The Fluff-Free Guide to Writing Powerhouse SEO Content

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Comment by Alexander Lau on January 11, 2013 at 6:56am

Ralph, that's awesome.

I think for those that are interested in using TextBroker. Yes, it's a good resource. The trick is finding the writer or writing group (team) that works the best for your needs. Gets to know your demographic, writes in a professional tone (up to you really could be a friendly tone, but do what converts better), understands car dealerships or gets to understand (if possible) and is responsive to your needs. Yes Ralph, they use the CopyScape API in order to check the content in-site on the fly, which is reassuring and smart.

One slight negative, the usability aspect of their offering, it takes a little time to understand what's what and how to get what you need. Their tools aren't the most intuitively designed.

Comment by Ralph Paglia on January 10, 2013 at 3:22pm

To Alexander Lau's comment about writers for hire type of resources... I have used TextBroker for a couple of years now and have a "Group" of experienced automotive writers that have become very adept at creating content per my specifications and requests.  For a dealer, you would select and create a group of writers who specialize in your brands of vehicles and location.  I have tried a lot of different ways to get original copyrighted content on a scalable basis and TextBroker is my favorite so far... Mostly because of the ongoing continuous improvement that their article commissioning and author management software provides.  Plus, it is nice knowing that everything is plagiarism vetted and copyrights filed before you ever publish.

Comment by Alexander Lau on January 4, 2013 at 12:11pm

Hi Ellen,

Thanks for your response. I don't mean to sound rude, but it is what it is, performance is performance.

I was using your basic (for some of the OEM-controlled child sites) and PowerSEO for a few less locked-down child sites and portal (I'm not so sure this is a new option, however, your PowerSEO offering has been around for over a year).

A particular issue with your service, your PowerSEO "experts" didn't understand our demographic. They were trying to get us ranked in areas that made no sense and spelling areas wrong as well. I ended up ripping out all of Cobalt's content and applying my own. I'd rather be honest about it. On the flip-side, your account specialist handling all web-related matters was excellent extraordinaire.

Thanks again for your response...

A

Comment by Ellen Jones on January 4, 2013 at 11:27am

Hi Alex,

We are sorry to hear about your experience at Cobalt.  In the past several months, we have made vast improvements in our website platform to continuously be in compliant with Google’s recommendations and keep up with industry SEO best practices.   Recently, we introduced a full service SEO solution, PowerSEO that will optimize your dealer group website, instead of our basic home page offering that your former dealer group utilized.  Here are just a few of very satisfied dealers:

• Since we signed up for PowerSEO with Cobalt, my leads and page views have easily doubled month to month, consistently. This means that my sales have increased as well which is music to everyone's ear. . . .  – Victor Valenzuela, Sales Director, MINI of El Paso

• I saw a significant upswing in our organic website traffic to all our profit centers.  We were getting high-quality leads, increased phone calls and they were serious car buyers.  This is a great SEO website solution that’s helping us meet our business goals. - Chap Morris, Dealer Principal, Wm L. Morris Chevrolet

• Since I enrolled, I have seen a noticeable improvement in my organic traffic and growth in market share for my DMA.  Simply put, PowerSEO has helped sell more cars.  It’s definitely worth the minor investment. - Nathan Potratz,  General Sales Manager, Gordon Chevrolet

 

I understand that you now work for a digital marketing consulting firm.  If you were still working with the dealership group, we would welcome an opportunity to showcase our offerings and successes.  

Thank you for your comment and feel free to contact me at eajones@cobalt.com.

Best Regards,

Ellen Jones

Comment by Alexander Lau on December 28, 2012 at 7:20am

The premise of your post is spot on and well-written SEO content is absolutely needed. It's a given for those of us paying attention to Google's algorithmic updates / original and informative content requirements. It's difficult for dealerships, most of them don't realize the importance of well-developed, informative and original content production and the weight search engines place on it. Too many dealers fail to recognize (or don’t want to spend the money; it seems to always be about saving it not investing it) the need for a dedicated resource, whether internal or 3rd party like what Cobalt offers in the SEO packages.

While working at a local, super-dealer group, I used 'The Cobalt Group' for SEO content. Take no offense, some of it worked very nicely, however, most of it failed to convert. Mind you,our content was intricately measured through a keyword conversion performance analysis process, assumptions weren't in play (most dealers probably have a tendency to assume their content is converting, when generally speaking, it doesn’t). Let me be polite about it and say it probably wasn't the best search engine friendly content (*this was post Panda and Penguin). There clearly was a lack of understanding of our demographic, which seemed to be the biggest issue. For our child sites, a lot of the content went against OEM compliance. The OEM inspectors just didn’t notice it (probably more concerned with home page imagery compliance), but I suppose it could have been a violation and it could have affected our co-op money. We tend to preach accountability and reputation management in the dealer community (reviews are everything), but my complaints to Cobalt tended to fall on deaf ears.

If you’re looking for reliable and affordable 3^rd party content production resources check out TextBroker and iWriter, whom act as content brokers and contract with 3^rd party seasoned writers. They act as crowd-sourced or user-generated content production mechanisms, that allow you to pluck the writers of your choice. Look for a writer that has automotive retail content production experience, they are out there. For those with a larger budget check SkyWord (fantastic process and well worth the money), they have an even granular process for search engine friendly content generation. If you're keen on developing content yourself, doing it through a blog such as WordPress, you'll love the Scribe plug-in, which researches and optimizes content for search engine friendly article production.

:-)

Comment by Jennifer Molyneux on December 28, 2012 at 7:14am

I believe I have aquired an internet position at the store I currently work at and am unaware of how to use SEO information and put it work for us.  Is there someone specific who may be able to enlighten me on what to look for and how to update?

Comment by Roosevelt Gist on December 27, 2012 at 6:15pm

usable tips.