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It’s hard to believe that it’s been nearly 10 years since we launched the Powersports Industry’s first online reputation management solution. In that time, we’ve systematically generated over 160,000 authentic customer reviews for hundreds of dealers in every corner of the country and aggregated them on www.powersportsdealerlocator.com. Way back then, we were a little ahead of our time with only the most progressive dealers understanding the importance of their online reputation. Fast forward to today, thanks to Amazon, Google, Facebook, and others and every astute dealer understands the need for an online reputation management solution.

But, the lay of the land continues to evolve and there are still many misunderstandings about the importance of consistently earning reviews for your dealership. One of them is SEO (Search Engine Optimization). When we first entered the website business and launched Firestorm Websites, we didn’t offer a separate SEO package as most of the other providers did. This is because we felt so strongly that we engineered SEO local business best practices into our platform. Things like link signals, on-page signals, GMB signals, Schema, etc. And I’m pleased to report that our Firestorm Website clients are experiencing excellent, and in most cases a boost in, traffic and leads compared to previous providers; validating that our architecture is on point.

But what we didn’t predict was that there would be an influx of digital marketing firms using cheap “ambulance chaser” type tactics in an attempt to scare dealers into using their services. This is what I’m talking about… I get one or two of these types of emails a week:

Hello firestormwebsites.com,

My name is Patrice Barnes, and I represent a California based company.

I was on your firestormwebsites.com and found certain issues on the design and development area which might be one of the reasons for the bounce rate and the decreased traffic on your firestormwebsites.com.

Here, I have two plans for you.

Remove all the technical issues on your firestormwebsites.com, make it SEO Friendly and promote the same to improve your online visibility and attract more traffic.

Redesign your firestormwebsites.com altogether making it SEO friendly from the start and promote the same.

If this is something you are interested in, please revert back so that we can communicate further and proceed on the mission to improve your firestormwebsites.com rank and its online visibility.

I’d be happy to send you our package, pricing and past work details, if you’d like to assess our work.

Waiting for your response.

Best Regards, 

Patrice Barnes, Digital Marketing Specialist

Well, shame on Patrice. This is completely bogus and whoever is behind this nonsense is a complete low life. While we do own that URL it isn’t even a live site and is redirected to PSMMarketing.com/Firestorm-Websites. This person has certainly never visited this site as they claim. It’s just a variable templated email that they are using to illegally spam businesses. It’s bogus and its BS. And what’s also BS is the obscure and manipulative tactics they use to prove your site isn’t performing. I should probably clarify; these tactics aren’t used by our competitors in the powersports industry (at least that I’m aware of). It’s outsiders and other fake businesses who are willing to stoop to this nonsense. 

Here’s what these bums wouldn’t ever tell you. While Google is quite secretive about their search algorithms, one thing we do know is that 3rd party online reviews rank in the top 5(!) most important factors in local SEO.

The local search experts at Moz concluded this in their most recent study, noting a 21.5% increase in importance from the same study conducted in 2015. This validates that online reviews are continuing to trend upwards in their importance for local business. Dealers can spend hours, days and even months analyzing their inbound anchor text, citation volume, page load speed, and hundreds of other SEO components that these unethical ‘Digital Marketing Specialists’ claim are causing site issues, or dealers can just go out and consistently and ethically harvest new reviews and out rank their local competitors the right way to boost quality local site traffic. 

This is why ongoing and consistently harvesting new reviews is a journey and not a destination. Rankings aren’t just based on the number of reviews and ranking, but also the recency of reviews. 

With this in mind, we’ve just rolled out a brand new feature on our Firestorm Websites that is an industry first. We’re integrating our reviews platform with our website platform to create amazing SEO and compelling social proof of your customers doing business with you and being displayed on your website. It’s in beta right now, and we’re looking for a few good dealers to help us pilot this exciting new feature. If you’re interested give us a call at 877-242-4472 or shoot us an email at marketing@psmmarketing.com