Alex

How was your overall shop performance in 2018 vs 2017? Please take a moment to vote in our poll. Feel free to discuss results in this topic or start a new topic in Business Talk - How's your shop doing?

If you are looking for an inexpensive option, I like zmodo for the price and features. The meshare app is pretty good. I use the cameras at my house. The ones below are outdoor but can be used inside, have 1080p and night vision. At $400 for 8 cameras with repeater, hard drive and NVR, its a good deal. This is on amazon. The indoor ones are good and have an intercom feature where you can speak into it. Here's a mix of 4 outdoor and 2 indoor:

Topic moved to - Shop Insurance, Regulations, Legal Issues Forum

Topic moved to our new forum - Buying a Repair Shop, Partnerships, Business Deals

Topic moved to our new forum - Buying a Repair Shop, Partnerships, Business Deals

Topic moved to our new forum - Buying a Repair Shop, Partnerships, Business Deals

Merry Christmas!

We've created this section here for you to post your shop website. This is a great way to get some feedback and suggestions from your peers. Please post relevant automotive shop websites only. Any posts including non automotive shop websites will be moderated and removed. Thank you.

Interesting article on Search Engine Journal about the importance of business reviews. Your business listing is prompted up with more positive reviews which is especially important for local area search. Google Local Search Study: Businesses on First Page Have an Avg. 4.4 Star Rating Businesses ranking on the first page of Google local search results have an average review rating of 4.42 stars. This information was revealed in a recent study from BrightLocal which examines Google reviews and how they relate to local rankings. A high star rating was found to strongly correlate with better rankings in Google search. Businesses ranking in the top 3 positions are more likely to have an average star rating of 4-5 stars (64% of businesses have 4-5 stars). Out of those ranking in positions 7-10 59% of were found to have a 4-5 star rating. Only 20% of businesses in positions 1-3 were found to have no Google reviews, compared to 26% of businesses in positions 7-10. Those numbers stress the importance of having a favorable star rating when it comes to ranking well in Google local search. Positive reviews send signals to Google that the business is trustworthy and provides a good experience for customers. Therefore, Google will be more likely to direct people toward those businesses when searching for what they offer. Other Key Findings from the Study Only 5% of businesses have an average star rating below 3 stars Photographers, alternative therapy businesses, and marketing services have the highest average star ratings Senior living services, car dealerships, and hotels have the lowest average star ratings Bars, restaurants, and hotels are the industries that are most likely to have Google Reviews Accountants are the least likely industry to have reviews on Google Results from this study are based on the analysis of 93,000 businesses’ Google reviews in 26 industries. Another recent study from Moz further illustrates the growing importance of Google My Business signals in local search results. Article: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-local-search-study-businesses-on-first-page-have-an-avg-4-4-star-rating/279895/

@xrac Your find is actually #16 on this list... https://www.hotcars.com/strange-things-found-in-tires/

A few online resources to create coupons and are relatively easy to use: https://spark.adobe.com/make/coupon-maker/ https://www.canva.com/create/coupons/ https://www.couponler.com/ * Moved to Marketing, Advertising, & Promoting Forum

@HemiHondo did you make this yourself with Godaddy website builder? I like the colors, but the site itself itself is very basic. There are a bunch of things going on if you intend to rank better in search engines, that you would need to do. If you only want an informational page or two, it's good enough.

Oil filters are one of those important parts categories that every shop usually stocks, to turn bays faster and offer an oil change service as a way to capture needed maintenance and repairs. What is your preferred brand of oil filters and why? Are you stocking oil filters in your shop? How do you keep your inventory stocked and updated if you do? Who is your oil filter supplier and why? Are you using a standard or premium oil filter on average? If you service trucks, are you using Heavy Duty filters; Baldwin, Fleetguard, Luberfiner, etc.?

Automotive Batteries What is your preferred brand of automotive batteries and why? Who is the supplier of that brand to you? What are the battery series that are available in that brand, and what are the warranties? Who manufactures your choice of battery?

@Pete K around SEO, you should think about running SSL/HTTPS and definitely optimizing for mobile, having your site designed to be responsive. Looks like its built with Google sites, which should have some options there if you are doing it yourself. As far as on page SEO...run your url through an online testing site like: https://www.seotesteronline.com/ then make some edits. @autobodyguys looks good but I would think about moving over to https/ssl, otherwise your visitors will get a message in their browser telling them it's not secure like: @wilfredo celedon looks good but same thing: One thing I noticed when your site resizes for mobile, I would make the phone number clickable to bring up the mobile phone's dialer and the phone icon in the footer, rather than link to the contact page, have that link to the phone dialer as well. The link should be changed to something like: <a href="tel:559-495-0319">559-495-0319</a>

Congrats!

The landscape definitely has changed to incorporate more ads and reviews on search pages so google can make for ad revenue. The reality is that the more ads and suggestions that are running for a particular keyword or phrase, the lower your organic results will be on the search page. Google being by far the #1, it's important to make sure you are listed and listed in a way that makes your business and website pages more relevant than your competitor's web pages. A website alone these days doesn't always cut it, really depends on the area you are in and how many competitors there are. Google business listings are extremely important and not only having a business listing, but having positive reviews which will push your listing up. Nowadays you have to have more than just a great website, you need up-to-date business listings (hours, phone, text, holidays, reviews, pictures, products,. services, specials,, etc.), positive reviews from all sources, continues social network activity with back-links to your site, a website well designed for mobile with up-to-date coding with on page SEO/Content and also run Google ads if you can squeeze it into your budget. Positive online reviews are a big driver of traffic these days for small businesses.

There are many different website services, packages, and programs available when choosing the right company/webmaster for your auto repair business. You can sign up to a service that provides a robust website, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), analytics, marketing services, social network management, integrations, etc. You can also sign up for much simpler solutions which usually only include a website and some SEO. You can also try to use an online website builder to get yourself online with something very basic, which is better than nothing. So many different option and they all have their associated costs. In some cases there are initial startup costs as well. In most cases however, there are monthly costs associated with operating a business website. Please take a moment and share, if you would like, about your website costs and associated services. Please also take a moment to answer a few quick question in the attached poll. Thank you.

Great to hear, thanks!

The actual news story on that is below. It worth a check to make sure your account is getting your payments, and in general its not usually an issue until you get an individual like this that tries to steal from his customers.

Hopefully the topic email will be a little better categorized moving forward. It does get quieter in the summer every year and it really depends on member participation, which includes starting new topics and replying to existing ones to keep content fresh and going. We keep it very open here and at any time if anyone has any suggestions for forum category layout or additional features, please start a topic in our member feedback forum which I will move this topic to. 😁

I've been watching this topic and appreciate the feedback. We definitely have an opportunity to send out the weekly newsletter/digest more refined I suppose. What happens is that the the topics that are listed in the email are the latest NEW topics and most of the ones that are started/created are by sponsor members who pay to be able to post in our forums and support the community. Here are our membership packages: https://www.autoshopowner.com/store/category/1-membership-packages/ That being said, we are going to change around the weekly email a bit starting this Sunday and break out the topics from the two forums where most of the marketing/coaching emails tend to reside and put them into their own block within the email. In addition to that, the new forum topics will now include new and updated topics, which should provide for a better read of activity when you open the email.

Wonder how it holds up, looks like they sell a lot of these on ebay for @ $50. Good luck with it and please share your feedback when you get it 😁

Topic moved to Automotive Shop Tools & Equipment forum. 😁 I would go with the Cheetah but watch out for knockoffs. Search around online. Amazon has it for under $200.

Indeed has become more popular in some cases than monster and careerbuilder, it’s worth a try 😁