http://www.google.com/intl/en/help/features.html

This link will help you search with power in the following areas:

1. Google Weather search
2. Google Stock Quote search
3. Google Time Zone search
4. Google Sports Scores search
5. Google Music search
6. Google Sunrise & Sunset search
7. Google Calculator
8. Google Book search
9. Google Earthquakes
10. Google Unit Conversion
11. Google Public Data
12. Google People Profiles
13. Google Synonym search
14. Google Dictionary Definitions
15. Google Spell Checker
16. Google Local search
17. Google Movie Showtimes
18. Google Health Conditions
19. Google Medications
20. Google Poison Control
21. Google Suicide Prevention
22. Google Flu Vaccine search
23. Google Flight Planning
24. Google Currency Conversion
25. Google Maps
26. Google Plus Operator
27. Google Related search
28. Google Fill-in-the-blank
29. Google Package Tracking
30. Google Patent Numbers

For more information about how to appear on searches and use the web to your business’s benefit, contact me.

NOTE: please keep a look-out for this message when you sign in to your Facebook Business Page:

If you see this message, that means that Facebook has already identified that you can transition your Facebook Business Page to a Facebook Places Page.  The Facebook Places Page contains the same information that the Facebook Business Page has, except that it shows a verified business location.

There are many benefits to verifying your Facebook Places Page:

• Verified business listing will secure you as the owner of your physical location.
• Facebook users can TAG themselves and other users at your business location giving you free advertising.
• Places pages are search engine optimized for your location and will show up in local searches.
• Removes duplicate listings when having both a Places page and a Business page.
• You can use Facebook Deals with your Places page.

After clicking on the prompt, look for “claim it now” on your new Facebook Places page.

a verification box will appear:

Next you will have to verify your physical location by having a phone call from Facebook to the business number listed on your Places page.

If you can’t answer the phone or the wrong number is listed, there are other methods of verification. Once you have verified your business, you’re done! Enjoy your new Facebook Places Page!

Your Brand must be of a single focus and well defined. This may already be the case, but for many businesses, there is a misconception when it comes to branding. Your Brand is not a product. It is not an ad or a tag-line. Your Brand needs to stand for something. It is the question that you come back to whenever you make a business or marketing decision in your company.  It is the character of your name.

There are a few strategic steps to discovering and implementing your Brand:

1. Discover what your Brand/Focus is… and is not.
2. Find your Place within your industry.
3. Define your Target Audience
4. Competitive Comparisons
5. Discover your Opportunities and Low-hanging Fruit
6. Develop SEO strategy based on your Brand
7. Evaluate results

When a clear objective is kept in mind, the primary Focus becomes clear. At the end of each cycle, evaluation of results based on your Brand will increase conversion of lead/visit/customer acquisition in your target market thus increasing your overall return on investment.

Confucius Say: “Too many hands make bad web design”

The challenging part is that most of the time, the template or design that was picked in the beginning of the ad-making or web-design process was beautiful. Too many hands in the pot creates something doesn’t even resemble the edgy design that spoke of flow and harmony that you originally chose. There doesn’t seem to be a way to prevent the degradation of your company image when so many people clamor to have their ideas “flash” and “pop” on in the front. Now let me be clear, I am not down-playing a call-to-action; however, too many calls-to-action confuse clients, create very ugly designs, and produce very few leads.

Get to the Point. Find your Purpose.

The solution is to find your purpose behind your web design or ad and stick to it. Your Sales Department sells cars. Your Service Department services cars. Your Finance department finances loans. Your Accessories department sells accessories. Sounds simplistic because it is. Any business will fail if they do not stick to their business model and follow their business plan. The same is true in advertising. Before making a quick decision when each new 3^rd party lead provider walks in the door to “put a big button on my home page for this great new feature,” stop and consider what your website or ad’s primary purpose is.

Don’t Forget the Meat & Potatoes.

What do your clients come to your website to do? They are interested in buying a car or getting their car serviced. If there are too many things distracting them and getting in the way of them doing those things… you’ve lost your lead.

Overcoming this situation forces us to be smarter at the way we approach the acquisition of leads. Customers are smarter and dealers must adopt a holistic approach to online marketing. Overall automotive industry leads are down nearly 30% but that doesn’t mean the customers aren’t still out there. One of the best things that members of the automotive industry are good at is networking and keeping relationships. Unfortunately, that hasn’t made its way into the online space. If by treating a dealership website just like a brick and mortar dealership, horizons can be expanded to reach customers where they are by means of networking, social interaction, constant contact, and friendly support.

Okay, so this may be an idealistic situation and it’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks. The world is changing though and the way that people communicate is changing also. Here are a few examples:

• The average teenager sends over 1000 text messages per month.
• The average age of a facebook user is 35 years old.
• The normal internet user would rather be emailed then pick up a phone.

To put this in dealership terms when we take a look at our processes, both fixed and variable, we have to be able to use all of the tools that are available to reach out to where customers live. That may be by text message, facebook or twitter, email, missed opportunities in old customers, accessories, or simply by an interesting and regular communication with information that can’t be ignored.

So overcoming a 30% downturn in leads is actually possible. It just takes a bit of a process change. This may be painful, but no guts – no glory, right?

Quote:

I actually have a few friends that work at Yelp have have talked to them about this exact thing … the criticism from business owners is that some user reviews are unfair, and there isn’t a proper mechanism in place to work out issues related to bad reviews (or bogus ones by people with an axe to grind, or even the competition themselves – which in the BMW case, some look suspiciously like a rival dealership). Yelp’s stance has always been – community first, consumer/user second and businesses last.

I can only recommend two things:

They can reach out to the bad reviewers via private message (but only once I think) … I suggest they do something more than just apologize or ask “what can we do to make you feel better” … actually invite them to the dealership for a free oil change or something similar, then ask them to post a follow-up review.

Otherwise, they’ll need to take a proactive approach to educating people about their business listing on sites like Yelp.com and citysearch, etc and ask for them to review their experiences at the dealership … perhaps even put a placard on the front counter, or a sticker in the window that say, “hey, we’re on yelp.com – review us!”

They’ll also need to constantly review their profile on sites like yelp, looking for bad reviews … I also suggest they get in a habit of sending messages of appreciation to positive reviews as well.

This is community building. At the end of the day, all dealerships are going to have pissed customers … it’s the dealers responsibility (and ours too as a service provider) to educate themselves on the tools out there and learn how to incorporate them into their everyday marketing efforts.

…. The third option would be to do business w/ yelp as an advertising business with an enhanced profile .. those negative reviews miraculously disappear or get buried – yelp’s been called out on the carpet for this many times. Sometimes they’ve even removed bad reviews the day before a sales call, only to have them put back up after a “no thanks”.

This tool will show a graph by day of the average loading time for pages on your website. It is also very helpful for suggesting ways of increasing your site’s speed. Here are a few of my favorite recommendations for speeding up your site:

• Decrease photo size. Always optimize photos for the web. A great (free) program that lets you do this is: http://www.irfanview.com/
• Be careful of embedded objects. Social media sites offer many embedded objects these days and it is easy to drag your site down with lots of plug-ins. Examples: youtube, facebook badge, sharing buttons, flickr slideshows.
• Minimize DNS lookups. This is similar to the recommendation above, but if possible don’t frame in pages from other sites or display photos hosted on another URL.
• Combine external CSS. Getting rid of bloated code is always helpful and will speed up any website. Consolidating server side files will decrease the number of lookups and increase your website loading time.

Take a few minutes and familiarize yourself with this tool. If anything, you will make your visitors happier that the page appears quickly. I know I’m frustrated by this when I’m accessing sites from my tethered cell phone.

This method of social broadcasting can be very useful to link building, branding, and in general creating a buzz. My only reservation about a system like this is the obvious problem with unique user generated content since I refuse to copy and paste any of my written work to multiple social networking areas. This method will certainly be studied and monitored. There must be some value to sheer hard work with creating unique content since as we all know, “content is king.”

Video Link: http://www.metacafe.com/watch/2790186/hendrick_mini_toll_booth/

Providing interesting content is by far the best way to capture a visitors’ attention and keep them connected to the information and message that is on your website. Subject-oriented content is the driving factor behind all current methods of search. The most frustrating thing to your website visitors is to be disappointed by a page that does not deliver what they were looking for.

Content can come in many forms. Text, video, audio, social, logical, subjective, as well as a host of other types describe the content that can be what a visitor is looking for. A good mix of all of these will make a well rounded site that will keep a visitor entertained and interested for a good period of time. With the release of streaming content via YouTube.com, time on sites with video content increased exponentially. Many people will watch multimedia content even if they would not have spent time reading the same information. Izmocars was one of the first to release a full library of 360 degree rotational vehicle animations in our Virtual Brochure that has become one of the highest lead-converting tools in the industry. Text content, however, should not be overlooked. The search giant, Google, has found that text ads used in the correct way with short descriptive content can actually be more effective than a graphic ad of the same size.

What Do People Want?

The most important thing about content is the message. A strong message that is carried through all content will capture exactly what your visitors are looking for and will minimize the distractions. Searchers have become numb to flashy ads and to blaring content that tries to force a call-to-action. Instead, the best way to give people what they want is to stay on topic and make sure that the organization of your site conveys your message. A good example of this is shown on the online shopping site of Amazon.com. Suggestive product offering as well as logical page organization shows visitors only products that are similar to what they are searching for while displaying the critical information in a quick-glance way. Displaying items such as “those who purchased this product also purchased” lists assist visitors into finding other areas of the site that they may not have found on a regular search. This process is called recommended links.

In the automotive industry this concept works very well since inventory, parts, service, and finance are so easily interconnected. One of the foundational principals of the izmocars platform is building interconnected websites that easily link to other similar areas of the site so that website visitors can easily find their way to other lead- generating areas of the site.

Keeping focus in a time-crunch society

Time is such a valuable commodity now that internet searchers have trained themselves to quickly glance down pages in order to gain the gist of the information without actually digesting the content thus spending less time on the site. Carefully engineering your content will draw your visitors into the meat of the message that you are presenting. All too often in the automotive industry in recent times full disclosure has been taken to an extreme. While full disclosure is good and provides a standard of stability in an industry marred by slick-haired sleazy sales the proper way of initiating a spark of interest as a visitor glances down the page is an intricate process. Izmocars uses these marketing techniques to sculpt content that is both disclosing and captivating by creating an interest in the subject that compels users to get in touch in order to gain the value that is offered for simply the price of submitting their contact information.

The internet savvy user wants content that is of interest to them delivered in a way that is easily readable, searchable, and readily receivable. Blogging is the answer to that desire and provides a way for your visitors to subscribe to your content or quickly search for the topic that they are looking for and find a large amount of information on the subject. In the automotive industry, blogging is an excellent way to sculpt the image of your business online.

What to Write About?

Choosing what to write about is the primary question when creating a blog in order to reach out to your customers. The first rule of blogging is to stay on topic. Once you create a blog about your business, all of the posts as a whole make up the way that your visitors perceive you. It is important to carry the same tone in your blog posts throughout your online presence. Whether you are writing a technical blog on the ins and outs of specific models or possibly a more personal route that expresses the philanthropic interests of the dealership in community involvement, the blog should display a singular message. When writing posts for a dealership blog the perception of the visitor should be taken into consideration. For instance, if your intent is to portray your dealership as a integral member of the community, posts on popular local venues and sponsored events will show your customers that your business exists for a higher purpose than just the pursuit of financial gain.

Standards of Blogging

There are many good standards of blogging and ways to make a more interesting blog post that will keep the attention of your readers. The inclusion of multimedia content is helpful as well as descriptive post titles and relevant post labels. This helps make your posts exciting while organizing them in a manner that is easily searchable by your customers. In order to keep readers supplied with fresh information the intervals between posts should be constant. There is no limit to the number of posts that a blog can have and the more frequent, the better. The posts are easily picked up by search engines and through the izmoRainmaker program; the posts are expertly marketed to blog directories in order capture the largest market-reach.

Benefits of Blogging

The benefits of a well constructed blog are paramount to your online marketing presence. Blogs create a large amount of keyword rich content that cannot be matched with the creation of pages or manipulating inventory listings. Blog content is indexed by search engines at a much higher rate than standard internet web pages and can be spread throughout the internet community in a matter of minutes after posting. This new keyword rich content not only is delivered to blog subscribers but frequently gains recognition from the search engines and places your site at the top of searches that would not otherwise have been listed. Finally a blog develops a connection to your audience in ways that are personable so that your blog readers come to view your posts as a source of knowledge and value.

Here is the framework for maximizing the number of web pages to be successfully indexed:

• The Google Success Framework
• Identify competition
• Link tracking
• Identify keywords
• Combine keywords
• Add keywords to Content
• Tune keyword list
• Submit pages to Search Engines
• Check Search Engine Submission
• Check Placement
• Repeat the process and start again.

Managing SEO is a full-time job for someone. It takes careful research, web analytics, close attention and a strong defined strategy. A good indicator is your Google Page Rank. The next question becomes: “Once I gain first page listing on Google, how can I knock my competitors off the page so that I stand alone?” This is more difficult but it is also a strategy that we implement by achieving high-ranking secured links such as press releases and social media pages that achieve viral recognition. Please note URL ranking results change week to week due to competition. So maintaining SERP requires constant keyword monitoring and information rework.

Need: to track the source of a banner ad or link from an external source into Google Anlytics.

Example: Yahoo ad

Solution: Tag your URL with Google’s URL Builder so that the source is easily shown within Google Analytics.

Step 1: Go to:
http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55578

Step 2:
Enter campaign Data:
Campaign Source: Yahoo
Campaign Medium: banner
Campaign Term: (list your keywords unless your account is connected to Google Adwords)
Campaign Content: (used for AB testing, enter a unique description for each ad)
Campaign Name: My Yahoo Promo

STEP 3:
Click “Generate URL” and then use this URL in your Yahoo banner ad to link back to your site.

Result from example above:
http://www.nathancaskey.com/blog?utm_source=Yahoo&utm_medium=banner&utm_term=nathan%2Bcaskey%2C%2Bblog%2C%2Bseo&utm_content=MyYahooAd1&utm_campaign=My%2BYahoo%2BPromo

Presto! You now have a verifiable source from external advertising campaigns.

The now widely popular Google Analytics system is now being used around the world for accurate reporting of website statistics and metrics.

I have a word of caution: Take this with a grain of salt.

Why?

There’s a simple reason: cached pages. Google Analytics shows statistics for your cached pages only. Many people overlook this when using numbers and statistics from Google Analytics. Even those who use this system on a daily basis may forget this simple truth.

The reality is that even if you have great site maps, a good crawlable website, and a high google indexing rate, you may still have pages, even entry pages to your site, that are not being counted in the Google Analytics number. That is one reason why there is such a disparagement of data when comparing two analytics tools. For example, Google Analytics will always show a much lower hit count than a log-file based tool like ClickTracks that counts every visitor to every single page.

Now, before you go out and dump your Google Analytics, be aware that even log-based tools like ClickTracks are not fool-proof. Log-based analytics systems can skew numbers by counting visits to pages multiple times while Google Analytics does a good job of tracking the user through their entire website visit experience.

1. Create more Lead Forms
2. Make your Landing Pages more user friendly
3. Move Lead Forms around
4. Shorten the number of Fields in a Lead Form
5. Move the Lead Form higher in the Website Heirarchy
6. Make sure the name of the “Submit” button matches what they get by giving their information.

These are sure-fire ways of increasing conversion on your website. Check back for more tips on SEO and SEM that will be released soon.