Pros and Cons of Dealer Micro Sites?

What is a Dealer Micro Site

They are extension of a dealers main online web property usually tied to specific models and or online advertising campaigns.  You can focus dealer micro sites around many different specific keywords such as make and model, market area and brand, dealer name, credit and service.

Valid uses of Automotive Micro Sites

• SEO - They can provide inbound links to your main site.
• Lead Capture - Lead forms can be built into the landing page to generate email leads or trackable phone numbers can be placed to generate phone ups to your store.
• Automotive Search Engine Reputation Management - They can help keep negative information from showing up in the Search Engine Results Pages for your money terms and third party lead providers.
  
• Additional Website Traffic - Micro sites can bring in additional referral traffic to your main online property via links clicked on the site bringing the surfer to your dealership website.
  

The Cons of Dealer Micro Sites

• Dealers do not own the content - Once spending the money to have a vendor create the landing page or micro site for them they lose the use of that web property once the contract expires.  The dealer does not own vendor created micro sites content in most cases.
• Universal Search - Google is changing their algorithm to offer the surfer more options when they search for specific terms.  Of course their own directory listing will show on top for specific dealer searches or market area and brand searches.  More and more you will see other items such as blogs, video,  images, books and maps in addition to plain website returns.
• Content Updates - If something changes and you wish to display different content to your potential customers you must wait for a vendor to update the content or pay them to do so.  If there are dealer micro site providers that have a full functioning CMS for dealers to update content please let me know in the comments.
• Loss of website traffic - If a search engine user lands on a micro site instead of your main dealership website it may confuse them into thinking that it is your main piece of online real estate and not offer them what they are looking for.
• Accountability - If a micro site is not performing like it was promised the dealership is stuck in a contract that they cannot escape from in most cases.  There will always be fine print that says "results not guaranteed" while you are stuck with a bill each month or even worse prepaid in advance.
• Advertising - Beyond creation of the micro site you will have additional expense of SEO and SEM to drive traffic to it.  A site does not SEO itself just via submission to the search engines.  There are other factors to consider such as link building and pay per click management.

Alternatives to Dealer Micro Sites

If you have been considering engaging vendors to build your dealership micro site you should explore other options.  Google's Universal Search will start bringing in blended SERP returns you should consider utilizing those mediums in addition to traditional websites.

• Blogs - Every dealership should have one or more blog focusing on current dealership happenings, service specials, seasonal car care tips, car buying tips, customer testimonals and highlighted inventory.
• 
  Video - Properly optimized video content is almost SEO magic and easy to ranked for automotive search terms almost instantly.  It allows you to deliver a targeted message when the surfer watches it.  There is a lot of smoke and mirrors concerning automotive video optimization.  To learn how to optimize your videos for the search engines just ask the mack daddy of search Google.com
• User Generated Content - There are many different types of user generated content.  You are looking at user generated content now.  This was created using Google Knol.  There are other places that will let you create content to carry your marketing message as well.  Squidoo.com allows you to do this as well.  Here is an example from there Kansas City Suzuki Dealer
• Image hosting sites - Places like fickr.com and photbucket.com will allow you to add images with descriptions and links back to your main website and they rank well in the search engine results pages.

It's Your Money

There are plenty of free ways to get people to engage you across the world wide web, how you chose to do it is completely up to you.  Automotive Social Networking is starting to take hold and I have not even touched that topic here; is the future of the car business and it's online marketing initiatives.  When you spend your money for online marketing efforts just make sure you have complete control of the content and you reach the people who want what you sell.

Do not hesitate to contact me if you have more questions or concerns.

Paul Rushing
Believer in All Things Possible
912-266-1629    
800-357-1793
http://ismintraining.com
http://drivingsales.com
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