AutoJini.com Dealer Website Blog - Classified Sites

Craigslist sends cease and desist to automated posting software & service providers

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 20:59:00 -0500

"By offering services designed to undermine craigslist’s ability to enforce its terms of use, these businesses facilitate the placement of ads for illegal services that would otherwise be blocked by craigslist’s protective measures. craigslist has no tolerance for these activities and has filed 14 lawsuits and is sending “cease and desist” demands to numerous other companies and individuals offering such services. In addition, craigslist will investigate and provide information to state attorneys general for the prosecution of those engaging in and facilitating criminal activity."

I'm glad that Craigslist is taking this step. This year SPAM has gotten out of control on Craigslist. I hope one of these 14 lawsuite's target Craigslist Ad Removal programs.

Tip: Setup your dealership website domain for Auto-Renewal

Wed, 28 May 2008 23:05:00 -0500

Tonight as I was working on a powersport dealership website and I added links on the dealership's link page for ATV Trader and Snowmobile Trader site. On checking the links, I noticed that both domains www.atvtraderonline.com and www.snowmobiletraderonline.com are down, because the domains expired on May 21st. I'm amazed that Dominion has not realized that these domains have expired and renewed them.

If they don't renew it soon, these domains might be renewed by me and redirect to AutoJini.com... :)

Your website domain name is the most valuable part of your online presence. Do not lose it. Most registrars offer an option to renew your domain automatically before it expires. If you registered your domain name yourself enable the auto renew option or better yet change domain's administrative contact to your dealership website service provider. Loosing a domain to cybersquatters can be frustrating.

Kijiji U.S. launched... make it part of your auto inventory postings

Tue, 03 Jul 2007 19:02:00 -0500

Ebay today launched U.S. version of Kijiji, a direct competitor to Craigslist. Currently most categories are empty and have no ads... be the first one and post your ad and take advantage of free PR. The process of posting a car ad to Kijiji is very similar to Craigslist.... HTML is restricted and you must upload the images.

Why should I post to my cars to Kijiji?

Well one thing it is getting press coverage and there are no ads in most categories so for few days your ads will be the only ones in the categories. They have the SEO part pretty well down.... the site is pleasing to look at... one can contact the poster right from the ad... my eyes don't hurt when looking at the ads... search functions are way superior... site navigation is rock solid.

Auto Classified Syndication by AutoTrader and Cars.com

Sat, 30 Jun 2007 21:01:00 -0500

Here is a quick reference to sites where your inventory listing on AutoTrader and Cars.com are syndicated to.

AutoTrader.com

Yahoo
MSN
Edmunds.com
AOL
Netscape
NADAGuides.com
Univision
AskPatty (not part of site... but links)
Internet Broadcasting Systems (76 Sites ... but AutoTrader says 156. Maybe IBS does not list ALL it's sites on it's website)
The Washington Post Company (6 TV Sites)

Cars.com

KBB
Consumer Guides
USAToday
Forbes
msnbc
About.com
Terra
Popular Mechanics
Cartalk.com
BELO Group (7 TV, 5 Newspaper, 2 Cable News)
Gannett Co (100+ Newspaper Sites, 2-3 TV Sites)
The McClatchy Company (31 Newspapers but 52+ Sites... mosts have JavaScript Errors)
Tribune Company (16 Newspapers, 24 TV Sites)
The Washington Post Company (1 Newspaper, Washingtonpost.com)

While going through about 250+ sites... 80% of them had one or two JavaScript errors very annonying.

Addicted to Oodle.com

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 17:12:00 -0500

Last few days I have spent lot of time playing with the graphs and data on Oodle's website, I'm hooked. For those who don't know what Oodle is... well it is an online classified site that takes data from thousands of sites and brings it together in one place. If you are one of our dealers then your data is on Oodle. Now with all that data they can do some really nifty things and the thing I've been busy toying with is there new market trends. For automotive you can pull up graphs for price and price vs mileage for the local market. Here is an example... pretty neat and useful.

Ultimate dealership online marketing website

Tue, 27 Mar 2007 12:56:00 -0500

Here is a list of vendors and tools I would have for a the best of the bread dealership online marketing website for an OEM dealership.

AutoJini.com Powered website with platinum package plus these additional features and services
- Chrome VIN decoding
- eVox to provide the images for new inventory lineup
- Dealer Specialties to provide the data feed and images for used cars
- Google Analytics to provide me the web statistics
- Live Chat
- Click-To-Call
- Organic Search Engine Optimization Service
- Pay-Per-Click Program
  - Adwords, Yahoo, MSN with minimum of $100/mo spend on each.
- Campaigner8.com for my email marketing
- Cost: $695/mo(Excluding Dealer Specialties and PPC spend)
Adam, ReyRey or DealerSocket CRM
Cars.com & AutoTrader Account to get my listing in front of over 60 million users.
X-Time for online service appointment hookup.
RouteOne to manage my finance applications
Minimum 1 listing a month on E-bay
Ongoing training from Sean Bradley or Cyclone Automotive

Total cost: $2500 to $4500 a month. Largest cost being Cars.com, AutoTrader and the CRM

AutoTrader and Cars.com reach in Alexa top 100 U.S. websites.... and the winner is..

Fri, 16 Mar 2007 00:25:00 -0500

Cars.com with 4 of it's partner sites appearing in Alexa's top 100 U.S websites (MSN, Washington Post, USA Today and Forbes Magazine) with AutoTrader.com as runner up (Yahoo and AOL) distant third is Vehix.com (Comcast.com) and last is CarsDirect.com via Excite.com.

Although by sheer traffic numbers AutoTrader.com beats Cars.com... but still something interesting to look at.

BTW did you know we can send your complete inventory to over 100 classified websites.

Driving traffic to your dealership website

Mon, 04 Dec 2006 19:21:00 -0500

In this post I will be focusing on one of the things as a dealer you can do to generate more leads from your dealership website. If you recall from my previous post "How do I make my dealership website an effective lead-generating resource?" the first thing we need to do is drive traffic to your website.

So here are the methods you can use to drive traffic to your website:

Online marketing
- Search Engines
  - Natural/Organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
  - Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
  - Paid Inclusion
- Classified Sites
Offline marketing

Search Engines

What do you do when you are looking for something online. If you are like me and most other online users you'll likely visit your favorite search engine and type in what you are looking for. According to some studies and our web stats there is a likely a 70% chance that you found this post and our dealer website product by using a search engine. So getting your site listed in search engine matters greatly for driving targeted traffic to your website. There are three search engine marketing methods you can use to increase your visibility, Natural/Organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay-Per-Click (PPC) and Paid inclusion or Search Engine Marketing.

Natrual/Organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Is a method of increasing your visibility in the natural search engine result pages (SERPs). So when someone searches for your targeted keyword(s) your site appears in the first few pages of SERPs and not the sponsored search results on the top, bottom or right. This is a very very very high level look at things and no way I could cover SEO in this post... However here are the few things you can do now to increase your rankings in the SERPs

Pick your keywords carefully
Have the main keyword in the title of your page do not use Welcome to XYZ dealership as your title
Do not keyword spam (frequency of keyword is higher then normal, using unrelated keywords)
Have good content on your homepage and use your keywords. Use the main keyword in heading tags or bold them
Avoid full flash based sites as search engines can't index them
Get incoming links to your site.

Pay-Per-Click
Its a method that allows you to choose the keywords you like your site to appear for on search engines. And you decide how much you are willing to pay when someone clicks on your ad. The places these ads appear are top, bottom and/or right of natural search engine results. This is an excellent way to get traffic to your website. However, this should not be the only method used for online advertising due to the cost involved. Here are few tips that could save you some green when doing PPC or you can always hire a third party like us to manage your PPC campaign.

Setup your campaign using GEO targeting.
Choose your keywords carefully and be specific do not use general keywords like "auto dealer"
Use ad Variations and test your ad copy
Integrate your PPC programs conversion tracking tools into your website
Keep an eye on content match and ban sites from your network or not use content match all together.

Paid Inclusion
You pay a price to have your site included in natural search engine result pages. Inclusion is guaranteed however placement is not. Personally I think it is just waste of cash. Google search engine does not offer this option, very good thing.

Classified Sites

For classified sites I cut them into four different categories, national auto classified sites, regional auto classified sites, generic classified sites and local classified sites.

National auto classified sites contain the likes of AutoTrader, Cars.com, Vehix.com, CarsDirect.com, Edmunds (I think AutoTrader powers their site but you can sign up for dealer listing) and etc. I won't be covering them much as most off us already know the value of these from personal experience.

Regional classified sites are the unknown in your local region examples being IowaMotor.com or WheelsForYou.com. Google for some others as the cost to get your inventory on these sites is going to be lot less then national sites some may even post your inventory for free and you may see better ROI from these then national.

Generic classified sites are the onces ignored by most dealers... these include craigs list, kijiji.com, Google base, Oodle.com and others. All these mentioned sites offer free postings. For craigs list and kijiji.com the posting process is manual but it is well worth the 5 mins it takes to post one listing. As that one listing could generate up to 250 unique visitors to your site and get you 5-7 leads. When posting your listing on these make sure to include a link back to your site from the ad content. Please please follow the rules when posting on these sites, as it will keep everyone happy.

Google base and Oodle.com will take your full inventory file and can be automated unlike the other two. BTW AutoJini.com sends your feed to Google Base and Oodle.com for Free.

Local classified sites are the local websites started by a web developer in your city. Almost every city has few off these use your fav search engine to find them. Contact the site owner and let them know that you can send them your inventory in electronic format. Most will add your inventory for free as they need content.

Offline Marketing

I won't cover this in here as ton of books and blogs are available on this already. Two things I will mention:

Your web address should appear anywhere your name appears
And checkout article "10 Strategies to Increase Traffic to Your Auto Dealership Website" by my colleague Syed Azam

I hope this sheds some light on methods available for getting traffic to your site. In the next post we will look at how to turn this traffic into leads.

Marck Canon (from AOL/Switchboard) named as chief product officer at AutoByTel.com

Fri, 14 Jul 2006 20:35:00 -0500

Mark Canon has been named to the newly created position of chief product officer. Canon, a founder of one of the largest and most influential local Search and directory sites, Switchboard.com, and former vice president of product strategy and development for AOL Search, is charged with creating and enhancing Autobytel’s consumer and business products to put the Company at the forefront of the automotive online vertical. Read the full press release at AutoByTel.com.

May be now they will do something about there website design and the overall user experience... I personally can't stand the lack of back button navigation, generic data errors and poor quality images/thumbnails of inventory.