What is search engine marketing?

What are the key differences between paid search and organic search?

Why is it so important for my website to show up on the first page?

Why is organic search marketing so important for auto dealers?

Why are industry experts arguing that dealers will increasingly embrace organic search marketing?

Why have dealers been quicker to adopt paid, rather than organic, search?

What makes eXtéres’ technology different or better?

Why should a dealer choose eXtéres over another provider?

If I sign on, how long will it take to see results?

Will eXtéres be making changes to my website?

I’m interested, now what?

Q: What is search engine marketing?

A: ‘Search engine marketing’ is an all-encompassing term referring to any means by which websites are promoted to increase their visibility on search engine results pages. But it consists of two very distinct components: paid search (or pay-per-click) and ‘organic’ or ‘natural’ search.

Because paid search marketing has been more heavily promoted, there’s been an incorrect confusion of the term ‘search engine marketing’ (SEM) more narrowly with paid search—when organic search/search engine optimization is a very—many would argue more-- critical component of successful ‘search engine marketing.’

Organic search marketing (which involves, but isn’t limited to, search engine optimization (SEO), is the complex process of getting a website to the top of the free, search results. It involves many elements, including sophisticated coding changes to websites to make them friendly to the search engines ‘spiders,’ linking strategies, etc.

Search engine marketing (that umbrella term covering both paid and organic) has been the fastest-growing marketing category over the last decade—and represents the #1 online marketing expenditure today.

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Q: What are key differences between paid search and organic search?

A: Paid search (or pay-per-click) is a type of contextual advertising where businesses pay to have their website featured as an ad on search results pages. I.e., they’re those ads/sponsored links typically appearing to the right on a Google search page.

‘Organic’ or ‘natural’ search refers to the main, free, unbiased results that come up in keyword searches—those results matching specific consumer queries with the websites deemed most appropriate to what the searcher is actually seeking. ‘Organic’ search, then, is perhaps an overly exotic or foreign term given what it actually describes...it might better be termed ‘actual’ or ‘real’ search.

Studies confirm that consumers perceive the ‘organic’ results to be more independent, with greater relevance and integrity. Which is why roughly 9 out of 10 search clicks come from organic search, and not through paid links—and 82% of consumers go straight to the organic results first, with only 6% going to the paid listings.

So while ad salesmen may use the term ‘search’ imprecisely to mean pay-per-click—you can see why an organic search strategy can represent a more mission-critical, beneficial aspect of search engine marketing for businesses trying to reach consumers.

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Q: Why is it so important for my website to show up on the first page?

A: Consumers seeking local businesses are now significantly more likely to use a search engine than the Yellow Pages—or other traditional media like TV or newspapers. In fact, roughly 2 out of 3 consumers now primarily use search engines to locate local businesses, while Yellow Pages usage just continues to drop.

So, having your business have a solid, long-term presence in that ‘prime real estate’ at the top of first page results has never been more crucial. It’s pretty much all consumers click on—and they’re getting more impatient with each passing year. Consider: roughly 7 out of 10 searchers in 2008 only click on links on the first page—and that’s up from less than half in 2002.

And first-page free search listings dramatically increase traffic and sales. Studies show that the first month a business is listed on Google’s first page, traffic triples, and in the second month it doubles again. Traffic converting to sales rises 42% in the first month, and then nearly doubles again in the second month.

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Q: Why is organic search marketing so important for auto dealers?

A: Because car shoppers are overwhelmingly search engine users—and search engines are the way today’s shoppers locate and select car dealers. The stats speak for themselves: 90% of all online new-vehicle shoppers now use a search engine in their shopping process—search trumps all traditional media as the #1 most-used resource consumers now used to locate dealers—with 4 in 5 car shoppers reporting they now rely on search engines to locate/select dealers.

Quite simply, if a dealer’s not ‘coming up first’ at the search engines when that shopper’s hunting down new and used inventory, service and parts, they’re losing a huge percentage of leads, calls and sales to the guy down the street—who’s achieving better placement with critical local dealer keyword searches at the Googles, Yahoos! And MSNs.

A dealer may imagine that as the top ‘Miami Honda dealer,’ they would naturally achieve high search rankings if a searcher typed in those keywords—simply not so. Today, that keyword search generates roughly 300,000 hits—and if your dealership has not implemented a seriously sophisticated, ongoing organic search strategy, with a constant re-optimization of your website so it’s ‘found’ by the Googles, your dealership, may, in fact, be ‘nowhere.’

Dealers know that the race is on for that prime search real estate, and are increasingly partnering with organic search marketing companies like eXtéres to make sure they’re ahead of the game.

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Q: Why are industry experts arguing that dealers will increasingly embrace organic search marketing?

A: In the past, (the first wave of Internet marketing) car dealers spent heavily on third-party lead providers to drive online business. But not only have lead costs risen as quality has declined—dealers are increasingly tired of paying to build some other company’s brand, when they can use organic search marketing to drive leads directly to their website—and calls directly into their store—and begin building their OWN brands. Dealers who’ve adopted an advanced organic search solution like eXtéres quickly realize they can stop paying for leads when their website is coming up first in the thousands of dealer searches taking place daily in their market. Organic search marketing makes dealers dramatically more self-sufficient from outside lead providers.

And while initial dealer search hype centered on paid placement, dealers are waking up to the fact that they’re increasingly duking it out over super-competitive, brand- and geo-specific keywords in their market, which drove automotive search terms up 300% in 2007. They’re paying (and paying) for ever-more expensive clicks, when they could invest in organic search and establish their dealership in the far more consumer-friendly free search results, 24 hours a day, seven days a week—and for months and years to come.

Additionally, in our Search Age, buyers are traveling further to purchase the right car with the right dealer—rather than just cruising by local lots. With 35% of searchers now reporting they’re willing to drive 20 miles plus, search has significantly extended a dealership’s market reach. In essence, search has allowed dealers to establish virtual showrooms outside their authorized franchise areas—and dealers are embracing this opportunity.

In sum, organic search achieves 80% accurate, fully targeted placement for dealerships—and that’s something no other media can deliver—not even close.

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Q: Why have dealers been quicker to adopt paid, rather than organic, search?

A: In part, dealers easily grasped the ‘paid’ model: you spend on ads, and get instant gratification tracking your clicks—and paid search has been aggressively sold to dealers. Organic search/SEO has been—quite unnecessarily-- more confusing and mysterious. Properly executed organic search is by nature an ongoing, nurturing process--but when dealers do invest in real, sustained organic search and begin generating the big, long-term results—the ‘confusion and mystery’ becomes a thing of the past.

One big problem has been that many dealers have been sold limited, poor, ‘mini,’ so-called ‘SEO solutions.’ Some company performed a one-off ‘optimization’ of their website, producing limited results for a limited time—and then their rankings slipped right down again. There’s been serious misinformation about what an effective organic search program is and entails—as well as issues of trust from some so-called ‘SEO providers’ out in the dealer market.

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Q: What makes eXtéres’ technology different or better?

A: eXtéres is the only solution specifically designed for the dealer industry, and it’s also the only offering that encompasses virtually all elements of organic search (from on-site optimization, linking strategies, monitoring of 1,200-plus keyword phrases per dealer, etc.) BUILT into an advanced, automated application.

This ‘smart technology’ can react faster to any changes in our clients’ performance—and continuously monitors which search phrases are performing and not—while automatically making hundreds of adjustments to ensure our clients are always coming up first. Organic search is a constantly moving target–your competitors are always making changes–algorithms at the Googles are constantly in flux–and eXtéres is uniquely able to provide on-the-fly, totally sustainable, search performance.

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Q: Why should a dealer choose eXtéres over another provider?

A: eXtéres is the only company in this market to offer crucial pro-dealer features, including 1) 100% performance-based billing 2) Total market exclusivity for dealer brands 3) No contracts, period.

Unlike any company out there, eXtéres’ billing is based 100% on the results we achieve for dealerships—and dealers are only billed when, and if, there’s a significant increase in organic search results. With eXtéres you’ll never sign a contract, long-term or short-term. And perhaps most importantly, we guarantee dealerships 100% brand exclusivity in their 10-city area. If another search company is promising to take your brand(s) to the top of the search engines—and is selling the same organic search solution to your rival down the street—there’s a serious conflict of interest.

We believe no other company can make these KEY promises, because no other company can guarantee the results.

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Q: If I sign on, how long will it take to see results?

A: All search engine optimization entails an incubation period, the time it takes to move a dealer’s website to the top of the search results. Think of it like a (short) pregnancy, as top search placement occurs with the right mix of ingredients over time.

It generally takes about 45-60 days to achieve significantly improved search engine saturation results, and, in a couple months more, dealers are able to quantify, with hard numbers, the significant benefits of the program. Of course, some dealers report that in as little as 20 days, they’ve seen dozens and dozens of additional phone calls coming into the store.

After incubation, organic search just continues to pay off. Because once a dealer solidifies their presence at the search engines—and the longer the search engines’ spiders register that your dealership ‘owns’ the top, relevant search positions—it’s exponentially more difficult for you to be displaced by the competition. Early adopters of effective and sustained organic search marketing powerfully establish their ‘search turf,’ and then continue to build on it.

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Q: Will eXtéres be making changes to my website?

A: In most cases, yes... however, most of the changes we make are in the background, and do not impact the look and feel of your site. If we feel it’s necessary to implement changes that are visible to the site visitor, we’ll first discuss these changes before implementing.

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Q: I’m interested, now what?

A: eXtéres recommends that all dealers take the ten-city test, and get a free, objective in-depth analysis of how your dealership is currently faring at the big search engines—and to see where an advanced organic search marketing program could take you in just 60-90 days.

Click here for a free, ten-city test,
or give us a call at: 1-888-486-8151 (toll-free)

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