DealerOn Archives | Page 11 of 12

Greg Gifford In DealerOn, Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

DealerOn’s New Director of Search and Social

Hey, I’m Greg, the new Director of DealerOn’s SEO department. I’m a big fan of video, so we’ll be sharing lots of video content moving forward – and here’s our first video…

Important Links:

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Hey – I’m Greg Gifford, DealerOn’s new Director of Search and Social. They brought me on to run the new SEO department, and as part of my duties, I’m going to be sharing videos here on the blog to share tips that will help your dealership kick more butt online.

Yes, I’m dressed down a bit in my ComicCon shirt today – Yes, I went. and yes, it was even more amazing that you think – but that’s because I wanted to tie in to my recent post on Search Engine Land, where I write a monthly column about Local SEO. We just shared a teaser here on the blog recently, or you can click the link down below the video to go read it. Make sure you check it out, there are some great tips there that apply to dealerships.

I’m also going to be presenting a Digital Dealer Webinar in a few weeks on Tuesday the 18th. It’s gonna be an awesome presentation – I’m going to share some really awesome SEO tips, and I’m going to be doing a superhero movie theme, so it’ll be fun to watch, too. I dropped a link down below so you can go register.
I’m also going to be doing a DealerOn Webinar on Thursday the 27th. You definitely don’t want to miss that one – it’s going to be 80 Gnarly Local SEO Tips for Auto Dealers, and the theme is going to be 80s movies. Again, check the link below to go get registered.

Besides running DealerOn’s SEO department, I speak at a ton of conferences. I’m heading to Confluence in Oklahoma City in September, and then across the Atlantic to speak at Brighton SEO in the UK, and then hopping back across the pond to keynote the Internet Battle Plan conference in Detroit. In October, I’ll be speaking at Digital Dealer, Pubcon, and Driving Sales Executive Summit. So, if you’re going to be at any of those conferences, definitely come find me and say hi! I love to chat with dealers and offer free tips…
Make sure you keep an eye on the DealerOn blog – we’ll be posting at least one video a week, so check back for awesome knowledge nuggets sprinkled with a helping of goofy fun.

If you’ve got any questions, jump down to the comments section below and I’ll get back to you asap. Thanks for taking a few minutes to watch, and I’ll see ya again next week!

DealerOn In DealerOn, Press Release

Pogo Parr Joins DealerOn as Vice President of Sales

DealerOn.com, the premier website and digital marketing provider for American car dealers announced the hiring of Pogo Parr as their new Vice President of Sales.

DealerOn In DealerOn, Press Release

Shaun Raines Joins DealerOn as Vice President of Marketing

DealerOn, the leading website provider to car dealers, adds Shaun Raines as their new Vice President of Marketing.

March 19, 2014, Derwood, MD: Today, DealerOn, the leading website provider to car dealers, announces the hiring of Shaun Raines as their new Vice President of Marketing. Since 1998, Raines has held leadership roles with Reynolds and Reynolds, DealerAdvisor LLC, ReachLocal and most recently, DrivingSales.

“Shaun is such a talented and well respected individual,” said Ali Amirrezvani, DealerOn’s CEO, “that we couldn’t be more excited to have him as a part of our Management Team. At DealerOn, our goal is to add team members that improve all facets of our business. Shaun’s experience and energy compliments our culture of high performance. His automotive digital marketing knowledge is freely shared and it’s one of the reasons why he is so highly regarded in the industry. The DealerOn family has known Shaun personally and professionally for several years and we couldn’t be happier to welcome him to the team.”

DealerOn’s new responsive website platform, just released at NADA 2014, was a huge success among dealers at the show. The platform automatically optimizes itself for any form factor or screen regardless of device. This platform provides a necessary solution for car dealers, given that the average dealer’s site receives traffic from nearly 1,000 unique screen resolutions each month. DealerOn’s new platform is currently in Beta, with its full release scheduled for May 1, 2014.

Said Raines, “I’m truly honored and excited to join one of the most amazingly competent and capable teams in the automotive industry. In the early part of my career with Reynolds Web Solutions, I discovered how much I loved working with dealer websites. Now, I get to be a part of a company with the most impressive website platform I’ve seen and digital marketing services for dealers that cover Search, Social and Reputation, and I couldn’t be happier.”

Before joining DealerOn, Raines worked at DrivingSales alongside Jared Hamilton and Kevin Root to plan, develop and build the automotive industries most trusted source for online education. With flexible learning options, DrivingSales University serves as a valuable knowledge and training platform for industry associations, dealer groups, OEM’s, single point dealers and individuals. Raines concluded, “I joined the DealerOn team to share every bit of my experience and ability in the effort to provide dealers with the best performing websites and complimentary digital marketing services in the industry. The opportunity is incredible and I’m so happy to be working with such a dealer focused team.”

Ali Amirrezvani In DealerOn

DealerOn Operations Smooth Despite Sandy

This weekend, along with much of the Eastern Seaboard, DealerOn prepared for an onslaught as weather and media reports warned of potentially devastating force from Hurricane Sandy.

Making the safety of our employees our number one priority, we still wanted to live up to our commitment to deliver industry-leading customer service, and did not want to let the hurricane close us down if we could do so safely. In the DC area, where DealerOn HQ is located, power has traditionally been volatile to impactful storms such as this one. Bracing for a week of outages, account management and production staff took their phones home with them on Friday afternoon. On Sunday afternoon, one of our operations team members happened to be driving home from a wedding in Michigan, and we had him stop and buy an 8,000-watt, 250-pound power generator as we feared all the local stores would be sold out.

Sunday night starting at 2AM, operations staff loaded several desktops, laptops, phones, network switches, and wires galore into a car, along with the power generator, three five-gallon canisters of gasoline, and 4G internet modems from both Verizon and AT&T. Having a mini-corporate office on wheels enough for the entire account management staff to work from, we felt confident that we could run customer service from anywhere, even from the side of the highway.

As it turns out, several key account management staff happen to live within one mile of Ali Amirrezvani, DealerOn’s CEO. Early Monday morning, we decided to set up shop at Ali’s house with local staff, and had the rest of our team work remotely; not wanting them to drive through any part of the storm. We set up our generator, hooked up four computer and phone stations on the dining room table, and also two stations in the kitchen. Also having staff in Michigan safely away from the storm and not in danger of power outage, we felt confident in running smoothly.

By 930AM, the whole staff was ready to rumble. The power generator was ready to take over, including to power our internet – but just in case, we had our 4G modems ready to plug in and take over as well. An overall calm day for Support, we had a relaxed call volume (between the hurricane, and end of the month for our dealers). Even Maksym, Ali’s younger son, joined in on our party.

Running smoothly and with power until 7PM, we closed up shop and ate dinner together. Bracing for the worst of the impact on Monday night, we woke up to the entire team and our office with power, and only light rain conditions. We all felt lucky having been able to avoid the brunt of the storm. Our hearts go out to those who lost their lives in the storm, as well as to the millions of people still without power throughout the Mid-Atlantic and New England.

The whole team is back in the office today, and we are gathering for a big lunch – on the company tab. After a successful 48 hours for DealerOn, we’d like to congratulate the entire team for their dedication and their ability to operate effectively and successfully under a very stressful situation. Cheers!