Getting on the all-important page 1 of a shopper's search. Here's how to get there -- and stay there

Rick Buffkin is sold on the power of Google to help him sell vehicles.

The four-store Beaman Automotive Group in Nashville sells about 100 vehicles a month from Internet leads in part because online shoppers looking for Toyota, Ford, Chrysler or Buick models can't miss Beaman stores on Google.

Google, the world's dominant search engine, uses a complex and constantly changing set of rules to channel shoppers to dealerships. Dealerships that master the rules win sales.

For instance, Buffkin, Beaman's Internet marketing director, uses low-cost product videos and fresh content on Beaman's own Web sites. The videos and content help Beaman appear high on Google's crucial first page of a search.

"People turn to Google for everything -- they're taking over," said Buffkin, 36.

Beaman Automotive, headed by dealer principal Lee Beaman, sells about 750 new and used vehicles a month at its Toyota-Scion, Ford, Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram and Buick-GMC stores.

Google is top-of-mind for dealers across the country as they look to shift marketing dollars from traditional media, such as TV, radio and print, to the Internet.

Tony Rhoades, Internet executive director for the seven-franchise Gunn Automotive Group in San Antonio, said: "Google is the dominant player on the Internet, and you have to do everything you can to position yourself on page 1."

Will Perry, director of business intelligence for Dataium Inc., said Google has led the way as car shopping habits have shifted to the Internet over the past decade.

Dataium tracks car-buying habits on more than 5,000 dealership and factory Web sites nationally.

Shopping starts online

The statistics are convincing. More than 90 percent of car buyers today start their research on the Internet, said Brice Englert, marketing manager at Dominion Dealer Solutions, which works with dealership clients on Internet marketing.

They make an average of 18 stops on the Internet along the way, said Brian Pasch, CEO of consulting firm PCG Digital Marketing.

Those online shoppers will make stopovers to comparison shop on sites such as AutoTrader.com, Cars.com and shopautoweek.com; get pricing information at places such as TrueCar.com and Edmunds; and use search engines to navigate the process quickly.

During the process, three of four Internet car shoppers will visit Google at least once, and in most cases multiple times, Dataium's Perry said. Two of every three shoppers who visit a dealership Web site come there directly from Google, he said.

Sean Wolfington, owner of Tier10Marketing.com, an automotive and entertainment marketing company that sells its services to auto dealerships, said, "Google is where people turn at the top of sales funnel, and at the bottom when they are getting ready to buy."

So, said Kevin Frye, e-commerce director for the 11-store Jeff Wyler Automotive Family in Cincinnati, it's critical for dealers to have a strong presence on Google. "It's a matter of fishing where the fish are," he said.

Why Google rules

• 90% of vehicle buyers start their shopping online.
• 65% of visitors to dealership Web sites come directly from a Google search.
• Google is the primary influence in 25% of dealership Web site traffic and 3% of sales leads.
Source: Dataium Inc.

Crucial first page

There are two ways for dealerships to get listed on the crucial first page of a Google search:

1. Buy their way on with advertising, a process known as search engine marketing.
Those paid search results are bought through a pay-per-click auction, in which dealers, the automakers and sometimes third-party Internet lead generators will pay 50 cents to $3.50 every time a Google visitor clicks on the ad to be taken to a dealership Web site. Those ads tend to appear along the top of a Google page in a shaded box and often along the right side of the page.

2. Get Google to list the dealership and videos for free by getting Google to believe the store's Web site is the most relevant to consumers in that market. That's known as an organic search. That means a site with a lot of fresh content and the ability to hold viewers' attention.

Beaman Automotive is definitely in the organic-search camp, Buffkin said. Though Beaman buys no advertising on Google, Beaman's Web site and videos routinely place atop the first page of searches involving dealerships in the Nashville area.

For example, a Google search last week using the words "2012 Toyota Camry Nashville" listed Beaman Toyota in the top two so-called organic positions on the first Google page just below three shaded pay-per-click listings on the page.

Beaman Ford, during the third week of January, won the top five organic positions when the following search phrase was used: "2012 Ford Focus SE Nashville."

Buffkin said Beaman has an aggressive strategy to get top Google listings -- a process known as search engine optimization.

It's working: Of about 50,000 visits to Beaman Automotive's Web sites a month, about 65 percent come there directly after a Google search, Buffkin said. Of those visits, about 1,200 people a month will fill out a lead form asking online to be contacted for more information or to make an appointment, he said.

Understanding Google

Buffkin said staying relevant on Google is part art and part science, with an emphasis on hard work. Google uses secret formulas, called algorithms, to determine which businesses get top play on consumer searches.
And Google frequently changes the way it weighs its criteria. For instance, videos on YouTube tend to score well with Google. YouTube is owned by Google.

That makes Google a moving target. But Buffkin said a couple of tactics are key. The first is to keep Beaman's Web site full of fresh content, including chat, videos and blogs that contain key words or phrases sure to catch Google's attention such as the city, brand, dealership name and even the nearby I-40 freeway.
Buffkin said Google puts a premium on dealership Web sites that keep visitors for long durations. The average visitor to a Beaman Web site spends 10.4 minutes on the site. The group's bounce rate -- the rate at which a visitor comes to the dealership Web site but drills no further into it -- is less than 30 percent vs. an industry average of 60 percent.

"You have to make your site sticky," Buffkin said. "In Google's eyes, content is king."

Videos help

Buffkin also is a big believer in the power of online videos. Of the top five organic positions that Beaman held in the search of "2012 Ford Focus SE Nashville," three were videos that the dealership's Web manager, Dealer.com, shot so Beaman could put them up on YouTube.

Another plus for Google placement are consumer reviews, said Matt Haiken, dealer principal and general manager of Prestige Volvo in East Hanover, N.J., outside New York. Reviews are part of the criteria Google uses for ranking dealership sites.

About nine months ago Google annoyed dealers by saying it would no longer allow reviews not gathered on Google to be shown on Google Places, the maplike business directory that shows up on Google search pages.

Overnight, Prestige Volvo lost 400 consumer reviews garnered on other sites such as Dealerrater.com and Yelp, Haiken said. But rather than sulk, Prestige began rebuilding its review base by identifying all customers with a Gmail account and encouraging them to submit a review. Gmail is a Google product.

Prestige is back up to 48 reviews on its Google Places page, with nearly a top five-star overall rating, Haiken said.

Google is critical to Prestige, since the dealership switched all its marketing dollars five years ago to digital media from traditional media, Haiken said. Prestige is one of the top-selling Volvo dealers in the nation, selling 757 new and 270 used vehicles in 2011.

Haiken said he consistently buys ads on Google to expand his reach. He said he spends about 10 percent of his digital marketing budget on Google. Prestige Volvo's total monthly digital marketing budget exceeds $10,000.

Fighting for business in crowded suburban New York makes ad buying a necessity, Haiken said.
He said: "Face it. If every customer is online these days, then every customer is an Internet customer."

Mastering Google

Tips to keep a dealership on the crucial first page of a Google search
• Use Google's free analytics tool to bid on the most-searched phrases in your market.
• Shoot high-quality video and put it up on YouTube (a Google property) and other sites.
• Make it easy for sales and service customers to write a store review on Google.
• Use videos, chat and blogs on your Web sites to keep visitors longer.

David Barkholz - Automotive News