As page load speed becomes a search engine ranking factor, it will impact all auto dealer websites that are media rich and heavy with automatic feature loads. While these types of websites are pushed by some design companies, they truly do not enrich the user experience, and that’s exactly what Google is trying to improve. Google’s recent thoughts on page load speed suggest that Google will indeed begin taking page load speed into consideration as a ranking factor. You might focus some of your SEO efforts and resources on making your site faster.  Ultimately this will lead to additional benefits for your web visitors and may possibly improve your sales. This also covers your bases if Google really does start using page load speed as a ranking factor, and gives you a head start on boosting your organic page rankings.

Google has repeatedly stated that it is trying to deliver the best experience in search to it’s users, and fast loading pages is very important to that experience. Take your design ego out of the equation of how your website looks; since page load speed is probably going to happen at some point, it’s much better to deal with it earlier than later when it may negatively impact your website page rank and traffic.

What do you need to improve your page load speed

• Stop using automatic loading videos on the home page of your dealer website. Let your customers choose if and when they want to see your video.
• Do you really need that pop up? How many auto dealer websites use a “talking head” that loads automatically? Once again, let your customers choose the play option for this feature.
• Is it really necessary for “Live Chat” to start when your home page loads? This is no different than having the salesperson standing “on point” waiting for the customer to open their door when they drive into your lot. Give then a second to catch their breath. If you have a well designed website, your customer can find what they need without being shuffled along.
• No Flash. Flash is not search engine friendly, and is way too graphics heavy. Flash will do nothing but slow your page load speed down and make it difficult for the search engines to crawl your auto dealer website.

If you start thinking like a search engine and your customers, you begin to understand the importance of speeding up the web. In addition to page load speed becoming a ranking factor in organic ranking results, also consider Google’s recently introduced real-time results and the importance of including social media in your online marketing strategy.

Very nice free video editor http://htxt.it/I8nw works quite nicely. Easy user interface and quick out of the box.

Open video editors anyone? As it stands I’m converting .mov files to use what I have. You Tube beware!

SEO is the process of configuring a website so that it has a chance to show up in a search result for a particular keyword phrase. It is your way of telling search engines what you think your site is about. Each search engine has a slightly different formula for how they determine the results of a webpage.

Why is SEO Important?
One word sums it up – competition. As many as 20 billion web pages are being indexed at any given time. To stand out from the crowd, it is absolutely critical to make sure you are using every tool to make sure your customers can find you when they are looking for your products and services.

So why don’t more people do SEO?
SEO is a PROCESS, not a one-time event. It is detail oriented, time consuming and requires regular ongoing efforts in order to maintain results. SEO is one piece of a complete overall online marketing strategy.

Simple guidelines that you can control for best long-term SEO results:

• Good site structure – The bottom line is that if you can’t easily navigate a site without problems chances are the search engines can’t either and you have no chance of ranking for your key phrase.
• Good meta-data – Simply geek-speak for the code behind the scenes that search engines use to understand the web page.
• Good relevant content- Visitors understand that good relevant content is really what they are looking for when they searched with a keyword phrase.  Websites appear higher in the search results generally have regular updates or blogs versus sites with older, stale content on them.

Long and short is that competitive space for search engine optimization is becoming further and further from a free venue. As more and more people compete for key terms, affordable SEO becomes a pay-to-play space. Sure there are things you can do to help improve search engine ranking, but the reality is that those who pay for online advertising, or those who hire full-time writers for their website will usually come out on top.
Traffic is one of the key components of your web site marketing strategy and is available in these three forms.

1. Borrow It. One method of borrowing traffic is called link exchange. This is where you put links to another website on your site and they put links back to you on theirs. The key thing to remember about borrowing traffic is that you have to give something in return.

2. Develop It. Articles are a great way of generating traffic. Once you have created your articles you can put them on your website or blog as content, a white paper, or eBook.

3. Pay For It. You can buy traffic typically using what is known as Pay-Per-Click advertising. You can define your target markets, your daily budget, and where you want your online ads to appear. Paid search marketing offers one of the best ways to control traffic to your website .