Limosine Rental

Recent studies indicate that 85% percent of consumers use search engines and directories to locate a particular service or product and 86% are searching with an intent to buy the desired product or service.

Now is the time for Limousine companies to consolidate their traditional advertising methods with online advertisements.

Here are some tips you may find useful:

YOUR WEBSITE: If your limousine company does not already have a website, make sure you hire a professional to design a website for your company. Your Limo company’s site should not only be pleasing and informative to the consumer eye, it should also be search engine friendly.

1. Make sure your site looks professional, is always functional, with good navigation and easy to load. No one likes to click on a site that does not come up, loads slow or hard to follow.
   
   
2. Before designing your site, target the market you wish to concentrate on, i.e. if your target market is the corporate market, your site should be as simple as possible with little or no graphics.
   
   
3. Make sure your site has all the important data, such as photos of your limousines and fleet, prices and anything else the consumer would look for. For faster access to your site, place smaller photos of your fleet and allow consumers to click on the smaller photo and view a larger version.
   
   
4. If you have been in business for numerous years, list this information on your site. Companies that have been in business for a number of years tend to earn the consumer’s trust.
   
   
5. Include testimonials from well known customers commenting on your services. Hearing from satisfied customers adds credibility to your company.
   
   
6. List your affiliations with any well recognized associations such as the The Better Business Bureau, The National Limousine Association and your local livery association. Memberships with such recognized associations also adds credibility to your business.
   
   
7. Provide forms to the consumer enabling them to request quotes or make reservations online. Be sure to check your emails at least once a day.
   
   
8. Respond to all consumer inquiries irrelevant of whether you are able to accommodate their need. Be brief and professional in your response.
   
   
9. Create an online brochure and email it to all consumers requesting additional information about your company.
   
   
10. If you intend to accept credit cards online, be sure to make your site secure, thus making the consumers comfortable that their private information will not be accessible to others.
    
    
11. Be sure your contact information such as phone, fax and email is listed on each and every page of your site.
    
    
12. Keep your site’s text brief and to the point. Research indicates that most consumers scan text rather than read the entire content.
    
    
13. Update your website by offering monthly specials, coupons, vouchers, or contests, i.e. have a wedding special of the month, offer a 10% discount for a certain time period, or give away a free limo ride.
    
    
14. Thank you letters to your customers asking them to comment on the service or fill out an online survey. This will not only enable you to improve your service, but will assist you in generating repeat traffic.
    
    
15. Store you client's email addresses so that you can inform them of upcoming specials and others news about your company.
    
    
16. To further enhance your limo company’s professional image, delvelop a signature file, also know as sig.file which is your electronic business card. Your Limo Company’s sig file should be attached at the end of all your emails and should contain the appropriate contact information, eg. Name, phone number, fax, email and URL. Be sure to make your sig.file as simple as possible and add a tag line, e.g. Sanfrancisco’s Premiere Limousine Service.
    
    
17. Cross promote your website using the traditional medial and print methods. Display your site’s URL on your various advertisement sources such as the yellow pages, your company’s vans and buses, your letter heads and business cards.

DOMAIN NAME: Choose a domain name that matches your service. Be sure to include the word limo, limos, limousines, limousine, sedan, tour, or other names relating to your service in your domain name. For example, if you provide limousine services in NY, NYLIMOS.COM would be an ideal name for your site.

SITE TITLE: The title of your website makes a difference in search engine rankings. The title should be your company and product’s name, i.e. New York’s premiere limousine service. According to Search Engine Optimization Services, your title should also be short, less than 40 characters.

PAGE TITLE: Give an appropriate name to each page of your title and make certain that the page title accurately reflects a description of the particular page. This is important for search engine submission.

KEYWORDS: Keywords and key phrases are very important in promoting your limo site through search engines. According to experts, your most important keywords and keyphrases should be in the page title and description. The most important is the first 200-250 characters of your page. Two excellent sources for finding the best keyphrases for your site are overture.com’s search suggestion page and Word Tracker.

SEARCH ENGINES/DIRECTORIES: Search engines use robots to locate and categorize sites on the web while directories use humans to do this task. If you have not already done so, be sure to submit your URLs to each major search engine and directory. Major directories are Yahoo, Open Directory and Snap. Yahoo is the most important directory and most used (61.9 of online consumers) according to recent studies. Yahoo also offers sponsored listing for $25 - $300.00 per month depending on the particular category. You must also be listed on Yahoo’s regular business listing in order to apply for sponsored listing. This generally costs $299.00. Looksmart (another major search engine) charges $299.00 to be listed on their network which includes other search engines such as MSN, Altavista, to name a few. In fact, most major search engines will ultimately charge businesses a fee for listing their sites.

Submit each page separately as each page has potential entry. If you have the time, you can learn website submission skills, otherwise, hire a professional to optimize and submit your site. There are great free services that will assist you in the submission process. One very informative site is www.selfpromotion.com.

LINKS: Promoting your site through links is another great method of getting high rankings in search engines. Google is one of the major engines that uses link popularity as a tool for site listings. Look for relevant sites related to your limousine service such as limo, wedding and travel sites; and ask them for a reciprocal link. While some sites provide you with free links, others with a large number of hits per day may charge you a fee to list your site.

BIDDING: Some search engines such as www.overture.com, formerly Goto
offer bids on certain keywords, so that if a consumer types in “Limo Service” into a searchbase, the highest bid for that particular keyphrase will be listed on top of their listings. Overture charges a minimum monthly fee of $20.00 with a minimum of 0.05 per click. Overture’s search results appear on major seach engines and directories such as AOL, Yahoo, Altavista, Netscape, and Infospace.

META INDEXES: Be sure and list your site with meta indexes which are huge lists of internet resources pertaining to a particular subject or category and are frequently used by consumers looking for a certain product or service. An example of meta indexes is the yellow pages or online shopping malls. Since the owners of metaindexes want to be the largest possible, they will most likely list your site for free. To find appropriate meta indexes for the limousine industry, couple your keywords (i.e. limo) with words such as directory, index, list, table resource or reference.