With online marketing an increasingly popular sales method for car manufacturers such as Mercedes, what are the pitfalls?
Bad implementation of SEO can cause huge problems for a firms online department as Mercedes country mates found in 2006. Google blacklisted the firm and reduced its page ranking to zero after the German firm broke its terms of use. The search engine accused the manufacturer of deceiving searchers by ‘sprinkling’ key words that show up on searches but not on the actual site. At the time Google commented saying:
"The quality of our index and search results is of the utmost importance to Google,"
BMW did immediately apologise and the ban only affected their .de domain site, however the damage and embarrassment caused by media attention associated with such a huge company couldn’t be undone. A reputable SEO company will use keywords correctly and hand in hand with Google algorithms to get the best results for your business. The reason behind Google’s popularity amongst online marketers is its worldwide dominance. Figures have shown the Google accounts for over 75% of all the worlds internet searches and is the market leader in every country except China,Japan,Russia,South Korea, Czech Republic where localised and national search engines reign supreme.
The reason for the increase in SEO popularity is down to the cheap and readily available online advertising space which is prime time 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Compare this to the costs of premium analogue advertising – billboards,radio and potentially television and as stated previously you have an always prime time advertising platform.