Dealer.com Challenge – SEO vs Search Engine Marketing

Search engine marketing is a great way to generate immediate traffic.  What is often overlooked by by car dealers is the real value of a well optimized site and an aggressive SEO campaign.  A recent post I did about dealership web traffic I referenced another post from Dealer.com on Drivingsales.com and feel that it was misconstrued based on the replies by Dealer.com.

Pay Per Click advertising has it’s place like for special promotions or a fresh site.  However at the end of the day there are so many studies out there that show that SEO provides better value than Seach Engine Marketing or PPC.  One of the best explanations was from Hubspot.com.

Their simple study showed that ranking number nine generates the same amout of leads and traffic as the number two paid listing.

From the post at Hubspot:

Here are the key takeaways from the data and the images above:

1) Organic results get 75%+ of the attention. People don’t click on the ads nearly as much as the organic results.

2) The first organic result gets over 25% of all clicks. Within the organic results, the first result gets the most clicks by far – more than double the second result.

3) Within the ads, the first ad also gets the most clicks. But, since you pay per click for the ads, you should care less about volume and more about if the traffic will actually convert and what your cost per lead and cost per sale will be.

4) There are a good number of clicks on all top 10 organic results. Even the last result gets about 3% of people to click on it – this is about the same rate as the second pay per click ad, and unlike the ad, its free!

SEO wins day in and day out.  Search engine marketing is an expensive way to drive traffic.  Contrary to popular belief SEO can be almost instant and that is the real purpose of this post to show how fast I can get it to rank for certain terms.  I bet it will be faster than the time it takes to set up a pay per click campaign.  Should see results in minutes not in ages, the term used to denigrate SEO.  I took it as a challenge from Dealer.com

I’ll report back with results.

• Published at : 12:45 pm Decemember 12, 2008
• Ranking #1 for : “Dealer.com Challenge – SEO vs Search Engine Marketing” 2:00 pm 12/12/08 < low value but indexed.
• Ranking Number #6 for “dealer.com seo vs search engine marketing” 3:45 pm 12/12/08
• Ranking #1 for “Dealer.com Search Engine Marketing” 7:00 pm 12/12/08

• # 3 for dealer.com search marketing 8:00 pm 12/12/08
• # 3 for dealer.com seo 8:00pm 12/12/08
• #1 & #2 for dealer.com seo vs search engine marketing 10 am 12/13/08
• #1 & #2 for dealer.com  search engine marketing vs seo 10 am 12/13/08
• #1 for dealer.com seo 12/14/08
• #1 for dealer.com search engine marketing 12/14/08
• #1 for dealer.com search marketing 12/14/08
• Going to stop tracking results now, and this page may fall out of favor, it was just a test to see how fast it would be to win search terms and show that it is not an ages long process.

images from Hubspot and MarketingSherpa

Recent post at www.drivingsales.com/blog

Searching for the Truth - How to get more out of your Third Party Follow-ups
by Steve Dozier
Has your dealership ever experienced the following scenario? A prospect walks into your dealership and leaves without buying a car.  The Manager asks the salesperson why and they respond that the prospect couldn’t afford the car they wanted or he ...

DEALERUPS HELPS AUTO DEALERS BETTER TARGET CUSTOMERS WITH POLK LEAD SCORING I...
by sara callahan
Sara Callahan                                         Stanley Parayil Thomas Carter-West Public Relations          Chief Executive Officer Phone: 949-742-0477                      PMDS scallahan@carterwestpr.com        Phone: 888-866-6999 DEALERUP...

Automotive Social Media Policy - Free Download
by David Johnson
As the saying goes, an elephant never forgets, neither does the internet. Everything said, everything posted, every video created and image uploaded is there for the world to see. People are forming opinions about your dealership without ever havi...