GMC Memorial Day Sale 2013

Yesterday I made a post about creating a service page for one of the stores I work for.  Today GM announced the 2013 Memorial Day Sale. Since the Labadie GM Cobalt website was upgraded yesterday this gave me a great opportunity to jump in and learn the new platform.

It took me a few hours to learn what HTML the Cobalt platform would take.  I finally opted for HTML5 instead of CSS.  This was mostly because I didn’t have access to the CSS file.  Using styles in HTML5 makes the page bigger because of more lines of code, but it gave me the ability to closely match the national advertising of General Motors.

So what pages did I create today?
Memorial Day Sale page for Buick
Memorial Day Sale page for GMC

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David Defoe is a web marketing specialist and photographer who lives in Saginaw, MI

Toyota Brake Service Saginaw MI

Conferences are good but so many times the information learned never gets implemented.  I recently attended the 14th Digital Dealer Conference in Orlando, FL.  In order to make sure that the information was put into action I got started right away with my marketing department.  One of the easiest pieces to put in place right away was covered in a few sessions including one called “The Most Valuable Web Page You’ll Never Build.”

The first valuable pages the department was tasked with building were auto service pages.  Currently we are locked out of the Cobalt site for our GM franchises because they are updating their platform so we started with Toyota auto repair.  At this point we were not able to put a contact form directly on the page but the team is working on it.

So if you are searching for brake service for your Toyota vehicle hopefully you will find our page! 

* David Defoe is the Internet Marketing Director for Labadie Auto Company in Bay City, MI

Toyota Time Sales Event 2013

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted in this blog.  I need to start using it more.

Last week I created a custom page for the Toyota Time Sales Event (http://labadietoyota.com/Toyota-Time-Sales-Event-MI/) and for some reason it’s not showing up on Google.  The home page for the website is showing but not the landing/information page.

2013 Toyota Time Sales Event

Even though this site has been up and running for a while I think that most of the traffic has been directed to a different domain.  Like a lot of website owners I’m trying to get all the traffic back to one domain.  Gone are the days when exact match domains helped you rank with Google.  So no it’s a bit of a challenge to get all traffic going to one place.  This type of SEO strategy that worked for about a year is now causing me a lot of extra work and time.  I wish I had just been creating the content on one domain all along.

2012 GMC Terrain

The weather in mid-Michigan was very nice today.  My cell phone is showing 59 deg.  I didn’t want to stay cooped up in my windowless office all day and decided to get out and take a few pictures of some cars.  Following are a few of a 2012 GMC Terrain SLT-1 with Merlot Jewel exterior.  Pictures were taken at Labadie Buick Cadillac GMC in Bay City, MI.

2012 CTS-V Wagon Michigan

I went into work on Saturday to get some car pictures done.  Pulling into the parking lot I noticed a CTS-V Wagon parked by the clean-up department.  After some inquiry it came to my attention that this was going to be driven by the dealership owner starting in a few days.  This was my short window of opportunity to get some pictures of this CTS-V and to take it for a test drive.

The first very cool item I noticed was a g-force meter on the dash.  I had to test this out and headed toward the back parking lot.  It was fun speeding around in circles to see how high the meter would read.

The next test was the highway.  The CTS-V Wagon handled amazingly well on the bumpy Michigan roads even at high speeds.  The seats were comfortable and with the Cadillac set to performance driving mode the ride was still smooth.

If I had $70k to spend on a car this would be one of my first choices!  Do you live in Michigan and want to take the new CTS-V Wagon for a test drive?  Contact the professionals at Labadie Cadillac in Bay City.

Need car photography done in Michigan?  Contact David Defoe

Self Pictures

How do people get good pictures of themselves with a cell phone?  I can take good pics of other people but can’t seem to get any decent ones of myself.

Mid-Michigan Repair Collision

When doing SEO research I often find it interesting what google reporting tells me what keywords people use in search.

Today I had one of the shocking discoveries.  I am working with the auto body shop at Labadie in Bay City, Michigan and trying to figure out how to get more traffic to their portion of the website.

I figured that people would search for car crash repair.  Google tells me that 3,600 people per month search for that.  Not a big number lets continue.

“Car accident repair” = 8,100

“car body repair” = 60,500 searches

How about “collision repair”? 74,000 searches.  Really more people type collision repair that car body repair?

The numbers are getting better.  How about the really big numbers?  What is the #1 keyword that if I rank well for it would really drive traffic?

“auto body repair” = 165,000 searches per month. Ok now were getting some good numbers.

A search for “paint and body” shows 823,000 monthly searches.  Now there’s a key phrase I’d like to rank on the first page for!

Do you need paint and body work done in Michigan?  Contact Labadie!