Reevaluating Free Inventory Listing Websites

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1 Reevaluating Free Inventory Listing Websites Are your directly hurting your own search results? by Brian Pasch PCG Digital Marketing

2 Dealers spend thousands of dollars a year on designing a good website. Then they spend thousands of dollars a year to add video, chat, vauto, SEO and SEM to promote their websites. Dealers invest in expanding their brand using radio, TV and newspaper as well. Then dealers unknowingly make decisions that block consumers from finding their website for popular search phrases in their marketing. Dealers are creating their own competition by participating in inventory advertising models that yield little value and actual car sales. HOW DID THIS HAPPEN? "Dealers are blocking their own websites on the search engines." One day, dealers were told it was a "good" idea to send their inventory to 3, 5, 8 or 10 "free" inventory listing websites that promised to create significant leads and relevance to their business. Inventory feed providers, website providers all bought the sales pitch. Funny, not many dealers have gone back to look just how many leads are coming in from these "free" sites? Even less have decided to take any action once they saw that these free sites were NOT producing meaningful results. Dealers concluded: "Why would I not say "yes" to this offer. It can't hurt me to send my inventory...it's free. " Guess what. It's NOT free. It has a real Cost. So, I wrote a blog post and I thought would elicit more responses, but it didn't. I think I just gave too much information, so I'll say it one more time, using graphics. Dealers are allowing their inventory to be used against them. Dealers are allowing free websites to push their own websites off of Google Page One! 2

3 Checking Yahoo For Basic Automotive Search Phrases I did a simple search on Yahoo, which was: " Indianapolis Silverado for sale" and I documented Page 1 and Page 2 of the search results. You should test a few local phrases and see who comes up on Page One. Take a look at the full size screen shots on the following pages and take note that: 1. There are NO car dealers in organic search results on Page One or Two. 2. Go back and read point #1. 3. Free listing websites that sell your leads or show competitor listings are on Page 1 and 2 and NO car dealer websites are one Page 1 or KBB is using your inventory feed to create car detail pages with lead generation links to: Cars.com FundingWay.com Presenting competing dealer banner ads Presenting banner ads that go to OEM websites 5. Ooodle is using your inventory feed to create car detail pages with lead generation links to: Your competitors using Google Adsense Presenting banner ads that go to OEM websites 6. LemonFree is using your inventory feed to create car detail pages with lead generation links to: Your competitors comparable listings in their network Competitors using Google Adsense 3

4 Yahoo Search Results Taken on April 28,

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6 Do I have to keep going? Many dealers are rightly paying Autotrader.com and Cars.com to advertise their cars and even AT is being pushed down in the ranking by free and pseudo-free websites that are NOT dealer centric models. Cars.com and Autotrader.com are producing measurable leads for most dealers but by participating in these free models, their search optimization is being trumped by sites not producing leads. The irony is that dealers are sending their inventory to free sites that are pushing even AutoTrader.com down in the rankings. Anyone looking for a reason WHY Autotrader.com leads may be down in your market? It just may be your own actions! How many leads a month are you getting from these FREE sites? A Call To Action STOP SENDING YOUR INVENTORY to "free" sites that are using your inventory to create landing pages by car model that: sell your competitors cars create leads that are sold to your competitors generate ad revenue for someone else that push your own website pages off Google Page One Call your inventory management service like HomeNet, Dealer Specialties, etc. and tell them to ONLY send your inventory advertising services that DELIVER results like Autotrader.com, Cars.com or any site THAT YOU HAVE PROVEN is not hurting you and is delivering real sales each month. Get it in writing and then search for VIN numbers that you have in stock the following month. Need proof? See the images below. Does ANYONE think that at least ONE Chevrolet Dealer should be showing up on Yahoo Page One or Page Two? I do. For additional assistance with search engine optimization and advertising solutions for car dealers, please contact PCG Digital Marketing at