Best Practices

How Can an Out-Of-Town Dealership Compete with Local Competition?

Matt Cutts Talks About Google Places

…this applies to your dealerships places listings

In a search environment where local is becoming increasingly important (and more full on the SERP), how can an out of town company/dealership compete with the local based competition without lying to show up in these local results?

Right now – log into your dealers Google Places account and be sure you have optimized your Service Areas and Location Settings.

image of google service area settings

Founder of DealerRefresh - 20+ Years of dealership Sales, Management, Training, Marketing and Leadership.
J
Brain Pasch came thru with this sugestion here several months ago and I changed my local settings to 75 mi and saw little to no effect. This does not mean it dosent work, it just didn't work for me. I am up to my aprmits in trying to make Google happy with my Google Places listings and that ain't easy!!
J
Matt Cutts says "..If you are a Mobile Business"... I am mobile. My sales reps routinely drive 1-3 hours to meet up with long distance customers. My concern is Google has added this feature for business that are mobile, and car dealers aren't classically labled as "mobile".

On Google's end, to reduce abuse, it would be easy to create a list of all businesses by SIC code, then place a grade on how likely a business is to offer mobile services, then create a algo to search their site for mobile use.

I'm on the fence. I've been entertaining removing my radius. Not only because I've noticed little difference but i'm concerned with SPAMing the maps.

Sleepless in Syracuse...
J