how review sites can help or hurt your chances...

When a customer searches for a solution to the need that they have, your company shows up on the search page in two ways; in a paid ad at the top of the page or in the organic listing that make up the next ten lines. We know that customers are clicking the paid ads less than 50% of the time now so lets focus on the rest of the page for a moment. Search engines survive by serving up relevant content for each search, part of that is current and how specific to the search terms the content is. If your company is not active on social media with specific and relevant content, read: the same posts as many other dealerships that sell your brand, your store can easily be overlooked by the cold and heartless search engines. Review sites are always updating with pictures, content and specific info that often meets the search terms so they will show up strong and many times dominate the page. Your customer may not begin by looking for reviews but that may be what gets their attention when review sites are the only links that they see. When they click a link and see a good amount of reviews, but no replies from your company its is easy to assume that your store is just like every other car dealer and doesn't care enough to take a moment to thank the good reviewers or acknowledge the negative ones; not cool. Tip #1, get to work replying to EVERY review today, and once caught up stay up to date with prompt and individual replies not copied and pasted vague thank you's.
With a strong presence on social media you can be seen as relevant to the search by the search engines and have some actual control of the first impression your potential customers form of your company. Having your social media links show up higher than the review sites can draw the customers into your stores culture sooner and help establish trust faster than any review site. Tip #2, get going at getting social TODAY!
​Not sure if you have the time to run your business AND get more active online? Call Mike theCarGuy ;)