Strategies can not be templated. There is no substitute, no automated gimmick that can replicate what can be achieved by people that share a comfortable and open line of communication.

A local luxury-used outfit approached me two weeks ago because they were unsatisified with their website’s page 4 rankings. Today they are front-paging for half of the searches the dealer identified. The difference was no trick. Instead, a five minute conversation and less than five minutes of work on the site. The search engine, Google in this case, has recrawled the site and adjusted its rankings for the first time since the change.

A lack of communication was the reason for the previous positions, not any technical error. This business has an address in a small town that is not easy to spell. More people search for the county name, which is also the name of the closest large city. There was no mention of the county name on the website, and no links to the dealer’s website on the web contained or were close to the name of the county. Search engines do not volunteer this keyword association to websites; they organize information that already exists.

Machines and readymades will always be tools that are as good as they can be manipulated by a person. One of the most important questions that I can ask a dealer is, “What are you searching for?” Every search marketing campaign I begin has to start with at least one keyword phrase.