If you are reading this article, you probably are aware of just how competitive the automotive business can be, and you are looking for ways to give yourself a business edge over your competitors. It’s easier said than done of course, there are many factors come into play when you want to out perform your competitors. One of the most commonly forgotten areas in this technology race is the proper usage of SEO or “Search Engine Optimization” techniques to out rank your competitor on Google. We all want to be the first on the list when it comes to your own business, but getting there in cyber space is not quite the same as in the real world. If your business is relatively new or your domain age is relatively short, you probably have very little exposure on Google when your target key phrase is searched. But with proper SEO applied and little patience you can change all that for the better.

You, like many other dealer principles probably hired a web developer or firm to design your web site to be as flashy as possible, but over usage of graphics and flashy headers can actually hurt your Google ranking. Because the Google bots treat flash files and graphics as a block of blank content, having a web site that is heavy on graphic elements will translate to confusing Google of your business model and poor search results.
Another good reason to minimize on flash and graphics is due to the size of the files; generally speaking flash files are heavy on size, which in turn will delay the transmission time from your server to the client’s computer. With today’s high speed modems you may not notice this issue until you are using a dial up to connect to your web site, remember there are still many people in the world that is still on dial up modem access to the Internet. If you must have the flash or graphic files on your web site, you should use the proper “ALT” tags to explain to Google what the files are all about. Using the ALT tag in your HTML on images will index your image into Google image search. This can be a surprising source of traffic when you look at your overall exposure.

Hire the right SEO company to optimize your web site, make sure they have good references and solid customer service. SEO can be very touchy subject, without proper knowledge of this type of work can actually hurt your ranking rather than boosting it. Make sure your SEO firm is using good or “White hat” SEO practices where they are building your inbound links by hand, and by human. There are short cuts in the SEO world where you can run certain scripts to generate hundreds of inbound links in hours. Google is more intelligent than you think; having Google thinking you are using “Black hat” or hacker’s approach to PageRank can literally be a death sentence to your web site as well as your online business.

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FIG. 1 is a vertical sectional view showing a clearance lamp to which a first embodiment of the present invention is applied;
FIG. 2 is a partly cut away perspective view of a lamp body of the clearance lamp shown in FIG. 1;
FIGS. 3A, 3B, 3C and 3D are views for explaining steps of unitarily attaching a gasket to a seal leg;
FIG. 4 is a vertical sectional view showing a clearance lamp to which a second embodiment of the present invention is applied;
FIG. 5 is a sectional view showing a conventional automotive leds ; and
FIG. 6 is a sectional view of an essential part of another conventional automotive lamp.

FIG. 5 is a vertical sectional view showing a conventional automotive lamp of the type as disclosed, for example, in Unexamined Japanese Patent Publication No. Hei. 3-15748. The conventional automotive lamp shown in FIG. 5 includes a lamp body 1 which is formed on a back wall thereof with a seal leg 2 projecting therefrom for surrounding a bulb insertion hole 2 and a gasket 8 disposed between the seal leg 2 and an automobile body panel 6. Both a front and a rear side of the gasket 8 have a respective high adhesive surface so that the gasket 8 sticks both to the seal leg 2 and the automobile body panel 6. In the figure, reference numeral 3 designates a front lens and a reference numeral 4 designates lamp bulb.

FIG. 6 is a sectional view of an essential part of another conventional automotive lamps . As shown in FIG. 6, a gasket 8A is formed like an endless web a cross section of which is U-shaped. An adhesive agent is applied, if desirable, to a tip end of the seal leg 2 so that the gasket 8A sticks to the seal leg 2.

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DMS system or “Dealer Management System” refers to the complete packaged software that can run your automotive business. From printing service invoices to manage internet sales, from inventory management all the way to accounting and payroll. It is suppose to be the comprehensive system that is able to run a dealership all in one. But the software vendors in the market place are often poorly developed and hopelessly outdated. Many of the DMS or even the CRM solutions out there can be unnecessarily over complicated and redudant. Trying to enforce certain processes in the automotive business often leads to overwhelming human errors, and counter productive system glitches.  If you can take some time out for a little research, you should ask your support staff just how many functions of your DMS system they are truly using on a daily basis. Or better yet, pick a random function in your DMS system and quiz your staff on it. If your dealership support staff are only using a small fraction of your current DMS system, don’t you think it is a complete waste of money and time to have these over complicated system that is never put into use? If your DMS system require intense user training on top of that, don’t you think you are using the wrong system all together? Perhaps you are creating unnecessary obstacles for your business that is separating the meaning of team work.

A poorly deployed or developed DMS system can actually cost your dealership more money and time in comparsion to a well developed system. Don’t over complicate the simple process of selling a car. Focus your energy on selling cars not to have a seemly complicated system that is full of bugs, and not user friendly at all. If you have a system that can do what you are looking to do with just few simple clicks, don’t you think it is a lot more efficient to manage? When it comes to used car business the biggest challenge is to manage your inventory effectively, your DMS system should help you in this task to make your inventory organized and easy for access, not to create unnecessary obstacles to print, export and publish your inventory to sales staff. So the next time you hear the sales pitch for a CRM or DMS solution remember to ask these questions other than the cost.

This article is brought to you by Dealer Elite CRM your affordable automotive DMS and CRM solution for Canadian dealers. We are your complete web design, hosting an CRM solution all in one. For more details on our product or a video walk through of the system please visit us online at http://www.dealertemplate.ca or http://www.dealerelites.ca

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