Free Organic Social Media Search Engine Optimization

That may be a powerful title, but what does it mean? Well, I am going to give you some ideas on how you can acquire, you guessed it, free organic social media search engine optimization. Let's break it all down so it makes sense.

"Free" I don't know about you but if it's free, it's for me. There are a lot of things that you can buy that may or may not be successful. There aren't a lot of things (technology wise) that you can do for free and get massive results - that's why you're reading this article.

"Organic" This means placement on the search engine's first page in the top-10 listing naturally, without pay per click or search engine marketing (SEM) campaigns. Why is this important? Pay per click and SEM (at least on Google) do not get as much visibility as organic search engine optimization. As a matter of fact, only about 20 percent of people actually click those pay-per-click ads and links. That means 80 percent of people are going to skip it and go to the organic listing. One reason for this is that people know and understand what an advertisement is. On the other hand, if they search something and the search engine serves up a Web site or link, then it must be what they are looking for - it must be important or relevant. Why else would the Google gods bring forth these answers to the questions you ask if they were not the right ones?

"Social Media Search Engine Optimization" For a lot of people, this might be the very first time you heard or read about this phrase. Social media SEO is a new concept and a different spin on social media. Most dealers are still struggling to simply understand social media and having even more difficulty trying to incorporate it into their business. The majority of dealers are not able to quantify the opportunity or calculate ROI on time and money invested in social media. I have a totally different spin on social media. While I acknowledge that there is value in the "social" aspect of social media (communicating with current customers and prospects, etc.), another strategy is to use the various social media sites as incubators for SEO. Sites like Facebook (the No. 1 visited site in the world), YouTube, Twitter, Ning, Flickr, Tumblr and others get tremendous amounts of traffic. Millions of people use these sites, so they get major search engine relevancy points with the search engines. So, if you open accounts on these sites and properly optimize content, you get multiple benefits. First, Google says that part of the way they rank sites in relevancy is that if other sites that are prominent and get a lot of traffic link to your site, that makes your site credible and relevant. So, if you have signed up for sites like the ones I mentioned above and you have hyperlinks from those sites to your dealership's main website (back linking), that will increase your dealership's SEO relevancy.

Another opportunity that dealers can maximize on social media is optimizing all content uploaded. This might sound a little confusing, but it is not that difficult once you get the hang of it and develop good habits. When I say optimizing all content uploaded to your social media sites, I mean to make sure that all content (pictures, video, articles, blog posts) have:

o Properly Named Root Files - When you take a video or a picture, you usually have an automatic file name such as "00251.jpg." You should rename these files to whatever the content is. For example, if there was a picture of an F150 for ABC Motors dealership in Philadelphia. You might want to rename that picture "Ford_F150_Philadelphia.JPG."

o Proper Title - Make sure the title is relevant to the content, as well as geo-targeted with dealership and/or model. For example, a picture of a Ford F150 for a Dealership in Iowa could be "Ford F150 Davenport Iowa."

o Proper Description - Since many social media sites allow you the opportunity to add a description to your content, make sure in the you start with a hyperlink - http://www.abcmotors.com. Be careful, because certain sites, such as YouTube, will not make a site a hyperlink if you don't use the "http://" prefix. Specifically, if you have "www.abcmotors.com" in your description, all you have is your URL - it might not be a hyperlink which will not count as a back link.

o Tags and Meta Tags - Social media sites allow you to add tags, meta tags, and keywords to your content (pictures, videos, articles, blog posts, etc.) Make sure you use relevant tags and keywords to what you are trying to accomplish. Begin with the end in mind. I recommend that you use geo-targeted keywords and tags, franchise, model, competing brands (not the names of your competitors). There is no problem if you are a ford dealer and you have a video on a F150 that you have in your tags "Chevy," "Chevrolet," "Silverado," "Ram," etc. You can also put descriptions that are relevant like "new," "used," year of the vehicle, etc.

o Consistancy - You must be consistent. All of this has to match up. Your title tag, header, description, keywords and tags all need to be consistent.

If you have any questions on this article, or you would like me to show you for free how you can do this for your dealership, please feel free to either call me or e-mail using the information below.

Sean V. Bradley is the founder and CEO of Dealer Synergy, a nationally recognized training and consulting company in the automotive industry. He can be contacted at 866.648.7400, or by e-mail at sbradley@autosuccessonline.com.