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!

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.

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. 😁

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/

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. 👍

Initially I was not for leaving this link up to a facebook group, but if it can help shop owners I am ok with it. We obviously would like community interactions to stay on our platform here, but do recognize that shops may need multiple support group channels 😉

Elf on the Shelf comes to our daughters right around now!

Google has a great tool that allows you to check the mobile "friendliness" of your website. Just enter your website url at Google dedicated page: https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly You should get something like: If you don't, time to look into updating your website 😁

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

As a member of AutoShopOwner, you can manage the types of notifications that we provide you for when things happen here, either via email or when you login and view your notifications list (the bell icon). For instance, when you start a new topic in a forum or reply to an existing topic, you are automatically subscribed to receive a notification when new content is posted. That can happen by email or not, depends on how you want to receive it. To get to your notifications management section, first go to Account Settings Then go to Notification Settings There you will see some your current preference settings for overall delivery method, follow preference, browser notifications, etc. Scroll down and you'll see individual notification settings where you can pick and choose how you are notified. For email, an email is sent every time that action takes place based on your delivery method above. For Notification List, every time an action takes place, it will be listed in your notifications panel under the little bell icon. One more setting we have is for our weekly newsletter, which includes a list of topics and activity from the week. You can opt in and out from your account settings as well. If you haven't taken a look at your settings yet, we encourage you to check it out. 😃

We had a third party server issue with our chat that has been corrected now. We apologize for the inconvenience.

We've added a tab for HOME in our main menu when logged in, which takes you to our home page and same place you would get to by clicking our logo. To make things a bit easier to navigate, we've included 2 rows of Quick Links to help you find important sections and for new members that are learning our site. 😀

Yes both unread content and fluid forum view default to the most recent activity and will show you the topics that have the most recent posts at the top. You can sort it anyway you like because the unread content link is essentially an activity stream. You can create your own activity stream and sort it the way you want as mentioned above. Below is a screenshot of the fluid forum view and by default it loads forum topics with the most recent replies. I highlighted the time stamps to show. I would try this view out as it's very close to what you are looking for and you can filter out the forums you don't want to see topics from as well.

It's been a while since I made a blog entry so I've decided that I am going to start to add entries around using AutoShopOwner and things that may be of interest. For this entry, I'd like to showcase our Activity tab in the main menu and try to describe how you can use it and some of our other views to bring up the content that you want to see vs viewing everything. Today we have a few ways of seeings what's new from your last visit and content in general. UNREAD CONTENT You can click the Unread Content link towards the top right and that'll give you all your "unread" content since your last visit. It's also available under Activity Streams (next section). Some people love this feature on forums and it's handy for frequent visitors, but can be a very long list if you haven't been here in a while. At any given time you can "Mark site read" and it'll show everything as being read. You can even mark topics and full forums as read (stops topic titles from being bold because bold means unread) ACTIVITY STREAMS Click on the Activity section from the main menu and you'll see a link for All Activity, My Activity Streams, and Search. This is where you can really tailor your view of content that you want to see. Start with one of our default streams or give a shot at creating your own stream to show only what YOU want to see! FLUID FORUM VIEW If creating your own Activity Stream isn't for you and you like to just go to the main page of the forum and see what's going on, then Fluid View may be for you. You can toggle between Fluid and Traditional views easily by clicking on the layout button. You can also customize which forums will show topics by clicking on the "Showing topics from all forums" link. Hopefully this explains some of the ways we have available for our members to get to the content they want to see and stay updated. If all else fails, just use the search box at the top of the page!

@steve fox I took a quick peak at your website and I can tell you that your wordpress theme hasn't been updated in a while and I would suggest adding some SEO plugins and a little work on optimizing the content. For instance, your site was built using WordPress 3.4.2 which was released September 2012. The platform is currently at version 4.8.2. I see a lot of outdated wordpress themes that were built and never updated. Your page titles and content need to be optimized as well. Update your site and optimize it, and you should be able to crawl up the search rankings.. 😁

You can also check out this ongoing topic on SMS systems 👍

Topic moved to Marketing, Advertising, Promoting Forum.

I have added a 2nd weekly event for Wednesday night chats, open to any members. I'll get on to see if anyone joins and we'll see if it start something and then hopefully pass it off. I'll also send a note out to everyone this week for both Sunday and Wednesday group chat sessions. 😁

Assuming you guys mean video, because the chat we have is the same as most chats out there currently in terms of speed, functions, and usability....I'm not sure we can effectively do video without some third party integration. Something to think about down the road. As far as promoting, we can try and send a different message out regarding chat and put something up to advertise it better.

Thank you for posting this casting call. I changed your topic title to Garage Rehab Casting - Discovery Channel

@Capital our new chat has the ability to set up multiple rooms. Currently we have a general room and a Sunday night chat room. I can easily add a room for another day or if anyone would like to create a group for lets say a Tuesday chat, you can easily just create a group in the groups section and add your own chat room as well. Also, in our weekly topic email we include a blurb about Sunday night chats where we can easily add another day to see if it catches on. Just let me know if there is interest or PM me. 😁

Topic moved to Automotive Shop Tools & Equipment forum.

Today we added a new option to view the main page of the forum in a fluid view. This view will list out the latest topics (similar to the sidebar latest topics). If you click on the "Showing topics from all forums" link (highlighted in yellow below), you can filter which forums you would like to see topics from. You can easily switch back to the classic table forum view at any time. The 2 buttons are right next to the start new topic button. Filter your view by forums:

We've launched a new section here at AutoShopOwner called Groups. You'll see the section link in our main menu. We've had some requests in the past to have the ability to start specific forum sections and group sections within our forums and this not only addresses that, but also gives you the ability to start your own "mini" AutoShopOwner based on basically whatever you want. Our Premium, Platinum, and Sponsor members can all be group creators. All FREE members can join groups, but it's up to the Group creator on who is allowed in, who is invited, etc. Group creators can also assign moderators and control aspects of the group. Our Platinum and Sponsor members have the added ability of creating closed/private groups as well. This can be a great way to start your own network. At any time, you can upgrade your membership here. Once you create a group, you can add a topics section (just like our main forum), chat section (same as regular chat), blogs, downloads, gallery, etc. It's really up to the group creator on how to lay it out and it's simple to do. Once you create a group, it will be approved by us within 24 hours and you'll be ready to go. I'm going to leave it at that for now and encourage anyone that is interested in this, to go ahead and try to start a group. You'll see how easy it is. In the very near future I am going to be starting a blog around AutoShopOwner features, as we have a lot of them...😎