reaching automotive consumers online white paper

Reaching Automotive

Consumers Online - A Dealer Web Site Builder Study

w w w . s o r g e n f r e i l l c . c o m 2 | P a g e

About Sorgenfrei

Sorgenfrei, LLC is a consulting, competitive intelligence, and market research firm based

in New York. The firm’s principals come from the automotive, financial services and

consumer goods industries with experience in corporate strategy, marketing, market

research, finance, and investment banking. Our focus on client responsiveness and

precise data analysis has helped us generate a client list consisting of some of the

world’s most influential companies, such as Toyota, Mazda, Sony and American Express.

NOTICE

The content in this document represents the current view of Sorgenfrei as of the date of publication. Because Sorgenfrei responds

continually to changing market conditions, this document should not be interpreted as a commitment on the part of Sorgenfrei.

Sorgenfrei cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information presented after the date of publication.

Copyright © 2009, Sorgenfrei, LLC All rights reserved.

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Contents

Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 4

Search Engine Optimization – Best Practices ..................................................................... 4

Automotive Online Research .............................................................................................. 5

Who Gets Better Placement? ............................................................................................. 7

Study Methodology............................................................................................................. 7

Study Results ....................................................................................................................... 8

Aggregated Results across All Brands and Markets............................................................ 8

Path to Best Placement ..................................................................................................... 10

Summary ........................................................................................................................... 11

Appendix ........................................................................................................................... 12


Introduction

The days of searching the Sunday newspaper for a new car deal are behind us. Internet

search engines have changed the way consumers shop for everything; new vehicles

included.

A consumer who is looking to buy a new vehicle will likely spend most of her time

researching on the internet. Once she has narrowed down the make and model she will

then need to find a dealer for a test drive. Chances are she will use Google and end up

with hundreds of results organized in pages of 10. Those results are not necessarily the

dealer closest to her or the most relevant to her query. Rather, they are the web sites

that are the best designed to be found by Google.

What is the likelihood that she will click on the first listing, the tenth or go to

subsequent pages? How does a site owner get their links to appear in the most-clicked

position?

This paper will answer those questions and will examine which automotive dealer site

builders do the best job getting their clients in the first top ten search results on Google.

We will look at 12 brands in 20 markets and catalog a total of 148 builders, 2,400 sites,

and 670,733 pages.

But first, let us look at some fundamentals. The process of designing and modifying a

web site to be best found by search engines is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Search Engine Optimization – Best Practices

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is more art than science. The search engines are

constantly modifying their algorithms and most keep their methodology a secret. With

that said, there are some fundamental principles to follow when designing a site to be

easily found when a consumer conducts a search.

Beyond providing clear, concise, relevant and regularly updated content and providing

consumers with an easy to understand URL (www.atlantabmw.com is better than

www.helmutsbayerischemotorenwerke.com) three design principles stand out; making

your content easy to find, labeling it and provide a map.

� Easy to find content: Search engines use automated scripts to scour the internet to

find and index content. These scripts are called spiders and if the spider cannot find

your content, it cannot index it for the search engine to serve up later. The more

straightforward a site is designed the more “spider-friendly” it is. For example;

simply using HTML instead of Flash increases a sites ability to be indexed.

� Labeling your content: Once a spider finds your site, it needs to be able to easily

understand what your site is about. The first step is to use unique and descriptive

title tags on each page, and to support the title tag content with relevant text on the


page itself. Heading tags and link labels are additional examples of clues the spiders

use to identify themes contained within your web pages. This content helps the

search engines in matching your website to relevant search queries.

� Mapping your content: Another way to help the spider find its way around is to

provide it with a site map. Giving the spider a “cheat sheet” of what is contained on

the site, makes its job easier and it will index the pages properly. Photography

should be easy to for spiders to find as well. Images should have descriptive names

and tags.

The goal of being spider-friendly is to allow the search engine to find and index on their

servers as much about a site as possible; the more information that is indexed, the

better the chance of being served up when a consumer searches for similar content.

Automotive Online Research

Now that we have covered the fundamentals of site design, let us look at how the

automotive consumer uses the internet.

In the U.S., internet access is increasing and search engine use is proliferating: 73% of

consumers have access to the internet1 and 49% of those consumers use search engines

on a daily basis2. The top 5 categories accessed online are Health and Medical, Travel,

Online Video, Shopping and Classifieds, Entertainment3.

The automotive consumer falls into the Shopping and Classifieds category and a quarter

of the visitors to that category use search engines to get there. What does that mean for

the automotive industry, specifically the dealers?

Research shows that 73% of in-market consumers use the internet to research their next

vehicle4. They are looking for the information you would expect: pricing, specifications,

safety information and photos. They are at the top of the shopping funnel. As they get

closer to purchase, over a third (37%) are looking for dealer locations.


Auto shoppers – information sought online

Pricing information 53%

Fuel economy 48%

Performance information 43%

Model specifications 40%

Safety information 39%

Photos 39%

Interior features 38%

Dealer locations 37%

Vehicle comparisons 35%

Model availability 33%

Consumers are most likely using a search engine to conduct this research and the one

they are most likely to turn to is Google. It accounts for over 70% of all search results.

The closest competitor, Yahoo, only garnered 19% with Microsoft falling into a distant

third place with only 6% of the searches.5

Knowing the most-used search engine is useful, but understanding the importance of

ranking of the results by Google is critical.

42% of clicks on a Google search results page are on the first listed result, whereas the

second listing only gets 12% of the clicks on the first results page. The top 5 results

receive 74% of the click-throughs and the first ten results on results page accounted for

90% of the click-throughs.

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Figure 1: Percent share of click

In other words, like real estate

search engines. Getting organic (free) traffic fro

search results, and ideally the number one returned result.

Who Gets Better Placement?

We have identified the fundamental best practices for designing a web site

found by search engines. We then

automotive shoppers use the internet and more specifically, Google, during their

shopping process.

The next question is how can auto dealers use this information to better reach

customers? If they use a third

best utilizes the fundamentals of SEO and site design to get their clients high on the

Google search results page?

We conducted an analysis of search engine results from around the country to

Study Methodology

For the purpose of this study we picked 12 brands that represent

brands offered on the American market

domestic and international brands

Audi, BMW, Chevrolet, Chrysler, Ford, Jeep, Honda, Hyundai, Mazda, Mercedes

Nissan and Toyota.

42.3%

11.9%

8.4%

0.00%

5.00%

10.00%

15.00%

20.00%

25.00%

30.00%

35.00%

40.00%

45.00%

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click-throughs by position

In other words, like real estate, location is the only thing that matters in the world of

search engines. Getting organic (free) traffic from Google, means being at the top of the

search results, and ideally the number one returned result.

lacement?

identified the fundamental best practices for designing a web site

We then shed light on the fact that a significant percentage of


how can auto dealers use this information to better reach

third-party vendor to build their web presence, which vendor

est utilizes the fundamentals of SEO and site design to get their clients high on the

We conducted an analysis of search engine results from around the country to

For the purpose of this study we picked 12 brands that represent a cross section of the

brands offered on the American market. The brands include the top 5 brands by volume,

domestic and international brands, and luxury and mass market brands. The brands are:

Audi, BMW, Chevrolet, Chrysler, Ford, Jeep, Honda, Hyundai, Mazda, Mercedes

8.4%

6.0%4.9% 3.9% 3.4% 3.0% 2.8% 3.0%

7 | P a g e

location is the only thing that matters in the world of

m Google, means being at the top of the

identified the fundamental best practices for designing a web site that is easily

light on the fact that a significant percentage of


how can auto dealers use this information to better reach

party vendor to build their web presence, which vendor

est utilizes the fundamentals of SEO and site design to get their clients high on the

We conducted an analysis of search engine results from around the country to find out.

a cross section of the

the top 5 brands by volume,

s market brands. The brands are:

Audi, BMW, Chevrolet, Chrysler, Ford, Jeep, Honda, Hyundai, Mazda, Mercedes-Benz,

1st listing

2nd listing

3rd listing

4th listing

5th listing

6th listing

7th listing

8th listing

9th listing

10th listing


We then chose 20 major markets geographically dispersed throughout the country. The

markets we researched are Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Cleveland,

Columbus, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, New York City,

Philadelphia, Salt Lake City, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington D.C.

In order to duplicate users’ experience searching Google from around the country, we

used Google’s Adwords targeted ad preview tool6. This allowed us to see Google results

as if we were in all the cities above despite being at our offices in New York. The

searches took place during the last weeks of December 2008.

Using the tool, we entered brand, “dealer”, and city (e.g.: BMW dealer Los Angeles) for

the 12 brands in each of the 20 markets.

The resulting listings included dealer web sites, third-party sites and vehicle

manufacturer (OEMs) sites – excluding paid search listings. We examined 2,400 search

results with a total of 670,733 indexed pages from 148 different website builders. The

search results were cataloged by:

� Position on the search engine results page

� The number of pages indexed per site

� The website vendor that built the site

Study Results

Initial analysis of the results showed that there are some clear leaders among the many

vendors offering automotive dealers site design, implementation and SEO services. The

top 10 builders with the most successful track record at getting their clients’ sites in the

top ten search results on Google are, in alphabetical order: AutoTrader.com, BZ Results,

Cars.com, Dealer.com, Dealerskins, LotPro.com, Reynolds Web Solutions, Source

Interlink Media, The Cobalt Group, and TK Carsites.

While companies like AutoTrader.com and Cars.com are technically not independent

site builders (rather they are aggregators of vehicle information and dealer web site

links) we included them in the study and rankings as AutoTrader.com and Cars.com

compete with the dealer sites for the consumers’ attention and click traffic.

There are multiple ways to look at the study data. We can sort the data by brand or by

market (see appendix for brief tables). For this paper to not be a tome, we decided to

look at the top 5 builders across all brands and all markets and focus on their ability to

get their clients ranked highly on Google’s first results page.

Aggregated Results across All Brands and Markets

Ranked by number of sites in the top ten listings across all brands and markets,

Dealer.com was a clear leader with 251 sites or 10.5% of the total sites cataloged. The


Cobalt Group had 216 and came in second, with Cars.com, AutoTrader.com and

Reynolds Web Solutions rounding out the top 5.

Builder Rank # of top 10 placements % of total

Dealer.com 1 251 10.5%

The Cobalt Group 2 216 9.0%

Cars.com 3 204 8.5%

AutoTrader.com 4 147 6.1%

Reynolds Web Solutions 5 139 5.8%

Being on the first page of search results is an important first step in getting customers

into your dealership. However, as mentioned, the top 5 placements account for 74% of

the click-throughs on a given results page, and so we cataloged the builders in the study

by the number of sites the individual builders had in the top 5 listings across all brands

and all markets.

Dealer.com also had the most clients in the top 5 across the markets and brands that we

tested. The Cobalt Group and Cars.com were number two and three respectively.

Reynolds Web Solutions and BZ Results rounded out the list.




Cars.com 3 114 9.5%


BZ Results 5 70 5.8%

But what really matters is the top spot on the Google search results; as a full 42% of all

clicks are made on the listing in this position.

Dealer.com was the leader with 47 sites in the top spot across all markets and brands. In

other words, almost a fifth or 19.6% of the top search results when looking for a dealer

given our criteria was a Dealer.com site. The Cobalt Group followed up in 2nd

place with

35 sites and Reynolds Web Solutions, BZ Results and Cars.com were 3rd

, 4th

and 5th

respectively.





BZ Results 4 15 6.3%

Cars.com 5 14 5.8%


Path to Best Placement

We have established that placement on the Google’s search results page is vital to

increase the chance of a consumer clicking through to a web site. What is not entirely

clear is how sites achieve high placement. Following the fundamentals outlined at the

beginning of this paper is a good start, but in reality, most of the factors involved are

nebulous and are subject of much debate.7 Most SEO experts agree that a higher

number of pages indexed in Google’s database improve a site’s chances of matching a

search query and that the quality of back-links to the website are important for Google’s

algorithm and can lead to higher placement.

In order to ascertain a correlation between the top performing builders in the

placement analysis and the number of indexed pages they generate, we ran the Google

“site:” test that indicates the number of indexed pages related to a URL. In the example

below, when we typed in “site:universalcitynissan.com” in the Google search box, the

site: test indicated that universalcitynissan.com has 551 pages indexed that are related

to the site

Dealer.com dominated the results, being responsible for 35.7% of all the indexed pages

in the study. ADP, which ranked 11th

in terms of sites in the top ten results, jumped

ahead in ranks to the number two spot when we looked at indexed pages. Reynolds

Web Solutions, The Cobalt Group and eBiz Autos rounded out the top five.

Builder Rank Share Indexed pages

Dealer.com 1 35.7% 239,417

ADP 2 7.2% 48,268

Reynolds Web Solutions 3 6.7% 44,749

The Cobalt Group 4 6.2% 41,318

eBiz Autos 5 4.1% 27,467

The variance in rank and the introduction of other builders in the top five could be

attributed to the “quality” of the indexed pages as defined by Google. Simply having

pages indexed does not guarantee that Google will deem them important. They must be


relevant to the content and if there are pages linked to the site, they must be from a

high-quality site.

The data set above indicates that Dealer.com has both quality and quantity of indexed

pages for their clients. ADP has a high quantity of indexed pages, but the dearth of their

clients achieving high placement on Google indicates a possibly lack of quality of

indexed pages.

Summary

It is very clear that the automotive consumer is using the internet, specifically Google,

during the purchase process. There is also little doubt that in order to reach those

consumers during their search activity, it is imperative to be on the first page of

Google’s search results and ideally in the top spot. The confusion lies in how to best

achieve the goal of optimizing a web site to achieve premium placement on Google.

Following Google’s Webmaster Guidelines is an excellent starting point and is where all

capable vendors should begin. There is, however, an art to working with the ever-

changing Google algorithm and the results of the data analysis for this paper indicate

that some vendors are more adept than others.

Automotive dealer sites built by Dealer.com and The Cobalt Group come in the first and

second place positions respectively when analyzing the top placements in the dominant

search engine, Google. While it could be argued that as large entities, they simply have a

volume advantage over the smaller competitors, the site: test analysis indicates a

correlation between the Google placement results and strong site design principles.

Looking at the correlation between top placement results and the number of indexed

pages suggests that Dealer.com is more adept at achieving premium organic listing

placements for its clients and that their methodology for building the sites is responsible

for their success.


Appendix

Google search result page with Paid vs. Organic search results

Builder rank by brand

Brand #1 builder #2 builder #3 builder

BMW AutoTrader.com Cars.com Dealer.com

Chevrolet The Cobalt Group Cars.com Dealer.com

Honda Dealer.com Reynolds Web Solutions The Cobalt Group

Jeep Dealer.com Cars.com AutoTrader.com

Toyota Reynolds Web Solutions Dealer.com gsMarketing

Chrysler Dealer.com Cars.com AutoTrader.com

Ford BZ Results Dealer.com Cars.com

Hyundai Dealer.com Cars.com The Cobalt Group

Audi The Cobalt Group Dealer.com Cars.com

Nissan Dealer.com Reynolds Web Solutions The Cobalt Group

Mazda Cars.com Dealer.com Source Interlink Media

Mercedes Cars.com Dealer.com Mercedes Benz


Most sites in top spot, top 5 and top 10 by market

Top 1 Top 5 Top 10

New York City Cars.com Cars.com The Cobalt Group

Los Angeles Dealer.com Dealer.com Dealer.com

Chicago Wencel Worldwide The Cobalt Group Reynolds Web Solutions

Houston Dealer.com Reynolds Web Solutions The Cobalt Group

Philadelphia Dealer.com Dealer.com Dealer.com

San Diego Search Optics Dealer.com Dealer.com

San Francisco Dealer.com Dealer.com Dealer.com

Columbus Dealer.com Dealer.com Dealer.com

Baltimore AutoONE Media Cars.com XI Group

Charlotte Dealer.com Dealer.com Dealer.com

Washington D.C. Cars.com Cars.com Dealer.com

Atlanta Dealer.com Reynolds Web Solutions Reynolds Web Solutions

Miami The Cobalt Group Cars.com Source Interlink Media

Denver The Cobalt Group Dealer.com Dealer.com

Nashville Dealer.com Dealer.com Cars.com

Cleveland BZ Results BZ Results Dealerskins

Dallas ADP The Cobalt Group The Cobalt Group

Boston BZ Results BZ Results BZ Results

Salt Lake City Dealer.com Dealer.com Dealer.com

Seattle MotorWebs MotorWebs MotorWebs

1 InternetWorldStats.com and Nielsen/NetRatings: http://www.internetworldstats.com/am/us.htm

2 Pew Internet Research, August 2008: http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Search_Aug08.pdf

3 HitWise: http://www.hitwise.com/

4 Burst Media Research, April 2007: http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/14970.asp

5 HitWise: http://www.hitwise.com

6 Google Adwords Targeted preview tool allows user to enter keywords and a location to replicate being

in that geographic location during search: https://adwords.google.com/select/AdTargetingPreviewTool

7 Seomoz.org, April 2, 2007: http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors

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