Your domain name is important. And by important, I mean detrimental to the immediate and long-term success of your online marketing. Your domain name is one piece of intellectual property that is yours…or at least should be yours to keep as long as you own your dealership. Think of it as your dealership’s driver’s license - something that represents who you are, identifies you, and should be kept with you at all times.
Here are a list of questions that may be the most important you will ever answer in regards to the viability and longevity of your dealership on the Internet.
1) What is my domain name?
To most of you, this is a ridiculous question. You are Billy Bob’s Toyota. Your domain is BillyBobToyota.com. Right? Seemingly so, and yet almost every week we get a Billy Bob Toyota who’s domain looks something like BillyBob-Fine-Cars.net. Yes this may be a bad example especially with Toyota’s strict guidelines, but you get the point. Billy Bob most likely forgot to register his domain name, and it’s been taken by another Billy Bob. If you can’t get your domain name to match your Trademark name, you might want to consider changing your Trademark name. Yes - it’s that important considering the vast majority of website visitors are either typing your Trademark name into their browser bar (Direct Traffic), or into Google (Search Engine traffic). Do not confuse your visitors.
2) Where is my Domain Name?
In other words, where is your domain name registered? The big shops like GoDaddy, Network Solutions, 1and1 are where most of the public registers their domains. However, some website providers actually take control and move your domains to their facilities making it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to manage or move your domains. Some companies actually register domains for their clients, which is the worst-case scenario. This means you actually have zero ownership of your domain. Suggestion - take control and ownership of ALL your domains. Keep them under one account and put them on Auto-Renew. This is vital. We have seen clients let their renewals come up and end up losing their domain, which means email, SEO rankings and all.
3) What is the structure of your domain, and does it include keywords?
This is more for Independents, but if you are a new store or considering registering a new domain, keep in mind that Google does still weigh the keywords in the URL very high. Let’s take Billy Bob’s Used Cars. Billy Bob lives in Texas. So Billy Bob’s ideal URL would be “BillyBobsUsedCarsTexas.com”. Or at least some variation of “used cars”, and preferably with a geographic qualifier to avoid competing Nationally, which is almost impossible to get rankings for.
For groups, it’s important to keep a uniform structure throughout your stores. And preferably keep individual brands as sub-domains underneath a master domain. Example - www.ParkPlaceTexas.com. The key here is determining whether you are a branded house or a house of brands. I’ll let Dave Hanson, VP of Interactive and former Global Brand Manager at Yahoo!, address that one for you.
Bottom line - keep your domain names close, keep them organized, and keep them renewed. Treat them like they are gold because one day when you have 70% traffic from Organic SEO and you lose your domain name to someone in India because you forgot to renew it you are going to be fresh out of gold.
