Anyone Have Experience with the SEO offered by OEM Website companies?

[KodyVoyles]

One of my locations recently signed up for DDC SEO.

Was wondering if anyone had experience with the SEO these companies offer.

Are they any good and worth it or am I better off doing it in house?

 

[Ryan Everson]

Even though I ranked DDC #2 for CDJR website vendors, I'd rank them near dead last for SEO.

You might be lucky for them to spend 30 minutes a month on your site - and you'll get a report saying they updated one page title, three meta descriptions, and created one citation listing for you on some obscure no-follow site.

 

[KodyVoyles]

Even though I ranked DDC #2 for CDJR website vendors, I'd rank them near dead last for SEO.

You might be lucky for them to spend 30 minutes a month on your site - and you'll get a report saying they updated one page title, three meta descriptions, and created one citation listing for you on some obscure no-follow site.

You've got to be kidding me. What is even the point!

 

[DSmovingmetal]

Completely agree with what Ryan Everson said. I work w/ many franchise dealerships using vanity sites, where they are still able to comply w/ the OEM cop-op requirements yet have a vanity site that is able to do what they need in terms of both on/off page SEO and better/more complete merchandising of their inventory (optional packages & exact features)

 

[Rick Buffkin]

@KodyVoyles, we had a short conversation about DDC SEO a little while back here in the forums. It may interest you. Maybe.

What in the Heck is Going On With my Dealer.com sites in Google SRP's?????

Guys, Is anyone else having this issue with their websites when they do a "site:www.your-dealership-web-address.com" search on Google ???????? I have page titles that say my dealership is in all other parts of the freaking country with other dealerships names in the page titles that are...

forum.dealerrefresh.com

 

[ASuave]

Better off doing nothing to your website at all than paying them for this service.

May even end up worse after the fact.

They recycle content..change a few city names, and you pay for them to correct basic page and meta data that they should have gotten right in the first place.

I’d be surprised if they even got into google search console in anything they do..

 

[KodyVoyles]

Completely agree with what Ryan Everson said. I work w/ many franchise dealerships using vanity sites, where they are still able to comply w/ the OEM cop-op requirements yet have a vanity site that is able to do what they need in terms of both on/off page SEO and better/more complete merchandising of their inventory (optional packages & exact features)

@KodyVoyles, we had a short conversation about DDC SEO a little while back here in the forums. It may interest you. Maybe.

What in the Heck is Going On With my Dealer.com sites in Google SRP's?????

Guys, Is anyone else having this issue with their websites when they do a "site:www.your-dealership-web-address.com" search on Google ???????? I have page titles that say my dealership is in all other parts of the freaking country with other dealerships names in the page titles that are...

forum.dealerrefresh.com

Better off doing nothing to your website at all than paying them for this service.

May even end up worse after the fact.

They recycle content..change a few city names, and you pay for them to correct basic page and meta data that they should have gotten right in the first place.

I’d be surprised if they even got into google search console in anything they do..

Thank you for all the feedback will check that thread mentioned before out.

 

[Ryan Everson]

Also, I would not recommend having a separate vanity site that you use as your primary website in 2023. If you had asked me 4 years ago, I would have said absolutely go for it (and we did).

Beyond the obvious downsides of being nearly double the work for you to keep both websites maintained and being confusing to customers. OEMs have made it very difficult for this to be viable today for a number of reasons:

• Requiring all co-op dollars to be used advertising the OEM-approved site
• Preventing inventory feeds of in-transit and in-production vehicles from being sent to non-OEM-approved sites
• Requiring your Google Business Profile URL to link to the OEM-approved site - this is where a majority of your highest-quality traffic comes from
• Approved vendors not being allowed to install their tool on your vanity website, which would result in you having to pay for 2 separate subscriptions for each tool

However, on the same token, most OEMs have made great progress on their certified digital programs. You're no longer locked down to either Sincro or DDC, and they've expanded their programs to include great options like Dealer Inspire.

It's a fight you will never win, so spend your time and resources on making your approved website as good as possible!

 

[Cameron Anchondo]

Even though I ranked DDC #2 for CDJR website vendors, I'd rank them near dead last for SEO.

You might be lucky for them to spend 30 minutes a month on your site - and you'll get a report saying they updated one page title, three meta descriptions, and created one citation listing for you on some obscure no-follow site.

Sadly I've seen a few vendors do this, not just the DDC website provider types. They'll stuff the report to make it look like a lot is being done but aren't actually doing much. Or they're doing things that don't really impact your results but make the report look nice.

DDC, DealerOn, and DI in general mostly just slap some boilerplate content up there and call it a day.

Any vendor worth their salt should be investing in custom content and actually researching the market.

 

[Ryan Everson]

Sadly I've seen a few vendors do this, not just the DDC website provider types. They'll stuff the report to make it look like a lot is being done but aren't actually doing much. Or they're doing things that don't really impact your results but make the report look nice.

DDC, DealerOn, and DI in general mostly just slap some boilerplate content up there and call it a day.

Any vendor worth their salt should be investing in custom content and actually researching the market.

There is a lot of snake oil in the automotive SEO space just collecting dealers' checks with little to no effort, that's for sure. However, there are some good ones too.

If you've ever had the opportunity to visit Dealer Inspire's offices, you'd quickly realize their largest team seems to be the SEO department. We've had their SEO services in the past, and they produce 10x the work that a comparable Dealer.com SEO package would. DI is one of the good ones, especially considering how large they've grown. And their leadership team remains thought leaders in the space.