I did a quick search for a common keyword in the philly area 'ford trucks philly' in google. The third result is craigslist, which is probably what I would want if I were looking for many ford truck listings in the area.

In this case, I'm looking for a car dealer. The last result on the page is actually a dealer's cobalt site: Echelon Ford, Stratford, NJ, Philadelphia, South Jersey, Explorer, F150, Mustang, 500, F250, Escape, Expedition More than likely google picked up on 'ford' and 'truck' in the first paragraph of the site (and 'ford' in the domain name) and philly in the page title. While that's great, the site doesn't make me want to buy a ford truck.

I changed the search term to '"ford trucks" philly'. The relevant result is in the #4 spot. An izmo site: Commercial Sale - Pacifico Cars, Ford Mazda & Hyundai Cars dealer in Essington Avenue Philadelphia, (PA) Again, the first paragraph is what got it listed there. The page is geared more towards commercial sales, but it does get you the information you may be looking for, and a contact. The only thing it's missing is a link to the truck inventory.

Unfortunately it's hard to find a good site that has the best of both worlds; One that is search engine friendly & optimized and captures leads.

I think the flash based sites out there may do a good job with getting leads, but when there's no text for the search engines to spider, how are leads getting to the site? That's an extra charge for SEO, when IMO it should already be built into the already expensive site. The opposite could be said for the cheaper txt based sites.

Many 'web 2.0' sites already have optimization built in. Blogging sites rank high because they are built correctly. Imagine if car dealer sites were built to this same standard. ROI would increase. I honestly don't think car dealers blogging about their cars (on separate sites) is the solution. Now a car dealer site that is setup like a blog would be even better.