Listing Your Used RV on the Internet - What Does this Mean?
Sunday, February 4th, 2007There is a common perception that once a used rv is listed with one website, than it is “listed on the Internet”, and that everyone using the internet looking for RV’s will now see it.
This is not the case.
There are millions of websites, and billions of web pages. Categorizing all of these pages are dozens of search engines, such as Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft Live, and Ask.com.
Each of these search engines uses different algorithims to rank websites and web pages. A search for “used rv’s” on Google, for instance, will turn up very different search results than the same search done on Ask.com.
Additionally, there is no one single term commonly used when searching for a used RV. Intead, thousands of different search terms are used, such as “rv classifieds”, “rv search”, “rv want ads”, “used rv’s for sale”, “recreational vehicle listings in AZ”. Each of these search terms used on the SAME search engine (such as Google) will ALSO lead to very different search results.
Due to the different search engines and the different search terms used, thousands of unique search result lists are generated, each of which may contain different websites, and/or websites ranked very differently. Top-ranked websites on one list might not turn up until many pages later on in another search results list.
What does this mean for the RV Seller? It means (1) that RV buyers are going to a number of different websites based upon their search results, and (2) that there is no “one” website that is visited by all rv purchasers.
At RV Listings Online, our RV’s are marketed on our website to those searching for RV’s, and, through 55-Alive! (www.55-Alive.com), a top-rated baby boomer website and retiree website, to those over age 50, the largest demographic of rv purchasers.
Although this coverage provides a fair amount of exposure to RV sellers, because the Internet is both tremendously large and fragmented, we nonetheless still urge RV sellers to consider listing with at least one other website, especially for expensive RV’s.
With a $50,000 RV, for example, listing on our websites and one or two other top sites can be done for about $150. This equates to a selling cost of only .3% of the RV sales price. As the sales price increases, this percentage declines (for a $150,000 RV it’s only .1%).
Even with three websites, these sales costs are low in comparison to the sales costs for other exepensive items, such as homes, where the selling costs can be 6% or more of the final sales price.
Ask yourself a question - will it be worth it to spend a little more money to ensure a broader coverage for marketing my RV?
