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Alex

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  1. Alex
    Sounds like you have the bundle. Do you have manager and prodemand/ondemand for repair? If so they sell the TeamWorks package at $229 plus $15 per additional user. Manager is $119 separate and Prodemand is $169 separate according to their website.
  2. Alex

    hello

    Alex replied to jethro29's topic in New Member's Area

    Welcome to AutoShopOwner 🙂
  3. Alex
    I'm not sure what the original post was about or in reference to, but thought I would use this as an opportunity to chime in on what @Hands On mentioned. To not logged in visitors, we only show the first post in each topic. You must be registered and logged in to view all posts within topics. It is difficult to screen everyone that registers but we try to do a good job when when we see something out of the ordinary or are notified by other members. Members should ideally be shop owners, techs who are looking to be shop owners, sponsors, industry writers/publishers and staff mostly with some exceptions. Now if anyone wants a private forum/closed off forum, lets say by invite only, you can easily do this by starting your own group and adding a forum to it. The forums can be open or completely off limits to others and by invite only. You may want to discuss topics that you don't want open to everyone, this is where creating your own group and adding a forum to it would come in. For more info, please see this topic 😁:
  4. Alex
    Google has a great informational page that outlines best practices to increase your website/business ranking in search results. Can’t find your business? Improve your info. You may find that your business doesn’t appear for relevant searches in your area. To maximize how often your customers see your business in local search results, complete the following tasks in Google My Business. Providing and updating business information in Google My Business can help your business’s local ranking on Google and enhance your presence in Search and Maps. Enter complete data Local results favor the most relevant results for each search, and businesses with complete and accurate information are easier to match with the right searches. Make sure that you’ve entered all of your business information in Google My Business, so customers know more about what you do, where you are, and when they can visit you. Provide information like (but not limited to) your physical address, phone number, and category. Make sure to keep this information updated as your business changes. Learn how to edit your business information Verify your location(s) Verify your business locations to give them the best opportunity to appear for users across Google products, like Maps and Search. Learn more about verification Keep your hours accurate Entering and updating your opening hours, including special hours for holidays and special events, lets potential customers know when you’re available and gives them confidence that when they travel to your location, it will be open. Learn how to edit your hours Manage and respond to reviews Interact with customers by responding to reviews that they leave about your business. Responding to reviews shows that you value your customers and the feedback that they leave about your business. High-quality, positive reviews from your customers will improve your business’s visibility and increase the likelihood that a potential customer will visit your location. Encourage customers to leave feedback by creating a link they can click to write reviews. Learn more Add photos Adding photos to your listings shows people your goods and services, and can help you tell the story of your business. Accurate and appealing pictures may also show potential customers that your business offers what they’re searching for. Learn more How Google determines local ranking Local results are based primarily on relevance, distance, and prominence. These factors are combined to help find the best match for your search. For example, Google algorithms might decide that a business that's farther away from your location is more likely to have what you're looking for than a business that's closer, and therefore rank it higher in local results. Relevance Relevance refers to how well a local listing matches what someone is searching for. Adding complete and detailed business information can help Google better understand your business and match your listing to relevant searches. Distance Just like it sounds–how far is each potential search result from the location term used in a search? If a user doesn't specify a location in their search, Google will calculate distance based on what’s known about their location. Prominence Prominence refers to how well-known a business is. Some places are more prominent in the offline world, and search results try to reflect this in local ranking. For example, famous museums, landmark hotels, or well-known store brands that are familiar to many people are also likely to be prominent in local search results. Prominence is also based on information that Google has about a business from across the web (like links, articles, and directories). Google review count and score are factored into local search ranking: more reviews and positive ratings will probably improve a business's local ranking. Your position in web results is also a factor, so SEO best practices also apply to local search optimization. There's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google. We do our best to keep the details of the search algorithm confidential to make the ranking system as fair as possible for everyone. Source: https://support.google.com/business/answer/7091?hl=en
  5. Alex
    This is an exclusive invitation to all AutoShopOwner members! You are invited to Elite's Employee Management Made Easy webinar on Tue, Feb 13, 2018 1:00 PM - 1:45 PM EST! Join Elite at this powerful course and you’ll see just how easy it is to improve employee morale, drive up productivity, and increase your profits. During this webinar you will learn… the key fundamentals of employee management proven tips on how you can improve employee morale how to deal with the most difficult employees
  6. Alex
    As fast as 24 hours in some cases if it's a policy violation. Google recommends responding to the review as a message back to the customer, if you haven't done that already. Google may have not seen the review as a policy violation in which case it's difficult to remove.
  7. Alex
    It's worth a shot to report it and dispute.
  8. Alex
    One of our sponsors will be doing a webinar for ASO members in the very near future. More info to come. I have to agree that this is probably happening at some level. Unfortunately I think facebook will cause many sites to change their strategies in order to compete, but that's inevitable. We are still seeing comparable YoY traffic here but new topic creation has dipped a bit. It's affecting many forums on the web and the only solution is differentiation from facebook groups.
  9. Alex
    Test how easily a visitor can use your page on a mobile device. Just enter a page URL to see how your page scores. Mobile is changing the world. Today, everyone has smartphones with them, constantly communicating and looking for information. In many countries, the number of smartphones has surpassed the number of personal computers; having a mobile-friendly website has become a critical part of having an online presence. If you haven't made your website mobile-friendly, you should. The majority of users coming to your site are likely to be using a mobile device. If you don't know if your website is mobile-friendly, take the Mobile Friendly Test now! If you used content management software like Wordpress to build you website, Check out our guide to customize your website software. If you don't use such software, consider hiring a web developer. We have a checklist of things to care about when doing so. If you're technical enough to do it yourself, check our Mobile SEO Guide. If you want to know more about the reasons why you should create a mobile-friendly website, read on! Why make a website mobile-friendly? The desktop version of a site might be difficult to view and use on a mobile device. The version that's not mobile-friendly requires the user to pinch or zoom in order to read the content. Users find this a frustrating experience and are likely to abandon the site. Alternatively, the mobile-friendly version is readable and immediately usable. In the USA, 94% of people with smartphones search for local information on their phones. Interestingly, 77% of mobile searches occur at home or at work, places where desktop computers are likely to be present. Mobile is critical to your business and will continue to be so – whether you’re blogging about your favorite sports team, working on the website for your community theater, or selling products to potential clients. Make sure visitors can have a good experience on your site when they’re visiting from their mobile devices! How do I start? The work involved in making a mobile-friendly site can depend on your developer resources, business model, and expertise. For an example of how a desktop site might be redesigned to work on mobile, see the following diagram: On a very basic implementation level, transitioning an existing desktop site to mobile entails using existing sections of content from the desktop site and organizing them in a mobile-friendly design pattern. For more information on the technical implementation of a mobile site, whether you hire a developer or do it yourself, see our docs on Mobile SEO. How much does it cost to build a site for mobile devices? The answer is... it varies! For example, here are some of the possibilities: Going mobile can be free if you can select a responsive template or theme for your website. A responsive template/theme adapts the display to the visitor no matter if they are using a desktop, tablet, or mobile phone. Going mobile can be free if you have the technical skills to build your mobile site. Check out Web Fundamentals! Going mobile will likely cost time and money if you need to hire a developer. Furthermore, if your website was created several years ago, a new developer might recommend starting from scratch (so you'll be paying for a complete makeover). This is because there are new web development techniques and themes (or page templates) that may make it more efficient to re-do -- rather than modify -- your site. This is especially the case for sites: Built with Flash Using outdated e-commerce platforms The good news is that if you start from scratch there may be an existing template/theme that your developer can utilize. You may be able to reuse your existing content which can hopefully save time and money. What are the next steps? If your site was made by selecting a template or theme from third-party website software, check out Customize Your Website Software for Mobile Users, which can be the fastest way to become mobile-friendly! If you're going to hire a web developer, check out our guide for hiring someone If you want more information on the mobile website implementation process, check out our docs on Mobile SEO. If you’re ready to build a mobile-friendly site, choose responsive web design. View our docs on Mobile SEO or go straight to Web Fundamentals and Principles of Site Design. If you’d like to learn more about making your business mobile-friendly, we recommend: The Mobile Playbook, Think with Google for the Mobile Platform, and Google’s Multi-Screen Success Stories. No matter which step you choose next, choose to go mobile!
  10. Alex
    Scott, you are coming up on the first page for 2 sites, nice job! I like the design, very cool. Looks like you are really doing some great work. If you want to hide some of the elements like your text box/link on desktops, you can hide it with custom css on certain screen sizes. Check out this tool to see what can be worked on to optimize your site http://nibbler.silktide.com/ since you are working on it yourself. It's not always possible to be perfect on everything but I find that its a good tool to see where improvements can be made with coding, optimizing images, social network ranking, etc.
  11. Alex
    Hi Mike, I took a quick peak at your site. Looks like a wordpress site. What are you looking at redoing? On a quick look, there are a few updates I would make. move it over to https:// add more h1,h2,h3, etc tags within the pages clean up some of the html Are you doing this yourself or is Automated Marketing Group listed in the footer managing this for you? Mobile is good, but some of the white text in front of the yellow drowns out a little. I personally prefer the logo more on top and in the header as the first thing the customer sees above the fold. I would make the header darker and move your logo up. Mobile and tablet below. Pages look well linked and you have a good reviews page. What type of traffic/feedback are you getting on your site? Would the second site be the same business name?
  12. Alex
    Thanks for posting. Topic moved to our new forum Shop Management Coaching, Business Training, Consulting
  13. Alex
    Topic moved to our new forum for Shop Management Coaching, Business Training, Consulting
  14. Alex
    I understand ☺️. If it's happening, hopefully it's only coming from Sponsor members and in a manner where its not overkill. I would like to know if not. Our sponsor members pay an annual fee which helps support our community and we allow them to mention their products and services. If it becomes overkill, then a mention is due. I would encourage our members to make sure it's a sponsor member if they see this happening and if not, to report the post. I would also invite members to visit our sponsor page to see who supports us here in that manner and give them a little leeway since they have taken the time to become a sponsor and see value in our community: Our Sponsors Believe it or not, it's some of our sponsors that report solicitations from non-Sponsors to us, which helps us in our attempts to keep the forum clean of a "free for all".
  15. Alex
    @Wheelingauto are you getting contacted on this site by people trying to sell you something? If you are getting solicited, just drop me a line. I tend to agree but it's gonna be a little bit as people migrate to "other than Facebook" platforms. Facebook is still very good for business and the most widely used site out there for connecting. Facebook groups are affecting participation on many online forums these days but some find they are getting new members from those that tend to move away from facebook to other networks. I'm not sure on the impact for ASO yet, but traffic has been steady here as it was a year ago and members join every week/day almost, it's not up and it's not down, many readers and less participants it seems. Registrations are steady. The days of sharing photos and experiences has moved over to facebook and forums have become destinations for support and "fine tuned" niche information. At the end of the day, I think it's all about the content and if its valuable to the reader/participant, whichever channel they can get it from...it's good to have the options in my opinion. The issue I see with running a facebook group is the fact that you don't own it, can't control the interface, and have no ownership over any of the data. Running your own site/platform, you can have complete control over every spec including the borders that surround these quotes...😎 I can't do that with facebook, you are stuck with what they give you and when they take it away. If someone here recommended something that was a great idea and others wanted, I would try to do it....can't do that on facebook 😒 I agree as well. I've been hoping facebook would introduce some sort of RSS or XML import into groups and then maybe I would start one for ASO to post topics and draw into our forums here like we do with regular posts on facebook and twitter, but that doesn't exists because you have no control and they don't want that, facebook wants to control the entire online experience. But we do have Facebook integration in terms of login and automatic posting of content to your facebook profile or page to share what you post on ASO. Anyone in your or other facebook group can click to autoshopowner and then just click the facebook login button and they'll automatically login here as a free member. If someone visited, while logged into facebook, this topic (and wasn't a member), they would see a box like the one below and could click the sign in with Facebook and automatically register and login, very easy to create an account here with your facebook, twitter, google, and linkedin info. Existing members can also link their social networks under account settings.
  16. Alex
    Merry Christmas!
  17. Alex
    Merry Christmas!
  18. Alex
    Here's what I see on that search term for page 1 Google. I do see your sites on page 2:
  19. Alex
    Sounds good, I look forward to hearing about your results. If you remove those slant pages, i would still redirect the domains to your main site pages so that anything you do get will get redirected.
  20. Alex
    You are on a great start! Good luck with your shop and let me know how you are making out. After you make some updates to your site, jump back into this topic and I'll be glad to take a look again. ☺️
  21. Alex
    So first off, I applaud your efforts because it takes a lot to do this and you have a good handle on troubleshooting your results and a good grasp of how organic search works. As far as the slant slides, they are ok as along as they aren't duplicating content and in most cases a one pager doesn't get the weight of a 5-10 page site because of the content. Domain redirects in my opinion are not worth much because Google will index the final destination on the site you redirect to and that will be duplicate content from the domain you are redirecting from. There are mixed feelings on keyword rich domain names where some feel they don;t hold the weight they used to and well optimized and unique content page is better. Some still feel that keyword rich domains are the way to go. I think it doesn't hurt but in the end content is king. http://audirepairrockville.com/ redirects to http://www.scottsautomotivemd.com/audi/ so you really are only getting indexed for http://www.scottsautomotivemd.com/audi/ and when I search for "audi repair rockville md" none of your sites come up in Google on the first page. My recommendation would be to heavily optimize this page for audi which I don't really see anywhere: http://www.scottsautomotivemd.com/audi/. It's currently listing text for volvo on the page and nothing about audi. List out Audi multiple times along with models and services and go from there. Same thing with http://www.scottsautomotivemd.com/bmw/ it's not optimized at all for BMW, it's like a duplicate page with volvo info. Mercedes, VW, and Mini pages on http://www.scottsautomotivemd.com as well. Make it unique and custom content to that manufacturer and you'll get higher rankings. Do the same for your other manufacturer pages and I think you'll see some more clicks. A few other tips: 1. Have Kukui or your host switch to SSL(https) and redirect all http pages to https. Make sure an htaccess redirect is in place. If using webmaster tools in google and bing, update your site to https 2. Have them also create a sitemap for your pages and add it to webmaster tools in google and bing if one doesn't already exist. 3. If you are going to keep those additional domains, consider small (unique) sites for each, 3-5 pages. In the footer of each website, have links to each of the sites so that they link to each other. These sites could be informational with service tips and other content with an appointment for service redirect to your main site. But adding content that is as unique as possible is key to having them picked up by search engines and indexed. Remember, a redirected domain a user would have to type the domain in the address bar because more than likely they will not find it in organic search. With all of your sites, link them from other sites like facebook, twitter, local business listings, etc. External links help with ranking. It's hard to really see where you are with SEO without analytics, so you may know some of this already...Hope this helps and keep me posted on how it goes. Good case study on having additional websites!
  22. Alex
    Hi Scott, both sites looks good. Your Kukui site should be giving you analytics, so I'd be curious to know how it's performing for you. Your wordpress site (volvo) looks to be running the latest version which is good. Is Kukui doing that one also? When I search for "volvo service Rockville, MD" or "volvo auto repair Rockville, MD" your volvo site does not come up on the first page or in google business listings. Are you listing that site as a separate business listing in google? Your other site does come up (Kukui). Are you getting traffic to your volvo site or is that something you recently put up using wordpress? When I search for your volvo site with "volvo service Maryland, DC" or "volvo auto repair Maryland, DC" your site doesn't come up on the first page of google or business listings. Your kukui site, I like what they do with reviewsyou may want to see about having the phone number clickable, especially in the mobile version. Your wordpress site is mobile friendly, but I would add a clickable phone number and maybe think about adding a volvo logo somewhere on your main image or somewhere above the fold. Without reading the text, i quickly see Scott's Automotive but no images about what you specialize in with this site, that a logo could correct. I do like the idea of branding with multiple websites, especially for niches. However, you can probably accomplish what you want by creating a volvo dedicated section with volvo rich keywords on your http://www.scottsautospec.com/ website. Kukui manages that for you and I would have them add a Volvo Service page under your services tab to test it out. When I search for "scotts automotive rockville md" I get your business listing which includes your volvo website and not your main site. But in the organic search results I get your http://www.scottsautospec.com website results. I would change your business listing to include http://www.scottsautospec.com or add another one and differentiate a bit. Here's what I see: Is Kukui incorporating Google and Yelp reviews or are the reviews on your site generated only from visitors to your site? Looks like you are investing in your online presence, which is good to see. Maybe think about either combining or differentiating more between the two sites as two separate channels.
  23. Alex
    Congrats on the new shop! Looks like you are running a wordpress site, which is good and gives you an admin panel to customize content. You still have a lot to work on in terms of content and when you do that, make sure your page titles don't read "auto repair website" but instead auto repair for the area (town/city) you are in or targeting. On large screens and desktops, your header and main navigation bar is floating, which is ok but you've got some image overlap at the bottom and its a bit confusing. You may want to take a look at that and when you scroll, maybe fix your logo to the navigation bar so you are always branding. You site is mobile-friendly, but you seem to have the some header/main navigation overlap which I would take a look at. Your header cuts off your address also on your blogs page and I would consider a link to a map and clickable phone number to your shop. Wordpress has a lot of great plugins and tools but you need to keep the script updated. You can also optimize for search engines with plugins, but think about the sections you want to add and create keyword rich content. Maybe add a services page with some sub-pages, and unless you are planning to write a blog or articles for your customers, I would remove that page. Overall, good start if you are doing this on your own. If not, get your designer/webmaster to complete it and come back and I'll take a look again. It looks like it's not quite finished. 😁
  24. Alex
    I often use GTmetrix to evaluate speed and optimization opportunities. This really comes to play for shops who are using wordpress, as its a script that utilizes a database, so optimizing output is essential for user experience. Static pages should be cached and there are things you can do to increase page load times. Remember, you may have high internet speeds and see your site load faster because your browser has cached your page, but do new visitors get the same experience? Take a 5 minute check to see. https://gtmetrix.com/
  25. Alex
    I've started a shop website group and everyone is welcome to join, if you like. If you post your site in my group, I will look it over and offer feedback. 👍

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