Farm equipment manufacturer John Deere recently gave its dealer equipment sales Web site, MachineFinder.com, a much-needed upgrade, both in its own right and by integrating its content updating system with popular auction site eBay.
According to Deere's partners at KoMarketing, the original MachineFinder.com site was built on technology dating back to 1995, which was inhibiting traffic and limiting visibility. Other problems included:
- No keyword strategy was in place for improving rankings.
- There wasn't enough content to appeal to users and search engines.
- Equipment listings could not be indexed by search engines (they were only available for viewing using the site's built-in search).
- The site needed foreign-language content optimization.
- Search engine optimization (SEO) activities were being managed in-house with inadequate resources and training.
The result was a corresponding lack of sales opportunities, as dealer inventory was stuck in the digital equivalent of a cul-de-sac.
The new content management system will allow John Deere dealers to list their used agricultural and lawn and garden equipment on eBay using the same system as Machinefinder.com and Google Product Search.
This eBay extension gives Deere dealers another high-traffic, user-friendly outlet for moving inventory as it allows potential customers to search through Deere dealer inventories by location, zip code and equipment type.
And Deere's own equipment remarketing site has 50 new pages of content, support for 12 non-English languages and a vastly improved search ranking courtesy of an ongoing SEO campaign.
See Also
