Quality score is an important factor of paid-per-click ads on Google. It has an enormous influence over the the cost and effectiveness of your search campaigns. If you are a car dealership that relies on PPC ads, it is important you understand how to increase your quality score.

What Is Quality Score?

According to Google, Quality score is a diagnostic tool meant to give you a sense of how well your ad quality compares to other advertisers. This score is measured on a scale from 1-10 and available at the keyword level. A higher quality score means that your ad and landing page are more relevant and useful to someone searching for your keyword, compared to other advertisers.

How Is Quality Score Calculated

When Google calculated Quality Score, it takes into account three factors related to the keywords, ads and landing pages:

1. Expected clickthrough rate (CTR): The likelihood that your ad will be clicked when shown.
2. Ad Relevance: How closely your ad matches the intent behind a user’s search
3. Landing page experience: How relevant and useful your landing page is to people who click on the ad.

Each component is evaluated with a status of “Above average,” “Average,” or “Below average.” This evaluation is based on a comparison with other advertisers whose ads showed for the exact same keyword, over the last 90 days.

Why Does a High Quality Score Matter?

Quality score is implemented to help show more relevant ads every time users search. In 2020, Google generated $147 billion in revenue from ads, so they have a huge incentive to make sure users find the ads they are searching for and clicking on them.

If google allowed low-quality ads, it could risk taking up space that could be replaced with more relevant ones, making less money in the short-term and risking its users long-term.

Having a higher quality score can help increase the amount your ads are shown and even reduce your CPC. This is a major reason that car dealerships need to be aware of and care a lot about their quality score, because it is one of the factors used to decide:

• Which ads are eligible to enter the ad auction
• How the eligible ads are ranked
• What actual CPC the advertiser needs to pay

The Bottom Line:

If you have a higher quality score, your ad may be positioned higher which tends to get more clicks, which could result in more leads, and more chances to make sales. Additionally, advertisers benefit from a higher quality score because it means they have to pay less to maintain their position versus their next competition.

Videos: A Great Way To Increase Quality Score

One of the major components of running a PPC ad campaign is making sure you have a relevant landing page associated with your ad. That’s because landing pages are often the first touch point a prospect has with your brand, so it’s vital you create a great first impression and deliver a great experience.

It is critical to use original and engaging content on each of your landing pages which will add value and increase Quality Score for PPC campaigns. A great way to do this is with videos. When it comes to landing pages, adding video content can increase conversions by 85%. That’s not all it can do. It helps capturing attention increasing the time spent on the website, helps educate prospective customers and drive them to take action, and provide valuable analytics about what’s working.

Since google is directly comparing you to your competitors, having a great website and landing page with high engagement and time spend on website is one way to stand out. Not only will adding video content contribute to your quality score, it will also directly contribute to conversions as studies have shown that viewers retain 95% of a video’s message compared to 10% when reading text. High engagement and time spent on website are two great ways to prove to google your landing page has relevance to those that view it.

Why Should Car Dealerships Use Video to Increase Quality Score?

With the continued growth of online car shopping, which has heightened due to the pandemic, it is now more important than other to have a strong online presence. Many car dealerships are turning to PPC campaigns on Google, making quality score more relevant. If car dealerships can increase their quality score, they have a better chance of higher ad placement, which result in more clicks, at a lower CPC, which will allow for savings. One way this can be achieved is through the use of vehicle videos, promo videos or testimonial videos on your website and landing pages. Videos continue to prove to be the preferred source of content for consumers, as they retain the message and spend more time engaging with videos. This can help boost the relevance and performance of your landing page, helping you outrank your competition and bump up your quality score. After all, your quality score is a direct reflection of you vs. your competitors, so what are you doing that makes you stand out?

LESA Car Dealership Video Solutions

LESA is the largest dealer video inventory provider with 100K+ vehicle video views daily on our dealers’ internet destinations — Dealer Sites, YouTube, Facebook, Cars.com, AutoTrader and more. Our full-motion walk-around videos have an 80% completion ratio average for a 2-minute video. This shows consumers are engaged and recognize the value that video provides. For more information, please get in touch with the LESA team.

Online video consumption is at an all time. In fact, video is predicted to constitute 82% of all global traffic by 2022. This clearly shows how important video content will be in the near future and why you should incorporate it into your content mix. Video content should be an integral part of your content strategy and should play a key role in your marketing initiatives.

Having a clear video SEO strategy can help your website rank for relevant search queries and increase traffic to your website.

What is Video SEO?

Video SEO is the act of optimizing your videos to help them be more visible in the search engine results for relevant and beneficial keywords/queries to reach a wider audience base. There are many ways and optimization strategies to give your videos a higher chance of ranking. The basis of video SEO is aligning your internal content strategy with what the search engine algorithm is prioritizing. Although the algorithm is constantly changing and we don’t have full transparency in what Google prioritizes, we do know that video is a powerful tool for SEO, and it’ll continue to grow in importance into the future.

How Does Video SEO Differ From Traditional SEO?

Video SEO and traditional SEO are closely related in terms of their goals- having the optimized page or video to be more visible in the search results. The primary difference lies within which factors of the page or various details of the video you need to optimize.

How Does Video Help Boost SEO Rankings?

The google search results page has changed over time. Not only does it have textual results, but it also shows videos, related searches, people have asked section, ads and google my business pages. Many car dealerships make the mistake of only trying to rank for textual results, when in reality, there is less competition with video SEO and google is starting to prioritize video SEO on the search results page. As videos continue to gain popularity on the web, it is predicted that textual results will slowly begin to take less real estate on the results page, and video content will start to take more. Optimizing your video and getting them to rank is relatively simple and easy to get up and running fast.

Additionally, Google has been rumored to prioritize search results with video above results without video. In fact, when Google shows a video thumbnail next to a search result, which it does for 26% of search results according to BrightEdge, users are more likely to click that listing. Although Google has not confirmed this idea explicitly, many marketing experts agree that their SEO results suggest this theory is true.

Video content also helps other metrics that are important for SEO on Google. Two important metrics to consider when looking at SEO is time on site and backlinks. Video content almost always has the ability to improve both of these figures. Studies have shown that people spend over twice as long on a page with an engaging video then without. The higher quality and more engaging your video content is, the more likely you are to get backlinks which plays a factor in boosting SEO.

Appearing on the first page of google is crucial to help consumers find your car dealership. Google’s algorithms are increasingly prioritizing websites with engaging video content, which is something car dealerships can’t ignore in 2021 and beyond. 93% of online experiences start with a search on a search engine, so it is critical your business does everything it can to stay competitive and help consumers find what they are looking for.

Creating High-Quality and Engaging Video Content That’ll Boost SEO

The key to using video as part of your SEO strategy is to take the time to make high-quality content that’s aimed at a particular goal. You can boost your video SEO in no time by applying simple yet effective tactics to your video content.

1. Complement Video with Transcripts: Video SEO transcripts offer a number of benefits such as exposing a new number of keywords, improves user’s ability to search topics within a video and makes content more accessible to a global audiences. Transcription is the process of converting the spoken content in video and audio files into text. This allows bots to crawl the information and have a deeper understanding of what the video page is about.
2. Add Closed Captions: Captions reflect the audio track and are meant to be read while watching the video. The process involves transcribing audio to text and then synchronizing small phrases with the video. A study by Discovery Digital Networks shows that captioned videos get more views compared to uncaptioned videos.
3. Give Your Video Some Context: Publishing a video to your website on a blank page is not going to do much for your SEO. In fact, it may even hurt your SEO as bots are unable to understand the purpose of the video. Be sure to embed your video where it makes sense, and surround it with other relevant and written visual content.
4. Don’t forget the technical details: It is critical you enter the right information on the backend so search engine crawlers know how to categorize and prioritize your video. This could include various information such as title tag information, keywords in the description tag, tags, etc.
5. User Experience Is Still Highly Important Although we have references the importance of having a page and video setup so search engine crawlers can crawl at ease, it is still extremely important to focus on the user experience. At the end of the day, people have to be the priority over bots. The elements that search engines look for in content is only valued based off the perception of what they think people value. Prioritize having a page that is easy to use, navigate, understand, that is professional designed, high quality, credible and legitimate content.

Why Car Dealerships Need To Focus on SEO and Video Content in 2021

Car shoppers have never searched for more information online than they have in 2021. Consumers are visiting the dealership less, and conducting research online more meaning it is especially crucial that your car dealership website has an SEO strategy and video SEO strategy to rank on google. As we mentioned above, 93% of users begin an online experience with a search engine. It will be tough for your car dealership to stay competitive if you don’t have a focused SEO strategy and videos are the perfect way to boost your rankings while also converting car shoppers into customers. 

How Can My Car Dealership Get Started with Videos?

Incorporating vehicle videos on your car dealership website has never been easier with LESA video technology. LESA is the largest dealer video inventory provider with 100K+ vehicle video views daily on our dealers’ internet destinations — Dealer Sites, YouTube, Facebook, Cars.com, AutoTrader and more. Their video inventory, video suite and other video apps have been proven to increase traffic and conversions to car dealership websites. If you are looking to grow your business, look no further, LESA technology is right for you. Interested in learning more about LESA Video Technology for Car Dealerships? Get Started and talk to a representative today!

Online video consumption is one of the most popular internet activities worldwide. There is no doubt that video consumption has increased and will continue to increase over time. In 2019, the number of digital video viewers worldwide amounted to over 2.6 billion viewers and is projected to reach over 3.1 billion by 2023.

This is important for car dealerships to explore new advertising avenues, gain new customers and make more money. Let’s take a look at how your car dealership can benefit from the LESA Video Suite.

Why Video?

The pandemic has caused the automotive industry to change forever. Consumers are visiting the dealership less and researching online more. In fact, more than 80% of potential car buyers begin their search for new vehicles online before they ever set foot in a dealership.

According to hubspot, not only do consumers pay attention to video content the most, they want to see more video content in the future, more than any other medium. In an increasingly high-tech world where moving video is worth a thousand still pictures, it’s clear that consumers rely on online video for news, entertainment, products and services.

To better serve existing customers and catch the eyes of new ones, it’s important to keep up with the shifting ways in which they receive and spread information. This is especially important while car shopping as it requires such a large investment from the consumer. Consumers want to make sure they have the best and most transparent information to help give them a clear view of car before making an investment. Video is a great way to keep car shoppers engaged, provide new perspectives of vehicles, and provide total transparency in the car shopping process.

What Is LESA Video Suite?

The Dealer Video Suite app is a video toolbox for your sales team, bringing your dealership closer to your clients than ever before via personalized videos. It allows you to create and send professional quality videos that does not cost many hours or thousands of dollars.

The Benefits of LESA Video Suite

LESA Video Suite helps the sales team at a car dealership easily create, record and publish videos without having to get video creators and website professionals involved, which can be extremely time consuming and expensive. Additionally, a major benefit of LESA video suite is your sales team doesn’t have to worry about braving the weather or pulling a vehicle from the lot, they can easily search and select a video from the dealer vehicle inventory.

 Not only are the videos easy to create and publish, they offer full customization and personalization capabilities to help attract and retain new and existing customers. Your sales team can handle all video operations as apart of their day to day

job.

• Helps show car shoppers which cars are available on your lot
• Confirms to customers the features advertised are consistent with the reality of the vehicle
• Sets realistic expectations of the condition of the car
• Helps car shoppers gain new perspectives of the car, aiding in purchasing decisions
• Establishes trust between the car dealership and the car shopper, providing full transparency of the vehicles
• Provides motivation for potential customers to make the trip to visit the dealership knowing you have what they are looking for

Types of Videos on LESA Video Suite

Vehicle Walk Around:

The video walk around feature allows sales reps to capture and send personalized full-motion videos to potential customers.  The app easily allows you to video the car of interest in addition to custom branding, custom VoiceOver, background music, and more without ever having to leave the dealership to shoot a video.  Additionally, if the video already exists in the dealerships video inventory, they can easily use and personalize without having to go outside and reshoot.

The picture in picture features allows sales rep to put a recorded video of themselves on vehicle video, allowing the the potential customer to see the car and sales person in one video. This helps remove the pressure and sales tactics of visiting the dealership while providing comfort and ease. If the potential customer wants to visit the dealership, they know exactly what sales person they are looking for from the video. At the end of the day, the customer is mostly interested in seeing the car, but showing the face of the sales person can help establish trust and build relationships.

How It Works: Creating a vehicle walk around video can be completed in three simple steps.

1. Select: easily select a full-motion video from your library, shoot one with the app camera, or select from your device gallery
2. Target: Enter the contact information of the video recipient
3. Send: Send a customizable email or text message to your recipient.

Vehicle Testimonial

The Vehicle Testimonial feature allows you to capture positive customer reviews during the delivery of the vehicle and before they drive off the lot.  The Dealer Video Suite App allows sales reps to shoot positive customer review videos and send them to potential leads or share them on your dealership’s social media channels.

In a competitive environment, reviews are very important. Numerous consumers search for dealership reviews before committing to purchasing a vehicle, to ensure other consumers had a positive experience. LESA video suite uses proprietary SEO video techniques once the testimonial video is uploaded to your car dealership website to ensure your reviews are being found on Google. If a potential customer searches “your dealership name” and “reviews”, the testimonial videos will come up at the top of the first page of Google. Video testimonials are very powerful as they show raw emotion and the real experience of other people. Text is not as influential as a personal video from a happy customer.

Many customers might be reluctant to hop on a video testimonial due to being camera shy, however, even if your car dealership can get video testimonials from 10% of your customers, this has outstanding impact on building trust and boosting SEO for your car dealership.

How It Works: Creating a vehicle testimonial video and distributing to your social media can be completed in three simple steps.

1. Select: easily select a full-motion video from your library, shoot one with the app camera, or select from your device gallery
2. Sign Release Form:  Customers must sign a release form for video testimonial to be used
3. Target: Choose which social media platforms you would like the video to posted to
4. Send: Push send, and the video will automatically be distributed to the selected social channels.

Promo Videos

Almost 50% of internet users look for videos related to a product or service before visiting a store. The promo videos in the Dealer Video Suite App allows you to easily create promo videos with our app and instantly publish to your dealer website without involving the website provider. 

For example, if your car dealership is running a Labor Day Special, you can create a custom promo video and tailor it to any make or model applicable to show up after the vehicle video on the car dealership website. The app even allows you to select an end date, so the promo video will automatically disappear off your website without having to go in and manually remove. The promo videos are so easy to upload, it removes the need to involve a website provider which can cost extra time and money. Additionally, you don’t have to hire a professional videographer, the promo video can be shot entirely from a cell phone.

How It Works: Creating a promo video and distributing to your dealership website can be completed in three simple steps.

1. Select: easily select a full-motion video from your library, shoot one with the app camera, or select from your device gallery
2. Filter: Use custom filters to select when the video should expire, and if it applies to only particular makes/ manufacturers.
3. Upload: Choose wear to upload your promo video, either to your website, social media platforms or both!

Thank You Videos

Every brand interaction leaves an impression. As a car dealership, you want to end the deal on a warm, fuzzy note to create customers for life. Thank you videos allow you to increase referrals and repeat business by adding a personal touch. It’s a simple and smart solution to increase your dealership revenue.

How It Works: Creating a thank you video and sending to your customer can be completed in three simple steps.

1. Select: easily select a full-motion video from your library or shoot one with the app camera
2. Target: Enter the contact information of the video recipient
3. Send: Send a customizable email or text message to your customer.

The Bottom Line

Your car dealership has a great opportunity to further connect with car shoppers and customers by creating custom videos. Now more than ever, consumers pay attention to video content most and expect to see more video content in the future. LESA video suite technology is easy to implement and doesn’t require much extra effort from your sales team. The technology also can easily integrate with your social media platforms and car dealership website.

How Can My Car Dealership Get Started with Videos?

Incorporating vehicle videos on your car dealership website has never been easier with LESA video technology. LESA is the largest dealer video inventory provider with 100K+ vehicle video views daily on our dealers’ internet destinations — Dealer Sites, YouTube, Facebook, Cars.com, AutoTrader and more. Their video inventory, video suite and other video apps have been proven to increase traffic and conversions to car dealership websites. If you are looking to grow your business, look no further, LESA technology is right for you.

Interested in learning more about LESA Video Technology for Car Dealerships? Get Started and talk to a representative today!

Car dealerships have had to tailor their online presence to the preferences of their consumers in 2021. If you only have static images on your website, consumers may visit your competitors’ websites to find more detailed images and videos of the vehicles they are interested in purchasing.

Not only do consumers pay attention to video content the most, they want to see more video content in the future — more than any other medium. Car dealerships around the United States have been quickly adjusting their online presence to tailor their content to what their consumers want to see.

Let’s take a look at two options that dealerships are using to stay competitive in a rapidly changing environment.

Option #1: 360 Spin

What is 360 spin?

Although 360 spin is not technically video, it has become a popular addition to numerous car dealership websites across the United States.  360 spin offers interactive images that allow your customers to view the exterior of a vehicle from every angle.

How 360 Spin Works

360 spin works similar to a flip book, and is a collection of consecutive photos that creates the illusion of a spin allowing you to view multiple angles of the car. If a consumer views a 360° spin image on their computer, they can drag their mouse to rotate the vehicle. If the image is viewed on a tablet or mobile device, all it takes is a swipe of the finger to rotate the image.

The Benefits of 360 Spin

The main benefit of 360 spin is that it offers an interactive component to your car dealership website keeping car shoppers interested and engaged. It does allow you to see the vehicle from multiple angles, however, it can lack transparency and clarity.

The 360 spin hot spots are another benefit, which allow you to zoom in on certain parts of the car for further viewing. However, the hotspots are just photos and may not provide all the transparency and clarity needed when purchasing a vehicle.

The Downsides of 360 Spin

Although it’s easy to navigate and also offers more transparency than just viewing a photo, at the end of the day, they are really just a series of photos and do not provide the same transparency that videos do. Many times with 360 spin, consumers just end up looking at photos of the car which defeats the purpose of offering them a more transparent view of the car. With 360 spin, you really can’t see the details since it is just a collection of photos. In fact, sometimes it can even offer a distorted and not clear view only showing one story of the car, not the true reality.

The big selling point of spin is interactive but it doesn’t give you the same kind of comprehensive overview of the car as the video can give. Videos provide more value to car shoppers as the truly allow consumers to view the car from multiple perspectives.

Option #2: LESA Video

What Is LESA video?

LESA is the largest dealer video inventory provider with 85K+ vehicle video views daily on our dealers’ internet destinations — Dealer Sites, YouTube, Facebook, Cars.com, AutoTrader and more. Their Video inventory software allows car dealerships to easily capture automotive videos for your website, google my business, Facebook ads, and more in just minutes. Additionally, LESA provides tools, training and support to market your dealership inventory online, maximize your SEO and increase your leads.

How LESA video works?

Car dealerships can easily record and upload a video to their website or send to their prospective customers in just three simple steps. To get started, all you have to do is scan the VIN on the app, and it will automatically add the vehicle to the inventory. Next, you can record an HD full-motion walk around video and capture photos simultaneously. The app allows you do easily add VoiceOver listing options specific to that vehicle, background music and more to enhance the videos to increase user engagement. Finally, it’s time to upload! The platform can wirelessly upload and syndicate your videos to your dealer website, social media channels and third-party lead providers like Cars.com and AutoTrader.

The Benefits of LESA Video Inventory

The more time a viewer spends on a shopping page, the more likely they are to buy. People spend on average 2.6x more time on pages with video than without. Our full-motion walk-around videos have an 80% completion ratio average for a 2-minute video. This shows consumers are engaged and recognize the value that video provides.

Additionally, LESA spotlight features allows consumers to view key highlights in the video and interact with features that matter most. Spotlight easily helps car shoppers identify the wheel, headlight, steering wheel, odometeter/speedometer, navigation system and the video

Video Content vs 360 Spin: Which Should You Choose For Your Website?

Online car shopping is at an all time high due to the pandemic which forced consumers to change in person shopping habits. People prefer to conduct more research online and visit the dealership less, making it essential for car dealerships to have digital channels that help consumers make important purchasing decisions.

Not only is online video consumption at an all time high, but video content is a popular method for gathering and learning new information. In fact, consumers prefer watching videos to learn about new products or services as compared to articles, infographic, ebooks and presentations. Videos are also proven to influence purchase decisions of consumers. According to a survey conducted by Google, 68% of YouTube users watched YouTube to help make a purchase decision. Video will increasingly inform consumer decisions and connect businesses with people on the internet.

Although 360 spin may be more beneficial than photos, at the end of the day, 360 spin is just a series of photos that gives shoppers a 360° view of the vehicles. In a competitive environment such as the automotive industry, it is essential car dealerships tailor an online strategy to the preferences of the consumers they serve. Consumers continue to prove that video is the most effective medium to learning and digesting information.

360 spin has an interactive component, LESA solved the problem by adding spotlight. The big selling point of spin is interactive but it doesn’t give you the same kind of comprehensive overview of the car as the video can give.

How Can My Car Dealership Get Started with Videos?

Incorporating vehicle videos on your car dealership website has never been easier with LESA video technology. LESA is the largest dealer video inventory provider with 100K+ vehicle video views daily on our dealers’ internet destinations — Dealer Sites, YouTube, Facebook, Cars.com, AutoTrader and more. Their video inventory, video suite and other video apps have been proven to increase traffic and conversions to car dealership websites. If you are looking to grow your business, look no further, LESA technology is right for you.

Interested in learning more about LESA Video Technology for Car Dealerships? Get Started and talk to a representative today!

Since the emergence of the internet, it has changed tremendously over time. Not only has the internet changed, but internet user behavior has changed too. Over the past few years Americans have shifted from content readers to content viewers.

Love it or hate it, video content is the preferred medium for consuming information for a majority of internet users. In fact, it’s only growing in popularity and dominating social media.

The automotive industry is also undergoing rapid transformation due to the implications of the pandemic, and car dealerships need to tailor an online strategy to the preference of the consumers they serve. If you are a car dealership looking to increase traffic and conversions, you should consider adding video content. Here’s why…

The Human Brain and Video Content

90% of the information processed by the brain is visual. 80% of people remember what they see, compared to ten percent what they hear and 20 percent of what they read. Our brains are far more engaged by storytelling than a block of text or list of facts. It’s easier for us to remember stores and make little distinction between an experience we are reading about and one that is is actually happening.

Videos have the ability to paint a picture much faster for your audience compared to an actual picture. In fact, videos have been found to improve learning by up to 400%. They affect learners on a cognitive level and stimulate imagination, therefore, enabling users to process the information faster. Studies have shown that the average viewer retains 95% of a message when they watch it, as opposed to a mere 10% retention rate when reading it.

The Growth of Online Video Consumption

Businesses around the globe are turning to online videos to help consumers grasp important messages about products, services, news, and more. In fact, the use of online videos has grown substantially over the past few years as data continues to prove that businesses and consumers prefer, digest and retain video content much more quickly than text and photos.

In fact, four times as many consumers would rather watch a video about a product than read about it. People are 85 percent more likely to buy a product after viewing a product video. Studies have shown that the average viewer retains 95% of a message when they watch it, as opposed to a mere 10% retention rate when reading it.

According to Statistica, the most popular online activities include: text messaging, checking email, and watching videos. Online video consumption is at an all time high, and your business is missing out on the action if your not providing video content to your desired customers.

Online Videos Influence Purchase Decisions

Not only is online video consumption at an all time high, but video content is also proven to influence purchase decisions of consumers. According to a survey conducted by Google, 68% of YouTube users watched YouTube to help make a purchase decision. Video will increasingly inform consumer decisions and connect businesses with people on the internet. Studies show that 92% of shoppers say visuals are the most influential factor affecting purchase decisions and that almost 50% of internet users look for videos related to a product or service before visiting a store.

Videos give consumers confidence and help them feel informed before making important purchasing decisions.

Why Online Videos are Important For Car Dealerships

Online car shopping is at an all time high due to the pandemic which forced consumers to change in person shopping habits. People prefer to conduct more research online and visit the dealership less, making it essential for car dealerships to have digital channels that help consumers make important purchasing decisions.

Additionally, as consumers have shifted to online research and online shopping for cars, they are equipped with the information they need resulting in quicker decision making. If a car dealership wants to get in on the action and make sure they are not overlooked in the car shopping process, it is essential that they provide shoppers the best and most transparent information regarding their vehicles.

How can car dealerships be sure they are not missing out on the online car shopping boom? Videos! The research above clearly shows that online consumers prefer videos. They provide the information and transparency in a quick and efficient way opposed to looking at pictures or reading text. In a competitive environment such as the automotive industry, it is essential that car dealerships are tailoring an online strategy to the preferences of the consumers they serve. Since so much time and research is spend online researching cars, car dealerships have a unique opportunity to provide valuable video content that is easily digestible to the consumer it’s trying to win over.

How Can My Car Dealership Get Started with Videos?

Incorporating vehicle videos on your car dealership website has never been easier with LESA video technology. LESA is the largest dealer video inventory provider with 100K+ vehicle video views daily on our dealers’ internet destinations — Dealer Sites, YouTube, Facebook, Cars.com, AutoTrader and more. Their video inventory, video suite and other video apps have been proven to increase traffic and conversions to car dealership websites. If you are looking to grow your business, look no further, LESA technology is right for you.

Interested in learning more about LESA Video Technology for Car Dealerships? Get Started and talk to a representative today!

Is traditional SEO dead? The answer is Yes, and No. SEO has evolved due to ever changing algorithms from Google. Gone are the days of keyword spamming and all out link building. Traditional SEO can still work but it takes patience. It may mean months of investments in time and tinkering to hopefully see some organic results that usually sit below paid Google AdWords, video results, and other information competing for the user’s attention. It is due not only to Google algorithm updates, but also the other major change that has occurred in recent years, the revamp of Google’s search results page.

Revamped Google search results page

It used to be that on a Google search results page you could only see organic textual rankings with the only competition being the occasional Google AdWords ad that appeared at the top. Nowadays the Google first page has a lot more going on depending on your search query. Besides the traditional textual search results, you see Google Ads, video results, images, shopping results, Google My Business Pages, Related Questions and more.

Why today’s SEO is still important

According to a study by Bright Edge, organic traffic is responsible for more than 51% of all traffic to websites, more than any other sources such as paid (14%) and social (5) traffic.

• People use “Google” when they are looking to buy products or services. For most people Google is the starting point to look for information, products, or services when they need them.
• Organic results are highly targeted in terms of user intent. For example, a users searching for an “auto repair shop in Hartford” are likely looking to get their car fixed. Google’s search results play a big role in discovering a store or service to meet that need. The same is true for product-related searches such as “used 2019 Honda Accord” in which case users are looking to buy an exact product.
• The long-term benefits of SEO makes it more cost effective. Once you’re ranked on the first page, you can enjoy being on the first page for a long time assuming you don’t make major changes.
• Increased sales – Being ranked high on the first page brings more customers to your site. The rest is up to you.
• Organic local results are critical. 72% of consumers who did a local search visited a store within five miles.
• Ranking matters – being ranked #1 gets around 21% of clicks, with #2 and #3 with about 10% and 7.5% respectively. So, ranking high is critical in growing your organic traffic.

As you can see SEO is still very important. However, with the revamped Google search results page, you have to adjust your SEO strategy and target your SEO efforts based on how Google prioritizes the first page results.

Utilizing a three-pronged SEO strategy: video SEO, video sitemapping, and Google My Business posts

We are going to look into how this three-pronged SEO strategy can be used by an automotive dealer to help drive traffic to their website.

Video SEO Results

Videos in Google search results appear for certain keywords when Google decides video to be useful for that particular search term. As illustrated below, this is the case when a consumer is searching for a vehicle they are in looking to get more information on or to buy.

In the example above, you can see how video results are shown above textual search results on the first page. As mentioned previously being ranked on top of the search results page pays big dividends in terms of organic traffic.
Google recently changed how they show video results. Instead of a carousel, you now have a list type result showing only a handful of video results. When clicking on the “View all” link the user is taken to the “Videos” tab where more video results are shown. This is important because now the video tab will get more traffic due to this recent change.

If you look more closely at these video results, you may notice that all the video results are showing YouTube videos. That is no accident. Google does own YouTube after all and makes a ton of money selling ads on YouTube.

How to optimize your YouTube videos for high Google rankings

Here are some things you should do to create an optimized YouTube video:
1. Words spoken in the video – Google can extract some limited meaning from the audio and video of the file. It is therefore important to have descriptive voice over to describe the vehicle. When you have auto generated closed captioning that’s easy to read you can confirm that there is a clear and descriptive voice over.
2. Optimize your Metadata: Title and description
a. Include your primary keyword in your title and description. In this case the year, make, and model of the vehicle.
b. Also, we find that adding a detailed description in the video helps with the ranking especially for long tail searches such as “Honda Accord heated seats”
3. Create an enticing thumbnail – Don’t use the auto generated thumbnail by YouTube that usually only shows the interior shot of the car. Instead grab an exterior shot of the vehicle to use as the thumbnail. It is much more engaging.

Video Sitemapping

To provide the appearance of fairness, Google officially encourages websites to use schema for video to help Googlebot index your videos on your website.

In order to expose a video in search results, Google must understand something about the video. Google can extract information about a video in the following ways:
• Google can crawl the video and extract a thumbnail and preview.
• Google can extract information from the page hosting the video, including the page text and meta tags
• Google can use structured data such as a video sitemap associated with the video.
Google provides its own detailed guide on how to setup a video sitemap for your site.
Once a sitemap is setup properly, Googlebot will be able to crawl and index the videos on your site and the results can be amazing! Here’s an example of a first page video search result that links directly to a dealer’s website and not to YouTube.

However, Google is still not quite playing fair. These direct to website video results only appear on the video tab and not on the All tab on Google. Google is still favoring showing YouTube video results in the All tab results page.

Google My Business Posts to capture local search traffic

Now that you’re able to optimize your YouTube videos and the videos on your website for first page results, the third component in this approach is to capture local search through the business’ Google My Business (GMB) page. If you’re a business Google will automatically show on the right-side information about the business establishment such as hours of operations, address, and contact info. If you’re the owner of the business you can claim the GMB listing shown for your company.

The GMB page captures a great deal of local traffic. People searching for a business name are looking to contact the store in one form or another. Like a physical store, the GMB page is the virtual store front for your business. Google allows you to post information about your product on your GMB.
In our example, an automotive dealer can post a few vehicles to showcase on their GMB page similar to parking a few cars in front of the store front to attract foot traffic.
Using the GMB dashboard the business owner can easily make these posts. GMB allows you to upload videos as well as photos when creating these posts.

These GMB posts get hundreds of views within days of being posted, proving that you have to leverage the your GMB page as much as possible to help draw traffic to your website.

To Sum It Up

So here you have it. SEO is not dead, but the old SEO techniques are! Today’s Google Search results page is extremely dynamic and provides a lot of information to the user. It’s important to remember that:
• Video gets priority real estate over textual results for search terms that warrant video results. In our example, Google deems video results to be important when searching for cars.
• A business’s Google My Business page is shown prominently when users search for a particular business.
• Google is smarter and more sophisticated now. It has gotten better at distinguishing between high-quality content from poorly optimized content.
You will need to use new optimization methods in order to take advantage of the ongoing changes Google makes to their algorithm, as well as ,to the changes Google makes to the visual aspect of the search results page (SERP).
Using the techniques described in this article will allow you to take advantage on how Google works today and make it work in your favor. Here are additional benefits of using this three-pronged approach:
• It delivers faster, more immediate results compared with traditional textual SEO. Video results shows up within days in Google search results compared to months for traditional SEO.
• Delivers long-term results. The competition for video results is far less intense compared to textual results. Besides getting ranked fairly quickly, once you rank high you can reap the rewards for a long time.
• It can save you money by spending less on pay-per-click ads like Google Adwords.

Start today and invest in video SEO and Google My Business for local traffic to get long-term, reliable traffic that will lead to more sales and loyal customers!
Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.