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Watch the Hunt!
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What's In A Name?
“Auto Body”, “Autobody”, “Body Shop”, “Collision Center” – all the same right?
We recognize all these name iterations as simply different terms for auto body repair businesses, but do search engines see it the same way as we do; and could selecting one over the other influence our visibility to search engines? Po-tay-toe or po-tah-toe; it's still just apotato. Right?
With the internet proving to be a significant lead generation tool for small businesses - the auto body industry included – businesses are discovering that local marketing is a hyper-competitive marketplace and being discovered online is getting increasingly complex. The days of set-it-and-forget-it website marketing are long gone, today’s businesses need a better strategy with quantifiable results for their marketing spend. With respect to online marketing – this means selecting the right words that will enable your business to rank well on search engines thus be discovered by more people searching for what you have to offer.
Regardless of what the name is on the sign outside your body shop – the wording you use for your online marketing plays a significant impact on both overall visibility and brand recognition by your customers and prospects searching for you online. A businesses ranking on Google for example – is often the first impression a new customer has of your business. Conversely, for your older customers who haven’t needed your services in a while who look your business up on the internet instead of searching for your business card that they most likely misplaced, your ranking on search might cause them to be lured away from your business by your competition who appears more prominent in the local auto body repair scene – judging solely by that businesses higher ranking on the search engines.
Like any other business, high ranking for your auto body business on search engines is all in the words – choose the right words, and they will come. {more}
By Chris Sheehy | Sidewalk Branding Company
About: Chris Sheehy is an auto industry veteran with twenty-five+ years, has been published internationally within the auto, auto body, insurance, and marketing industries and is the founder of Auto Body Consulting Group, a sister company to Sidewalk Branding Company, an award-winning Rhode Island based SEO and Local Marketing firm - named a Top Startup Business in New England.
Comment
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Comment by Cheryl Senko on May 22, 2012 at 4:00pm -
Another great article, thanks again Chris! It can be very confusing to us non IT people to try to make sure that we're doing everything possible to put our body shops out there and make sure we're fully optimized for best results. Take care, and thanks again for the advice.
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Comment by Christopher Sheehy on May 22, 2012 at 3:45pm -
My pleasure Cheryl - you know how to find me if you need to.
I think you may also like this article on marketing your website I wrote for MarketingProfs recently: http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2012/7488/top-4-reasons-busi...
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Comment by Cheryl Senko on May 22, 2012 at 3:33pm
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Awesome comments Chris THANK YOU SO MUCH! Very nice of you to take the time to peek under our hood and make those suggestions. Right now we're in the process of a re-design with Autowatch and I'll share your comments. THANK YOU AGAIN! Cheryl
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Comment by Christopher Sheehy on May 22, 2012 at 3:29pm
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Thanks for the great reply Cheryl!
I've taken the liberty of having a peek under the hood of your website - this is the first place to start in migrating the term "Auto Body" into your marketing strategy. Here's what I discovered:
On your home page
"Collision Repair(s)" is mentioned 2x, and "Body Shop" 1x. Auto Body doesn't appear anywhere
Within the back-end of your website (the administrative SEO side - yea, I can see that stuff)
Your Website Title reads "Mayfield Collision Repair"
1- are you open to using "Mayfield Auto Body Collision Repair" as your online website name (you dont have to change your business name or your website address - hjust the website title)? Before you make any changes - there would need to be what's called a 301-redirect performed on your server end (or with Register.com) for your existing website title page name so you don't loose the SEO you have already gained.
2- have you considered buying the domain Mayfield Auto Body.com and pointing it to your existing website? This is a less desirable and much less effective solution than the one above, but the added benefit is the defensive position of buying a web-address that your competition could otherwise trump you with.
Your Website Description contains Collision Repair, Collision Center, Body Shop, and Collision Repairs - but not the word Auto Body. It's also quite long - so much so it's out of spec with the SEO best-practice character count standard.
You list 7 iterations of "Body Shop" and 2 of "Collision Repair" in your Keywords (no mention of Auto Body). First off - you really don't need these, they aren't used any-longer by search engines. But if you really want to use keywords because your admin panel has the space for it, think of my article and use it wisely. This is the first place I look at when doing competitive research for a client - you may be giving too much of your keyword strategy away here.
LASTLY - your logo image-file-name is titled simply "advantage" and is not specific to either your business name, location, or inclusive of your new favorite keyphrase "Auto Body".
So, that said - here's some change to make that will get you started with stronger SEO for your website.
Focus with the getting the TITLE and DESCRIPTION nailed for your website inclusive of the term Auto Body, next move to the text of your page and include Auto Body within the first 50 words. and make sure Auto Body is also in the image file name (and within the "alt" for the HTML part) of your website images.
For certain; the guys at SeeProgress can handle these change for you, but if you would like to discuss further - drop me a note at sidewalkbranding.co@gmail.com and we'll set up a time to chat.I hope this information is beneficial to you Cheryl - all the best.
Chris Sheehy | Sidewalk Branding Company
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Comment by Cheryl Senko on May 22, 2012 at 8:26am
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Great article Christopher! Our owner and founder Tom Griffin has told me many times that he wishes he named our business "Mayfield Auto Body" vs Mayfield Collision Center 23 years ago when he founded the business, but at that time the term "collision center" was viewed as more state-of-the-art. Now we always try to work the phrase "Auto Body" into our marketing message "Mayfield Collision Centers is a full service auto body shop that specializes in collision repairs." What other advice would you give us to capitalize on the term "Auto Body" since we can't exactly change the name of our business now?
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