):
So one thing to add here is that organic traffic
converts about three timesbetter at least than paid media
traffic.
So you notice this often withdealer groups when they expand
and they buy a new dealership ina new market and they're like
why do I have to spend fifteenthousand dollars over in this
new market?
I'm spending three thousandover in the other market.

(07:22):
But it's not an apples toapples comparison because
oftentimes dealerships will haveseveral thousand visits, which
is like $20,000 of traffic thatthey're building their business
with.

Speaker 1 (07:34):
Yeah, that's an important addition there.
I would think this audiencealso would be interested in some
of the more commonmisconceptions that dealers have
about SEO.
It's been a topic for obviouslya long time and there have been
a handful of messengers on thetopic and there have been a

(07:56):
handful of companies that havegone really strong with their
SEO presence, but it doesn'tnecessarily mean that all of
it's been helpful to car dealersover the years.
So, um, we'd love it if youguys would share a little bit
about what some of those commonmisconceptions that dealers have
about seo might be problem isthat um ai is gonna completely

(08:18):
like ruin local seo.

Speaker 3 (08:20):
Um, I think, unless forbes or, I don't know,
business Insider creates a localdirectory like Forbescom, slash
local, and then they theMacPack always comes first,
right, the MacPack is always atthe top, and then you have the.

(08:51):
ILSs the internal listingservices down below and they
don't have an address, theydon't have a local presence.
They just list local businessesin there, but really what draws
people's eyes is the Mac packwith the reviews, with all of
that.
So I think that that's theadvantage that local has over

(09:16):
all of these other by-laces thatare just creating AI content
and pages en masse.
So I think that that's one ofthem.

Speaker 2 (09:26):
I think another one that we get a lot is why invest
in SEO?
It's really hard, it takes asuper long time and the OEM
websites or the internet listingwebsites like Cargurus or
Autotrader will always outrankus no matter what.
But we've been able to getreally great traction for
dealers that are serving alldifferent types of markets, and

(09:47):
Google does favor localbusinesses.
They know that when people arelooking for cars, they're
primarily looking for someonelocal to transact with, and
that's just something that a lotof dealerships don't know.
So obviously it takes time tobuild on these strategies, but
you can absolutely outrank somepretty big websites with your
local website.

Speaker 1 (10:05):
Yeah, those are really good points.
I know for years I thinkthere's always been some
misconceptions around becausethere's been a lot of price
discrepancies.
You can go to your websitevendor and, andres, you had
mentioned that there aren'talways limitations just because
you're with a website providerthat has a pretty stout or

(10:27):
locked down CMS right, wherethere's maybe not a lot of
permissions given to the actualdealer to do much in the back
end of the site, and that's notalways a limitation.
But one thing that has become amisconception, I think, over
the years.
I'm curious to know if you guyswould either agree or have any
additional comment on it.
But there have been providersthat will say, well, hey, we'll

(10:50):
do the same level of SEO, itwill have the same effect for
you, for an extra $600 a month,versus more specific providers
that are probably just doing alot more, that will charge
$2,000, $3,000, $4,000, $5,000 amonth in SEO, and I think what

(11:13):
ends up happening for dealers isthey one that's confusing to
them, but it creates amisconception for those that
maybe aren't going to take thetime to listen to, maybe, a
podcast like this.
They're not going to get theirhands on an SEO playbook and
really understand some of theintricacies, that would probably
unlock the door in their ownminds to ask questions of a

(11:34):
provider.
How can you provide all of thesethings that I've learned right,
because there's a lot of detailthat goes into being effective
and good with your search engineoptimization?
If you gave a dealer enoughinformation that they could ask
their vendor the question howare you able to accomplish all
of these things for $600 a month?

(11:56):
Sometimes that would one dispelmaybe a misconception that the
value is equal, but also I thinkwould unlock the door for a lot
of dealers to realize there'sno possible way that we could be
getting this amount of valuefor an extra few hundred dollars
a month tagged onto the billwhere that is usually probably a

(12:17):
place where the vendor it's aneasy extra way to get some
profitability built in versusreally giving great value to the
dealer.
Anyway, I think that creates amisconception of value for
dealers.
I think it has for many yearsand I can move on, unless you
guys have any thoughts on that.

Speaker 2 (12:34):
I do.
I actually I did work for a fewof the big auto shops, as you
know, and there was kind of oneof those situations where we had
a very low cost, easy bolt onSEO product was less than a
thousand dollars and basicallyall we were doing was reading
Google Analytics back to themand letting them know what
happened.
If it was good, great.
If it was bad, then oh well,you know it's the algorithm's

(12:55):
fault or whatever.
But ultimately, within SEO, youactually have to do a lot of
work beyond analysis, beyondreading the same tools that
everybody uses, beyond analysis,beyond reading the same tools
that everybody uses, and what'sreally important is that you
really look at the scope of whatthese providers are charging,
because small, cheap SEO scopesare extremely common across
every vertical that we work in.
But when we look at what hasactually happened in terms of

(13:18):
work and deliverables, typicallyit's like a light onboarding
and then they just kind of moveon.
I really do think that one ofthe worst typically one of the
worst companies to do SEO foryou is your website provider,
because they'll uh, at least, atleast on the technical side,
they'll tend to hide things fromyou that are limitations with
their platform because obviouslythey don't want to mess up the

(13:39):
website and kind of bundle deal,um.
But yeah, that's.
That's my two cents on cheapSEO scopes.

Speaker 1 (13:46):
Yeah, I have grown probably less gracious or kind
to the website providers whoalso provide SEO and try to sell
it really hard.
And yeah, I know you workedfrom those shop we worked at one
together that did a pretty goodjob of actually selling it with
websites.
And one of the things that I amprobably a bigger critic of

(14:13):
today than I ever have been is,if your website provider is also
your SEO provider, thelikelihood that they're also
your paid media or your paidadvertising provider, paid
search, if you're doingremarketing, display anything
across the Google Ads platform,it's likely that they're doing
all of it and maybe you madethat decision because it's

(14:34):
convenient, right, just keep itall in one place.
But the consequences of makingdecisions like that are really
where the problem is and dealersjust most of them just don't
know to ask questions that wouldbe like hey, website provider,
what's my average conversionrate of all the traffic that
comes to this wonderful websitethat I get from you?

(14:54):
And they tell you well, it'saround 2%.
That's the national average,that's the automotive average
and it has been for about 30years, which is pathetic.
Then I go back to say, well,okay, if 2% is as good as it
really gets, and there are someindustries where it's really

(15:14):
hard to get out of single digits.
I understand, okay, but ifyou're my SEO provider as well
and I'm spending all of thismoney and you spend no time
trying to make the conversionenvironments actually pay off
better, I want to have reallyserious conversations with the
provider that wants all of thatbusiness and does nothing to

(15:38):
work on better conversionoutcomes.
Like if I take my business topremier online marketing
outcomes.
Like if I take my business topremier online marketing.
Right Now, I'm working withpeople like Andres and Mike
Schaug, who have a vestedinterest in the outcome of what
happens with all of this effort.
Does it get dropped off in thedesert there's nobody there,

(15:58):
it's just left or is it beingput into environments where it
has its best chance of turninginto a sales opportunity or a
business opportunity?
I think that's really, reallycritical, and I could go on and
on and on about some of thesethings, but let me get back on
track with you guys.
All SEO is not the same and asmuch as it's been a conversation

(16:20):
for a long, long time, I thinkit's really prudent to cover
this and get your guys'perspective, because all the SEO
isn't the same.
That means that local SEO isdifferent than technical SEO.
It's all SEO, right, there'swater, there's ice, there's
vapor, but it's all SEO, local,technical and beyond.

(16:41):
Where should dealers focus, andmaybe a secondary on that is
what will the focus of yourplaybook be relative to this
topic of seo, not all being thesame?

Speaker 3 (16:53):
yeah, that's a good question.
So, um, for, for car dealers, Imean, local seo is the.
It's the name of the game, youknow.
I think that a lot of dealersthink that, oh, I just want to
rank on top of Google in theblue links, which are the
traditional blue links that yousee when you search for

(17:15):
something.
As I mentioned earlier, mostpeople's eyes are drawn to the
map pack.
It has a higher playthrough rateif you're ranking in the map
pack than in organic searchresults, especially for queries
that have both of them, as inthe search results.

(17:36):
So it's really important to justmaximize your local SEO,
maximizing every ranking factorthat local SEOo has in order to
to get better rankings, and it'sa completely different game.
I mean, there are somesimilarities in terms of what
factors help you rank in the mappack than in organic search,

(17:57):
but it's it's just a differentalgorithm.
I mean, relevance is one ofthem local, local relevance,
prominence.
So just any type of reviews,not just Google reviews, but
also third-party reviews, helpyou rank in the map pack.
So, yeah, it's a completelydifferent game with some

(18:18):
similarities, but dealers shouldinvest into local SEO more than
organic search and, as Mikementioned, traffic coming from
the map pack is highly likely toconvert than just going

(18:40):
straight to your website andclicking on a form and whatnot,
like if you get phone calls fromGVP.
That's a higher chance ofconverting or getting a demo or
getting into your dealershipthan someone that just fills a
form on your site.

Speaker 1 (18:59):
So let's talk a little bit about the importance
of visibility in search engines.
I know a lot of dealers kind ofstart with that.
They're like, okay, Iunderstand the concept that I
need to show up when people aresearching I um, there's not my
line.
Um, I'll credit sasha strauss.
He, uh, I think he still is aprofessor at usc and ucla's

(19:23):
business schools.
He's an amazing brand marketer,just brilliant guy, and he
famously says I can't buy what Idon't know exists, or I can't
buy what I can't find.
So search is really the tip ofthe spear in most cases when

(19:47):
you're thinking about well, I'ma car dealership and where do I
want to win first, when I starttalking about all these digital
marketing options, or when Istart to talk about SEO and I
think that's at the top of mindfor most people like visibility.
So how does SEO drive organictraffic?

(20:10):
And maybe specifically, howdoes it drive traffic that
converts.

Speaker 3 (20:17):
For example, for car dealerships, we see a lot of OEM
content, just generic contentthat's not targeting any geos or
any specific models.
We just see the cookie cuttercontent on most dealerships that
are not doing SEO, and thistype of content is just the same

(20:43):
copy and paste that you see onmost of their ships.
And so what we focus on wecreate specific content that
targets the geos that they wantto target or that are nearby,
that they're interested in, thatthey get the most clients from,
and we also focus on creatingpages that are relevant to what

(21:04):
users are searching for.
So if you know, in their geo inOhio or whatever, people are
searching for Ford Bronco a lotmore than the EV Mustang then we
will focus on the Ford Broncoand beef up those pages, make it
informative, make sure that theinventory is displayed, that

(21:30):
when the user lands in that page, that they have all the
information that they need toschedule a visit or to call the
dealership, and so a lot ofdealerships lack that and I
think it's something that isundervalued as well.

Speaker 2 (21:51):
Andres is very, very humble, but I actually.
There's a situation in mindwhere he had a Toyota dealership
that wanted to rank in a cityvery, very far away and I
laughed and told him no, I don'tthink this location page is
going to work, and a few monthslater we were ranking in that
city that was hours away.

(22:13):
So it's definitely possiblewith specialized content for the
users.
I mean, I think a thing that alot of dealerships, especially
new car dealerships, forget isthat they're not just repping
Ford or Toyota, they're reppingthat for their market and
oftentimes on websites you don'tsee very many geographically

(22:34):
specific pages or the keywordsthat they would really like to
show up for.
Another big area that tends tobe a blind spot for new
dealerships is they don't showup for new terms like or sorry
use terms, and they don't showup for finance.
They really are just completelyoptimized for whatever the 2024
new car lineup is and they'remissing out on, you know, the

(22:58):
vast majority of buyers whichare actually used car buyers.
So that's another huge area ofopportunity that we've been
working on with our product.

Speaker 3 (23:06):
Yeah, and one more thing to add to that is well,
it's a funny story.
This happened recently One ofour clients I worked with them
for more than two years.
We created a bunch of content,a bunch of pages, targeting
models, targeting different geos, and they had to migrate their

(23:27):
site to another CMS and part ofthe deal was to migrate their
SEO over there.
So they unfortunately canceled.
And then you see theiranalytics nowadays and they
tanked like 30% in one monthbecause the new website provider
deleted all our content andjust put generic content in

(23:49):
there, and it's just, you know.
Start to see our content, youknow, go to waste.

Speaker 1 (23:55):
And start to see our client, you know get or
ex-client get, um, get, uh,worse results I had the very
same thing happen this year,where, on the b2b side, where
some of the things we were doingand we were not, from an seo
perspective, we weren't doingexactly what you were doing, we

(24:15):
were due, but it was having ahuge seo effect in terms of the
content we were making and thenapplying it to interior pages on
their site, and they decidedthat they were insane.
So they switched strategieslike a hard left turn and it's

(24:36):
been a steady decline into whoknows what they're trying to
accomplish now.
Sometimes you can't help peoplefrom themselves.
You can't save them fromthemselves, and I think that's
why having conversations likethis and creating podcast
episodes like this allows peopleto get into it, and sometimes

(24:58):
even people that are consumingthe podcast episodes on a
regular basis.
Now you don't always have, uh,an hour to sit down and watch
the whole episode at once orlisten to the whole episode at
once.
Sometimes you do, but nowadayswe can even take podcast
episodes like this and chop upbite sized pieces of this
content, so the people get alittle bit of Andres explaining

(25:20):
a concept like oh, that's great,and then that leads them to go
and listen to more, and aconcept like, oh, that's great,
and then that leads them to goand listen to more, and I think
again, this kind of just pointsback to why it's great that you
guys are putting a new playbooktogether.
I think that that's longoverdue for the industry to have
something that's fresh and,just in general, educating on
the topic is huge.
So, in keeping with that, keepthe conversation going.

(25:43):
I know this has been mentionedalready a little bit in the
episode and I think this canconfuse people.
It may not be a misconception,but I don't think a lot of
people talk about the differencebetween local SEO and organic
search.
That because there is adifference.

(26:06):
When you talk about things likemap pack and google business
profile, right, there's a lot oflocal things relative to you
know, your business isconsidered to be a local
business, not a national or aglobal business by google, and
so there's, strategically,things that you do differently.
Tell me from your.
What's the difference betweenlocal SEO and organic search?
Why should dealerships careabout either or both?

Speaker 3 (26:28):
Yeah, so um yeah, for for local SEO, you're competing
against other businesses in thearea, right?
I mean, it's just you againstthe other dealerships, whether
they're other.
Uh like, if you're, if you're aHyundai dealership, you're
competing against other Hyundaidealerships, but you can also be
competing against used cardealerships buy here, pay here,

(26:50):
dealerships, and so you're onlycompeting with, with local
competitors.
For organic search it's alittle bit tougher because
you're competing against, youknow, I, carscom, carfax,
autotrader they have huge SEObudgets.

(27:10):
They spend millions of dollarson that every year.
Here you are a local businesstrying to compete against them.
Those are the main twodifferences.
One of the differences would becompetitors.
The other one would be howGoogle ranks or promotes you to

(27:31):
be at the top three in the mappack or the top three in organic
search results.
They're completely differentalgorithms, as I mentioned
earlier.
And the third difference Iwould say would be the
click-through rate.
If you're on the map pack, it'sjust a higher.
It has a higher click-throughrate than the organic search

(27:52):
results, simply because ofvisibility, but also having on
the map pack, you have thereviews, number of reviews and
review ratings.
So there's a little element ofsocial proof in there, just by
knowing that the dealership thatyou're dealing with is
trustworthy.
And the last thing is thatreviews can also or a snippet of

(28:18):
the review can show up in themap pack.
So if you're selling a hondaCivic and you're looking for
that and one of your reviewsmentions Honda Civic, then
Google will promote that listingover the.

Speaker 1 (28:32):
Nice.
So you touched on this a littlebit, so I'm not going to get
too much into ranking factorsand algorithms, but I think
that's an important distinctionfor people to remember.
I think that's an importantdistinction for people to
remember For years before.
What did they call it, mike,back in the days of mobile

(28:53):
geddon?
Is that what it was?
Everyone was like, oh no,mobile geddon.
When Google always they willtease about things that are
coming about, things that arecoming, and the mobile algorithm
was such a hot topic for so, solong, website providers
thinking, hey, are we responsive?

(29:14):
How will our sites look?
Are we ready for this?
But that also does speak to thefact that Google looks and
operates differently fromdesktop searches, mobile
searches and all of the you knowranking factors that are a part

(29:36):
of these determinations ofwhere you show up and how you
were, how, how well you're goingto perform from a local seo
perspective are actually.
I think it points back to thecomment I made earlier, which is
seo has and always will bedynamic.
Every year there's always somecarnival barker saying seo dead,
like it's dead, it's dead,links don't matter anymore, blah

(29:58):
, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And then all of a sudden it'slike whoops, there's a little
bit of a leak and now all of asudden, joey Hawkins and Rand
Fishkin's talking about it again, getting himself all in trouble
again, but he's kind of beenvindicated for a lot of the
things that he was concerned offor years.

(30:21):
All that to say, though, mypoint is and I think that this
conversation is reallyillustrating it well is SEO is a
dynamic part of digitalmarketing strategy, always has
been, always will be, and it isvery difficult for business
owners.
Let's just stay focused on cardealers and not a criticism.

(30:43):
It's difficult for a car dealerto be up on all of the
knowledge necessary to know.
So there is an angle, it's noteven an angle.
There's an element of trustthat's really really important
in terms of well, who are youworking with?
How are you trying to make surethat I'm educated, so I at
least know what's going on, andthen I can have some ability to

(31:04):
inspect and know what'shappening, and I think some of
that is just teaching people.
So, again, I'll just come backto the fact that you guys are,
you know, putting all of theseelements together in a playbook,
I think also will be be really,really helpful for people, not
only your own clients.
There will be other people, I'msure there will be people who
will say, man, nobody's beingquite this transparent and

(31:24):
honest with this.
We want to talk to you guys,but I think that's really,
really critical.
So, moving on from that, couldyou explain a little bit of
these pillars of local SEO?
I know some people are familiarwith proximity, but that's
another part.
I love just hearing you talk alittle bit more about those

(31:44):
pillars of local SEO and whyproximity is so important.

Speaker 3 (31:49):
Yeah, great question.
So, as I mentioned earlier,local SEO has different ranking
factors in organic search.
A lot of people think that, oh,if I just fill up my website
with content and links, I'mgoing to be good, and part of
that could be true.
But there are other factorsthat affect how your website is

(32:11):
promoted on the map pack, andthose factors are prominence,
proximity and relevance, and I'mgoing to dive into them a
little bit.
But relevance is just means how, uh, how, your content or the
or your google business profile,how, how relevant is it to the,
to the user's search or query,right?

(32:34):
So if, uh, if you're a flowerbusiness or a car dealer and uh,
and you're and the user islooking for a car dealer or a
used car for sale and you happento sell that, then they're
going to find you.
But if you're, if you're, ahyundai deal client is looking
for a new ford f-150, like, uh,it's very unlikely that you'll

(32:56):
be showing up in the map pack.
So that's relevance.
Prominence is basically howtrustworthy you are, how
authoritative or how muchauthority you have, and that
comes down to reviews.
Backlinks have some level ofimpact on SEO, on local SEO, but

(33:19):
over the years that's beenslowing down a little bit.
It still works.
I'm not saying it's dead, bythe way, but I'm just saying
that Google just uses otherfactors and a lot of times they
just trump prominence.
So, for example, as I mentionedearlier, reviews are very

(33:39):
important and the type ofreviews that you have are also
very important.
So if you have a bunch of nakedreviews, so just five-star
reviews with no testimonial oranything, those have not as much
impact as a review that awritten review that may include
a keyword right, because, as Imentioned earlier, if your

(34:03):
reviews contain, like, somekeywords in there, then Google
will pick up on that and usethem to promote your business in
the map pack.
And then video reviews, likereviews that have continued
video or photo, are also superimportant and they increase
click-through rate as well.
So there's levels to reviewsand also having reviews on other

(34:28):
sites like Yelp, because a lotof people are using Apple Maps
more and Apple Maps pullsreviews from Yelp, so they don't
have their own review system.
So having reviews there isimportant, and so that is the
prominent aspect of local SEO.
The third aspect would beproximity little bit deep into

(34:53):
this, because this creates a lotof confusion for GMs or, you
know, marketing managers in cardealerships.
Right, proximity is how closeis the searcher to your business
location?
Right, and this is a big factorbecause you might be in, you
know your business might be in.

(35:14):
You know your business might bein San Diego, for example, but
it's more like on the edge ofChula Vista, and they're like,
oh, why are we not showing up,like, why are we not getting all
this organic traffic if we'rethe only San Diego dealership?
But then the other San Diegodealership could be in Carlsbad,
or it can be La Jolla, which iscloser, and then they might get

(35:36):
like they might be closer tothe audience that they want to
get if they're high-incomeearners and such.
So proximity is a big factorand it can trump the other
factors down Just because thesearcher is closer and Google is
trying to give the user thebest result.

(35:58):
Also, what we get a lot is cardealers that are like, hey, I'm
sitting at home and I'm in SanMarcos, right, and my dealership
is ranking above me, likewhat's going on?

(36:22):
Or like a family member saysthat, right, and you're like,
well, I mean, I wish there wassomething we can do about that,
but you're, if you're at homeand you're not close to your
business and there are othercloser business closer, there
are closer businesses to you,then those are, those are the
ones that are going to getpromote, and that is that is

(36:44):
something that we get a lotright mike, yeah, absolutely so
you can't really game distancewith the map pack.

Speaker 2 (36:51):
If I'm understanding you correctly, you can do it
with organic search or thenon-map pack listings, so, like
if you create a geographic page.
Using that example, it wouldtake a very long time for a san
marcos dealer to rank anywherein austin, but it is
hypothetically possible with theright amount of content and
links.
But the map pack will only showpeople that are really kind of

(37:13):
in that area and it's reallyimportant that dealers try to
focus their SEO, their local SEO, on where they are actually
physically located, because thatis where they're going to have
the best success and the bestmomentum.
I had a question for you,andres In terms of local SEO,
how important are citations?
Are citations dead or are theystill important ranking factors

(37:35):
for local SEO and just standardSEO?

Speaker 3 (37:37):
Yeah, I love that question.
I mean citations have alwaysbeen to me, have always been a
pillar for local SEO and I don'tthink that that's changed.
I think that citations haveslowly, as I mentioned, any off
page, any like building andcitations they kind of lose a

(38:00):
little bit of relevance overtime.
But I mean it's proven when wehave a client and we create
citations for them and weoptimize them to the best of our
ability, we put as muchinformation in them and we
refresh them every month, uh,keep them up to date, uh, we get

(38:21):
good results.
And citations is only the firstthing that that a local
business should have, which isjust local listings, uh, being
being in a local directory oreven a niche directory.
But um, that's um.
But citations to me are stillimportant.
Google still thinks they'rerelevant and I mean you can get

(38:46):
a little bit of referral trafficfor them.
But that's not really what we'retrying to achieve with
citations.
We're just trying to get moreauthority if we, if, if we use
citations properly and also abig part of citations is keeping
them indexed.
If you create citations andthey don't have a photo, they

(39:10):
don't have opening hours, theydon't have, like you know, all
the relevant information, likefor the user to make a decision.
It's very likely that Googlewill not index them and when
that happens, it's basicallylike just Google ignores them.
There's no authoritytransferred from the citation or
the directory to your to yourwebsite, so you're really just

(39:33):
doing work for nothing,basically, if you're building
citations and not indexing them.
So our job in the SEOdepartment is just to make sure
that we take advantage ofcitations and include them in
our strategy, include them insome of our content, like just
keep them indexed, keep themrolling, keep them relevant at

(39:56):
all times.

Speaker 2 (39:57):
So just to clarify that, you can create a citation
or do a push through like Yext,but a lot of those won't
actually be indexed, so there ismore work that has to be done
to get those indexed andbasically, when they're indexed
with Google, then they have alot more SEO value for your
website, and that's a prettyadvanced strategy that Andres

(40:19):
enlightened me about.
It's yielded really, reallygreat results.

Speaker 3 (40:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (40:27):
I was just going to say.
You know the NAP, the name,address, phone number part of
you know citations has beenimportant for a long time.
But again I'll say it, seo isdynamic and it's not just
technical SEO, it's not justlocal SEO.

(40:47):
There are so many differentcomponents.
One of those is all of theinstances of your business that
include a name, address andphone number, and if your
business has changed locations,which some dealers end up
changing locations, and thatends up being an issue.
There's lots of buy cells thathappen, and so there's changes

(41:10):
with the name, address, phonenumber.
But it's a good segue intosomething that I wanted to ask
about the optimization ofprobably the granddaddy of all
places where your name, address,phone number exists, and that's
the Google business profile.
I well, I'll maybe ask somequestions after I ask this one,

(41:32):
and that is how can a dealershipoptimize their Google business
profile for better local searchresults, or at least to
complement the local searchresults?

Speaker 3 (41:43):
Yeah.
So where do I start there?
I would say I mean, I wouldstart from the top.
Right, if you open your Googlebusiness profile, the first
thing you're going to see isyour business name.
Right, if your business name umand you know, google has tried
to disprove this but, um, ifyour business name contains a

(42:04):
keyword or the geo that helpsyou a ton, right, um, now you
cannot.
You cannot add that it'sagainst, is against TOS if
that's not your real businessname.
But a little tip if you sign aDBA or doing business as in your

(42:25):
state, that you can use that,and then Google cannot take it
down or suspend you becauseyou're registered as as that
business or before you buy orrename a dealership, make sure
the geo name is in there.

Speaker 2 (42:42):
It's just, it's absolutely incredibly effective
and your main product, likehonda austin, is going to help
you rank for honda austin morethan you know dick myersyers,
honda of Austin or somethinglike that.
It's just, you definitely wantto have what you're selling and
the geo in there if possible,because that's going to get you

(43:05):
a lot of.
It's going to make it a loteasier for you.
It's not going to do everything, but it's definitely going to
make it easier.

Speaker 3 (43:12):
Yeah, and then another factor would be
categories.
Right, and this is somethingthat a lot of people don't use,
and I have a story about this.
I'll tell you in a second.
But your primary category hasUse Honda dealer, because that
has such a lot more weight thanthe additional categories.
Now, in the additionalcategories, you can add car

(43:42):
dealer, you can add used cardealer, used truck dealer, you
can use even car loan andfinancing company, because
that's your literally likeproviding loans, so might as
well use that.
And those don't have as muchweight as the primary category,
but they will help you.
And to illustrate this, I waslooking for a coworking space in

(44:05):
my area and the ones that Iliked were really far.
And so one time I went to thegym to look at the memberships
and the space and all that, andthey told me like oh, like
there's a co-working space underus and it's like 10 minutes

(44:25):
from home, like this gym andco-working space 10 minutes from
home.
And I was like oh, wow, I didnot know that.
How long has it been around?
Like a year.
And I'm like, okay, so I go toGoogle Maps and I'm like
co-working space and I'm likestanding in front of the door
and it's like they're notshowing up.
And so I type in the name of thebusiness and in their

(44:48):
categories it says executiveoffice, something like executive
suite rental agency, somethinglike that.
And then corporate office likeexecutive suite rental agency,
something like that.
And then corporate office likethose were their categories, and
I'm like you're a co-workingspace, like a year like you're
shooting yourself in the foot bynot using, like the, the right

(45:09):
categories, right and so that,like that.
That was a real example thatthat just just baffled me,
because I'm like what are youdoing?
You're trying to sound fancybut at the same time, you're
losing so many customers.

Speaker 1 (45:25):
I would imagine there will probably be a little
section there in your SEO, yourforthcoming SEO playbook, on
Google Business Profile, profileoptimization and making sure
you get this role of keywordslined out correctly.
And then categories and thishas actually been something
that's come up several times inthe I mean really since people

(45:48):
have been paying attention toGoogle, my Business, now Google
Business Profile in this kind ofserious manner over the last
handful of years that if you getthese categories wrong or you
get too cute, try to addyourself into too many or
irrelevant ones, that just thatalone can have kind of a
catastrophic effect on yourlocal SEO success.

(46:12):
So I think that's important.
I have, just as an add-on withGoogle business profile, in the
last at least four, maybe fiveyears, the growth and clearly
strategically how Google wantsto utilize the Google business

(46:33):
profile.
I have just and assuming thatGoogle is telling us the truth,
although you can independentlyverify this based on your own
Google business profile traffic,but Google has said that it's
like.
I want to say it's nearly 70%.
It's a very high number oftraffic that goes through your

(46:54):
Google business profile thatinteract, interacted with it,
results in a visit to yourwebsite.
It's a very high percentage.
I think they grabbed that froman average across multiple
verticals.
Perfectly fine, but curious toknow, if you guys have any
thoughts on this, whether youthink that one dealers car
dealers should be payingattention and probably power

(47:15):
sport dealers to RV dealersshould pay attention closely to
to the amount of traffic thatthey have that comes through
their business profile.
That ends up being a touchpointat the website.
I think all that's reallyimportant and for me, I have
told dealers consistently forthe last couple of years

(47:37):
optimization at the Googlebusiness profile level yes,
think about keywords, all thethings you guys are talking
about, your categories butkeeping it fresh with the
content that allows you to placethere as well has been
something that I'm curious toknow if you guys think I'm
giving dealers bad advice, butupdating information there so
that you do have pictures,visual content, but also offers

(48:01):
A lot of people I know you guysoffer this, I'm sure, through
your agency for people, people,if they want to, you know, be
putting in, you know, cars forsale.
There's a lot of different waysthat you can be optimizing your
Google business profile, buteven outside of you know, okay,
well, you should plug in carsfor sale, Putting offers in that
might be seasonal offers.
Or maybe you're trying toreally raise the level of

(48:24):
awareness on deals that you'rewilling to make on electric
vehicles because maybe you'reoverstocked, you got too much of
that in inventory.
Or maybe it's hey, you want toroute people through your
trade-in tool because you knowthat your trade-in tool does a
really good job of generatingleads for the dealership and
they converted a higherpercentage than maybe other lead
sources, and so those are allthings that can be added to a

(48:45):
Google business profile.
You can link your trade-in toolthere, have a little blurb on
it.
So there's a lot of things thatcan be done there, and I've
always told dealers optimize alot there, because I haven't
found that there is a point ofover-optimization on the Google
business profile.
I have found that there isconsequences to trying to be

(49:06):
cute with categories or gettingthings wrong with keywords.
But I guess my question for youguys would be and it's not one
that I had planned on asking cana dealership over-optimize
their Google business profile totheir own detriment, or is it
more of a keep trying?
We haven't seen it yet.
That's been my experience.
Curious to know your guys'thoughts.

Speaker 3 (49:27):
Yeah, that's an excellent question.
So I think for car dealers youcannot really.
There are certain things thatwill get you suspended if you
add them to your GDP profile andif you abuse it for the for the
majority of the fieldsavailable, I mean, when in doubt

(49:48):
, just fill it out, you know.
Like that's, uh, that's thebest advice I can give to
dealers.
Like, add your payment methods,add whatever you need, because
at the end of the day, that willincrease your click-through
rate at some point.
Right, like if you there mightnot be ranking factors, like
google's not going to be.
Like oh, this, this, you knowthey accept visa and this other

(50:09):
business doesn't.
Like you know it's not aranking factor.
Or like um having, um, it's notlike that big of a ranking
factor as much as um categoriesdoes.
But yeah, I think that thatthere think that there is no
wrong way to do it.
But there are some things thatare against TOS.

(50:30):
For example, adding a phonenumber to GVP posts.
We had a recent client that didthat a long time ago and it's
just bad for you because if youlook at terms of service and
they were updated a few yearsago you cannot add your phone
number to them.
I mean, it doesn't say address,but I would not add the address

(50:52):
either.
I would just make itinformative.
Avoid adding address, avoidadding phone number.
But definitely getting yourphone number in your GDP post or
GDP image can get you suspended.
So I would encourage alldealers to avoid doing that.
And then, yeah, I mean there isno.
There are no other things thatcome to mind that can get you

(51:12):
suspended, other than overlystuffing your business name with
keywords that I mean gold willnot suspend.
They might give you a softsuspension by asking you to
verify your business, but if youcan't verify, then they'll

(51:33):
suspend you.
Yeah, those are the only twothat come to mind.

Speaker 1 (51:36):
So don't do the crazy stuff, but definitely optimize
in ways that get people to oneinteract.
Stay on your Google businessprofile, perhaps even do
something that actuallyrepresents a conversion activity
.
All of those things are good.
Let's jump in.
I got a couple.
Oh, mike, sorry about that.

Speaker 2 (51:55):
Service areas or locations is really important
too.
Most people just fill in one.
I think you can put in like 20,right, andres.

Speaker 3 (52:05):
Yeah, service areas are very important.
It's been kind of like oursecret sauce for a while and a
lot of SEOs have dismissed them,thinking that they're not
relevant, and recently they'veregained popularity again.

(52:25):
I think Darren Shaw from WhiteSpark made a post about it
recently.
But we've been doing serviceareas since the beginning of
Premier.
We always fill out the serviceareas.
We add any relevant geos, zipcodes, counties, like as long as
it's within two hours and it'snot like irrelevant to the

(52:47):
business, uh, and it's not likesuper far away, we we add it and
uh, it's another way to to, toshow up that.
That's one way to not I'm gonnaavoid that word uh, that's
another way to increase your,your visibility.
Uh, when it comes to proximity,basically like if you're, if

(53:08):
your service areas includes acertain city that you want to
appear on, when you know peoplesearch for that, uh, for a
search term with a geo, then um,it's yeah, that increases your
chances of of appearing in themap pad for that chart
Interesting.

Speaker 1 (53:24):
Okay, guys, just a couple more questions.
This episode's been flying by.
Guys, let's discuss on-page SEO.
I've heard you guys mentionthis.
I don't know what it means, soI'm curious.
You guys have my curiositypiqued with this, so I've got to
ask about it.
What's your and I love ducttape.

(53:46):
What's your duct tape approachto target page optimization?

Speaker 3 (53:51):
Yeah, so yeah, I mean , who hasn't used duct tape to
fix things like?

Speaker 1 (53:57):
Everything.

Speaker 3 (53:58):
Yeah, fix everything.
That's part of my toolkit everyday.
I actually just bought thisfilm camera and the battery door
is not shutting, so I just ducttaped it.
So yeah, so you're placing it.
I'm like, no, I'll just puttape on it, you know, of course.

Speaker 1 (54:15):
Um that's a sign of your brilliance, andres thanks,

(54:38):
um, yeah, so, so the.

Speaker 3 (54:39):
I would say that the duct deductive approach and this
comes from, I mean, there's athe best way to do a quick
on-page optimization for a pagethat you want to rank, whether
it's an inventory page, aservice financing homepage,
whatever you want is to includethe keywords that you want to
rank for in certain elements ofyour page.

(55:02):
Remember, google ranks pages,not websites, unless you're
Forbes or Reddit.
But yeah, google will rankpages that are optimized, that
are relevant to the user's query.
So if you want to do that foryour dealership, then you want
to include the primary keyword,with the geo First of all, if

(55:26):
the geo or the primary keywordwith the geo, first of all, if
the geo or the primary keywordis in your domain.
So I don't know,amarillohondacom or something
you already got like a greatranking factor working with you,
which is the domain, the URL,right, but you want to include
the, the, the primary keyword,uh, on your, on your url, or the

(55:48):
keyword that you're targetingin the url.
You want to make it, you wantto make it short, uh.
So you don't want to include,like, if it's amarillo honda
dealership, like that's, that'syour main keyword.
You don't want to like, add, uh, like, honda dealership
Amarillo, texas, which is quitelonger.
You just want to make itshorter for people to read and

(56:11):
for the user to read.
The other one is the page title.
So every page has a meta titleand a meta description, and so
adding the primary keyword toyour page title is another
ranking factor.
Those two are the mostprominent ones.
And then the third one would bethe heading.

(56:32):
When you have a website, whenyou imagine yeah, when you have
a website, you have somethingcalled headings.
So you have your H1 heading,which is the most prominent one
and usually should tell the userwhat your page is about.
It's the largest heading andit's the one that most people

(56:54):
misuse because they try to befancy and cutesy with it, and so
adding your keyword in the H1heading is another big factor.
Those three would be the mostimportant factors in a font page
, like adding your keyword there.
There's two more, which isadding the keyword in the copy,

(57:15):
like at least once.
I would say once depends howlong your content might be.
You can also use variations.
You don't have to use the exactkeyword on all three of them or
on all four elements.
And the last one is to add somesort of variant of that keyword
or you know another supportingterm on your headings, on your

(57:38):
H2, h3, h4 headings, which are,you know, if you know HTML,
those are like the terms thatyou use, the tabs that you use,
and so by doing that, which issuper simple, you're already
covering most of your bases.
You're already 80% of the waythere.
There are more things that youcan, they can do to optimize

(58:00):
your pages, but that involvescreating more content, localized
content, internal links, likethere.
There's the other 20 of it.
That requires a little bit moreexpertise and understanding,
but if you cover those um, howmany?
Did I mention five elements?
You're, you know, you're wellahead of everyone else.

Speaker 1 (58:23):
There's a theme throughout if the listeners and
or viewers are picking up onthis, but I'm guessing that
it'll be something that willalso be a theme from your
forthcoming playbook and that isthere are some common things
relative to SEO about a businessthat have always been important

(58:46):
from the beginning, and it'swho you are, toyota dealership,
what you sell new Toyotas, usedToyotas, tundras, tacomas,
camrys, 4runners, blah, blah,blah and where you sell it.
And I have one last questionfor you guys search strategy.

(59:20):
That's really much moreexpansive, far beyond local
factors.
There still is this veryimportant the optimization of
your google business profile andits effect on local seo.
All of these things are socritically important, but they
all happen to be also uh easy,easily fall apart if you're not

(59:42):
focusing on well who are.
Who are you, what do you sell,where do you sell it?
And I think that this is allreally practical and helpful
information.
I'm excited that you guys areheading in this direction of
putting this playbook together,and I actually think we'll be
able to actually do some moreepisodes on the topic.

(01:00:02):
There's just so much always tocover, and we've burned all the
way down to the last thing thatI wanted to ask you guys on this
episode which was relative tothe documentation uh leak um a
few months back now, uh, wherethere was this kind of Google
search documentation that uhleak that everyone started to

(01:00:24):
talk about.
I think I first saw maybeMichael King was talking about
it and then Rand was talkingabout it and then Joy Hawkins
did an episode I don't know ifthey did it as a podcast or a
webinar where she had both ofthem on and they were talking
about those things.
Curious to know if you guys hadany particular thoughts, if
there was anything thatsurprised you or didn't surprise

(01:00:46):
you, and maybe was thereanything in there that you think
the dealers or any businessesshould be aware of.

Speaker 3 (01:00:53):
So the leak was very interesting because I mean,
there's two sides of the coin,which is you know it's fake, you
know it's fake.
And then the other one is, likeyou know, this, this is, um,
you know part of like the API,of like some kind of like
warehouse project and whatnotLike, and then there's people

(01:01:18):
that believe that there are realranking factors and, um, I mean
, I just take it with a grain ofsalt.
Uh, to be honest with you,there's a few things there that
that really highlight, likelinks, backlinks.
Who's going to say in this,links don't matter, of course
they do Like, come on, they'vebeen creating that for a while

(01:01:39):
and SEOs know that if you getbacklinks, if you do link
outreach, if you do PRs, thatincreases in the long term not
immediately, but in the longterm, it will increase your
visibility, your rankings, andif it's done right, of course.
The other one that caught myattention was the clicks right,

(01:02:02):
the rules being denied thatclicks don't matter right.
The world's been denying thatclicks don't matter right, but
there's so much documentationand I firsthand witnessed this
on the last Brighton SEOconference where Dan Sullivan
was talking and someone askedhim if links matter and he tried
to tip the door on the answer,but everyone came to the same

(01:02:23):
conclusion that clicks do matter, right?
I mean, if people are clickingon your search results, google's
going to promote that, right.
So it's very important to havegood titles, good meta
descriptions, schema thatenhance your visibility on
search results so you can getthe most amount of clicks and

(01:02:44):
that will help you eventuallyrank on the search results.
But also for Google Maps or theMap Pack, right, if you have
good reviews, people are morelikely to click on it.
If you get a batch of badreviews and your score goes down
, people are less likely toclick on your listing, and
that's proven to be like.

(01:03:04):
We've had a few clients wherethey had bad management and then
, unfortunately, got bad reviewsand then they started to lose a
lot of rank.
They started to lose rankingsand organic traffic and so on.
So, like that, I'm convinced,anecdotally, that it is an

(01:03:28):
important factor.

Speaker 2 (01:03:30):
Time on site was an interesting one too.
They were also saying that thatwas not important.
Clearly it was also a littlebit about exact match domains.
If you have the keyword in thedomain, it helps.
Google said it doesn'tnecessarily help, but it always
helps.
So a lot of interestingdeflections, I mean.
I think here at Google, probablybecause of the ad side of our

(01:03:53):
business, we get so much sold tous Like use the setting, use
enhanced CPC, maximize clicks,use max ROAS, even though you
don't have dollar amounts comingin.
You know, because you're not ane-commerce business, because
we're primarily Legion, they'lltell us to do a lot of things
with tremendous amounts ofconviction and a lot of them

(01:04:14):
have blown up in our face.
So we kind of take everythingthat Google says with a grain of
salt, especially if they say itdoesn't work.
On the SEO side it might stillwork for a while, but to the
point of what you're saying,it's dynamic.
Google is always trying tochange things, so you can't game
the system.
They know that.
You know 75, 85% of all peoplethat do searches click on

(01:04:38):
organic listings, not ads.
So everything that they can doto shake things up shifts more
searchers to their ad units.
I mean, I remember when westarted out, the way we would
game the system is we would likebid for position five, remember
, because it was top-line, yeah,and you get basically the same

(01:04:59):
amount of conversions.
Then they kill that and thenthey have four ads.
So all you can see is ads.
You have to scroll past the adsand people still do it.
So, again, anything Google cando to make ads look more natural
to change, move the goalpostsaround.
So businesses have to investmore with ads because they don't
have the reliability of a lotof organic traffic.

(01:05:22):
They're going to do all ofthose things, and that's just
something that you have to workwith a good partner for, and you
definitely cannot.
A good partner is not going tobe someone that takes everything
that Google says at face value.
You have to have a lot of testsand experiments going across
your portfolio of clients, whichis what we do, and then when we
find things that work, wedouble down on them for as long

(01:05:43):
as they work, with theunderstanding that Google is
going to change somethingtomorrow and we're going to have
to pivot again.

Speaker 1 (01:05:49):
It's interesting that you know, over the years and I
will just speak relative to theautomotive vertical because it's
the one I know the best it'sbeen paying my bills for many
decades.
You know, google's entranceinto the automotive vertical was
at first, gentle, cautious.

(01:06:12):
The early players that wereserving car dealers from an
AdWords perspective, google waslargely not involved.
Not giving advice, not givingtips, it's just.
This is the black and white ofhow the ad setup work in AdWords

(01:06:34):
.
Go for it.
And they never, ever spokeabout SEO when they started to
come to conferences inautomotive with speakers when
they started to build out andhad an automotive team, even
those people, while they wereinformative in what they were

(01:06:56):
there to deliver, they werealways uncomfortable in fielding
questions around anythingorganic, anything SEO, and some
people gave him a hard timeabout that and I don't know that
that was totally fair.
But at the same time, I've beenin this for a long time and

(01:07:16):
I've never seen a representativefrom Google on a stage anywhere
really just being candid, but,more importantly, stage anywhere
um really just being candid andbut more importantly, um,
informative about seo, likesharing things.
They just and I I understandthat that's not where they're
going to make any money, butit's interesting that all of

(01:07:36):
this time has gone by and somuch change has happened and
covid happened and you knowpeople changing up budgets and
even ginormous companies likeGoogle going back to the drawing
board around strategy.
And it's companies, really, andexperts like yourselves that

(01:07:58):
now I feel like the positionthat you take with your existing
clients and potential clientsis.
We've been in this so long.
We've seen all the changes.
We were here when it firststarted and we've been literally
standing in the stream beforethe dam broke and we weathered
the storm of all of thecraziness and we're still here.

(01:08:21):
And why that's important forbusinesses.
Let's just say why that'simportant for car dealers is
having someone that has thatexperience.
Um can be the and really arethe perfect people to say we
know what was done in the pastand how you needed to do paid

(01:08:42):
search, seo, all of these thingsto get results.
We know what's also changed andwhat's going on currently, and I
think Google needs the help ofbusinesses like yours.
Maybe they don't, they'reprobably not going to
acknowledge this, but they needthat help, that guidance, that
expertise that then can alsoexplain to the end consumer of

(01:09:06):
such advertising products whatthey need to know, because
google doesn't do what they usedto do.
Mike, you and I've talked aboutthis before and that's probably
constraint of resources,probably you know.
Just you know managingprofitability of their own
business, whether everyone elselikes it or not, whether it
really does ultimately end upserving the end user customers

(01:09:27):
as well.
I think all that's questionable, but as far as operating the
business, I understand it.
But I think what I'm trying tosay is, at this day and age, I
think that companies like yoursyou're dead set on we're going
to make an SEO playbook, we'regoing to start to have these
conversations.
You're also saying we have theexperience, that we know what's
been done previously and what'shappening today, and you need

(01:09:50):
somebody that you can trust,that's seen that before, that
will advise you to make greatdecisions that will give you the
best yields for the investmentyou're going to make in these
areas.
And there was a time periodwhere I felt like I don't know
what's going to happen with that.
But now more than ever, I thinkbusinesses should really be

(01:10:10):
looking for people that havethat experience, that have
literally been living in thetrench.
They get it, they understand it, because if you don't have that
, then all of these things thathappen, even unintentionally,
when Google says, hey, do this,making these ROAS
recommendations, making allthese things that you are so

(01:10:30):
good at articulating, mike, andthen it's like, ah, that wasn't
great because maybe they didn'thave enough time to test it, but
a lot of times it's justthere's not enough time to take
something.
That's a blanket, like let'sput it over every single
circumstance, every singledealer, and it's not one size
fits all in most of these cases,from brand to brand, from buyer

(01:10:52):
to buyer.
Subaru buyers are not Chevybuyers, they just aren't.
Are they a car buyer?
Yeah, but they're just not thesame.
Somebody that wants to buy aCrosstrek is not the same person
that wants to buy a Silverado.
Somebody that wants to buy aCrosstrek is not the same person
that wants to buy a Silverado.
And so you have to be able totake the similarities of the car
buyer and then the differencesand then understand and apply
all these things relative to anSEO strategy, to a paid search

(01:11:14):
strategy and navigating it.
So I think all that's great.
Anyway, this has been a greatepisode.
I want to thank you guys foryour time.
I know how to find Mike onLinkedIn and andres, are you on
linkedin?

Speaker 3 (01:11:29):
where's the best place people can find you?
You're gonna have a fan clubnow.
Uh, yeah, you can find me onlinkedin.
I actually don't know my handlebecause I don't install
linkedin but well, I'll helppeople.

Speaker 1 (01:11:36):
So just go look up, just go to yeah, just uh, my uh,
let me see yeah, just look meup.
Do you have in your profile?
Do you have your current roleat premier online marketing in
your profile?
Yes, so if you can't find himandres fernandez at premier
online marketing look up premieronline marketing and then

(01:11:59):
search by employees.
Find that company page andemployees and you'll'll find
them there.
You'll find all the Palm folksthere.
I always encourage that justbecause LinkedIn is a great
place for this type of B2Bmarketing, exchanges and linking
up with people, and every timeyou meet somebody new who can be
of educational assistance,brings you insights, brings you

(01:12:23):
helpful tips.
You definitely want to connectwith people like that.
So look up Andres and Mike onLinkedIn.
If you cannot find themindividually as Mike Schaug or
Andres Fernandez, then look upPremier Online Marketing and
then look up their employees andgo find them and connect there.
This is a great place to parkthis episode to the listeners
and or viewers.
We always appreciate yourcomments and questions when you

(01:12:45):
view this content, either inbite-sized pieces we put a lot
of it into LinkedIn, youtube aswell but wherever you're
consuming it, if there's acomment section, throw that down
there and also do not be afraidto ask questions.
Sometimes we get really goodideas from those insights of
people sharing that feedback.
And dark social is impossibleto track.
So we go in there and look atit and we want to know if you

(01:13:10):
have things that you really likeor you would want us to go
deeper on.
Your feedback helps us deliverreally relevant episodes.
So thanks for tuning in.
We appreciate your time andnever want to waste it, so we'll
see you again real soon righthere on the podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:13:24):
Thanks, john Thanks.

Speaker 1 (01:13:25):
John.
Thanks guys.
All right, we'll hit the stopbutton.