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NY website needs to be built for two sets of eyes: The eyes of the people who see it and the "eyes" of the search engine spiders that visit your site, catalog its key words and rank it according to their own formula. |
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| First, the people: If a prospective customer drove onto your lot, would you rush out and stick a sales contract through the driver's side window? As stupid as it sounds, that's what a lot of websites do. A customer hits the home page and is greeted with a qualifier. No stroll across the lot. No glimpse of the vehicle they're interested in. Just “What kind of car do you want? Fill this out, e-mail it in, and we'll call you.” That's not encouraging the customer to stick around. So, for starters, think like a customer. | |||
| From the customer's point of view, a new vehicle is the dream. That's what brought them to your site in the first place. Let them see it. Let them stare at it. Nourish their dream. Become a partner in their hopes for the future. That's the first step in becoming a partner in their decision-making process. | |||
| We make sure there's always a representative photo of every model. Even if it's not the exact color or trim they're looking for, it's close. And they have a chance to compare it to other models. They may start out thinking sedans and wander over to look at the SUVs. | |||
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| Our sites are easy to navigate. That encourages prospective customers to look around. We also do our best to encourage search engine “spiders” to do the same. | |||
| Search Engine Spiders: Good website builders keep refining their designs so their sites get noticed and ranked high by search engines. Search engines send out scouts or “spiders” to gather information about what's available on the web. Keywords and other data are gathered up from your website and fed into a formula. Based on the results, your website's name is placed in a database and pulled out (in a descending order of importance) for any given web search. The rank of your website changes over time. It may go up or down. Every day the Internet is different. And your site's relevance in that world changes. | |||
| Each search engine has its own way of determining the value of your website. Simply put, Google will rank your site differently than MSN. The exact methods they use are closely guarded secrets. And they should be. Search engines live or die based on their ability to return valid results for a web search. They shouldn't be required to reveal their formula any more than Coca-Cola should have to reveal the recipe for Coke. | |||
| But the guiding principles ought to be the same. That is, in car-industry terms, when a prospective car-buyer enters a string of search terms for a particular make, model, city and state, he ought to see legitimate sources for that vehicle on Page 1 of the results. | |||
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Is that always the case? No. | |||
| Why not? Because there is a shortage of well-made, valid websites and an ocean of poorly built or downright illegitimate ones that are out to spoof the search engines. Bottom line: legitimate dealer websites may be "ranked" below bogus sites that are just out to siphon off customers' contact information. If you really want justice, you probably won't find it on the Internet. Or in life for that matter. | |||
| The really big picture looks this: The Internet is growing faster than anyone's ability to make sense of it. And, just as surely, the existing search engines will either solve that problem or be superseded by others that can. | |||
| Meanwhile, do good anyway. Cream rises to the top. | |||
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Plywood Media - Car dealer sites that generate sales leads |