The Product and Catalog Showcase remains one of the most cost-effective ways to advertise in SEMA News, helping members reach more customers specific to the specialty-equipment market.

By SEMA Editors

Generate buzz for your products and services by participating in the 2013 SEMA News Product and Catalog Showcase featured in the June issue of SEMA News.

The Product and Catalog Showcase remains one of the most cost-effective ways to advertise in SEMA News, helping members reach more customers specific to the specialty-equipment market. Only offered twice per year in the June and November issues of SEMA News, guarantee yourself a spot in this highlighted showcase and boost your branding efforts!

Simply provide a four-color image of your new product or your catalog cover, along with about 75 words of text, and we'll build a 1/6-page ad for you. The cost is $250. Space is limited, so don't delay.

To get started, contact Brian Paik at 909-978-6677 or Monica Terlouw at 909-978-6695.

View the online version of the 2012 SEMA News Product & Catalog Showcase, featured in the November 2012 issue of SEMA News. 

SEMA News—April 2013

INTERNET
By Joe Dysart

Your Strategy for 2013

Search-Engine Optimization

The single most critical factor to search-engine optimization (SEO) success is creating amazing content—‘share-worthy’ content that is so useful, meaningful and interesting to your target audience that they want to consume it, share it with their own audiences and talk about it,” said Susan Gunelius, author of Content Marketing for Dummies.

SEO is critical to the success of your business, given that websites not optimized for search engines are generally much less trafficked—and often all but forgotten. With SEO, you’ll give your website the best chance possible to be found by the search engines and also the customers you’re looking to acquire.

“If you publish amazing, share-worthy content, people will share it with their own audiences across the social web, which leads to more incoming links to your site and more traffic,” Gunelius added. “People will stumble upon shared links to your content on social networks, social bookmarking sites, Pinterest, Twitter and so on, and they’ll click through to read it. If they like it, they might share it even further.”

Indeed, share-worthy content also often gets covered on blogs, which results in even more “quality” links back to your business site, Gunelius said. “Over time, your site develops tons of quality incoming links that are vital to boosting your site’s authority and search-engine traffic. Again, look at it through a long-term lens rather than a short-term one.” 


Jon Rognerud, founder of Small Business SEO, agreed. “Assuming you have a foundation, the most important thing you can do for SEO success today is ‘content creation plus content marketing,’” he said. “Some may not call this search-engine optimization, but really, SEO is all about building pages and content for the best user experience.”

SEO experts said that the new emphasis on “share-worthy content” has been rolling out during the past year as Google has tweaked its search engine to punish websites that use digital tricks to appear more popular and important than they really are. Essentially, businesses that heed Google’s crusade to rid the web of posers—and provide regular, fresh content that is truly valuable to the web—should do well on search engines. Those that persist in the digital black arts will not fare as well, the experts said.

“The old tactics of blog spamming, random social bookmarking and spinning content for article directories and blogs are dead,” Rognerud said. 


Moreover, Google has been giving higher ratings to businesses and other websites that are heavily involved in social media—a trend the SEO experts expect to continue for the foreseeable future. The upshot: Getting good rankings on the search engines is becoming more about creating an authentically interesting and valuable business website and less about how good you are at cyber trickery.

SEO Do’s

	The old tactics of SEO are dead, said Jon Rognerud, founder of Small Business SEO.

While the practice of SEO can seem daunting at first, experts said that business sites should do well on the search engines if they follow these basic best practices:

Create Share-Worthy Content: SEO experts recommend at least three posts per week, which ideally should include gripping text, stunning images and irresistible video. If you’re not a natural-born digital entertainer, consider hiring a good copywriter with graphics skills.

Get Social: For starters, join Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and Pinterest. Those are currently the Big Five social networks. Interact successfully and regularly on those, and you should see better returns on search engines.

Nail SEO Minutia: Proper keywords, page titles, tags and the like are the SEO fundamentals upon which all other SEO is based. It’s tedious, technical work—and it pays off. For a great guide on getting the techie stuff right, check out Google’s SEO Starter Guide.

Solicit Quality Links: Google is heavily rewarding business sites that have links from other extremely popular and valuable websites. Try to score as many links from these types of sites as possible. One way is to offer to guest blog for a popular site in exchange for a link back to your business site.

SEO-Optimize All Video: Web-marketing experts said that the future of the web is video—in the sense that most people logging onto the web will be consuming video more than any other medium. Google has seen the writing on the wall and is heavily rewarding business sites that optimize video properly. “Video optimization is one of the fastest ways for visibility in Google results,” said Small Business SEO’s Rognerud. For a guide, Google “SEO optimize video.”

Use Google Analytics: This is a free, powerful program that will analyze visitor activity on your business site and offer insights on how to improve the site experience and its popularity, and it is recommended by Brian Rotsztein, founder of Internet Marketing and an SEO expert. “It’s easy to find out things such as unique visitors, visitors from search engines, what pages are receiving the most traffic, where the traffic comes from, how users navigate and the ability to track for conversions,” he said. “It also integrates easily with Google Webmaster Tools and Adwords—Google’s pay-per-click advertising platform.”

Use SEOMoz: “It includes all the things you need as a beginner and/or a more seasoned SEO,” said Rognerud. “Google’s search algorithm has hundreds of variables, and things change often. In fact, more than 500 changes were made last year, according to Google. Keeping track of this is not easy. The SEOMoz platform helps you to understand what is going on beyond just factors on your website, but also technical issues such as broken links, redirects, robots issues and traffic stats as well as external factors.”

Consider Using WordPress: If you’re designing a new site or you’re willing to try something new, seriously consider using WordPress as the platform for your website. The reason: WordPress is designed, to a great degree, to automatically SEO-optimize your website. In fact, the auto-optimization is so powerful that the platform is regularly recommended by Google.

Get Educated: Give yourself a running start by accessing some time-tested guides that give you the inside track on SEO done right. To create an instant, free beginner’s SEO library, Google the following: “Google Webmaster Academy,” “Another Step to Reward High Quality Sites,” “Google’s SEO Report Card,” “Best SEO Tips and Practices for 2012,” “Search Engine Land’s Guide to SEO” and “How to Fix On-Page SEO Problems Using Bing Webmaster Tools.”

SEO Don’ts

Once you’ve got the SEO basics down, you may be tempted to use your new digital prowess to start gaming the search engines. As previously mentioned, this can easily morph into a fool’s pursuit. Here are some sleights-of-hand that can easily send you to the bottom of search-engine results, courtesy of “Content Marketing for Dummies” by Gunelius:

Read the complete article, "Your Strategy for 2013," in the April 2013 issue of SEMA News.

SEMA News—April 2013

INTERNET
By Joe Dysart

Your Strategy for 2013

Search-Engine Optimization

The single most critical factor to search-engine optimization (SEO) success is creating amazing content—‘share-worthy’ content that is so useful, meaningful and interesting to your target audience that they want to consume it, share it with their own audiences and talk about it,” said Susan Gunelius, author of Content Marketing for Dummies.

SEO is critical to the success of your business, given that websites not optimized for search engines are generally much less trafficked—and often all but forgotten. With SEO, you’ll give your website the best chance possible to be found by the search engines and also the customers you’re looking to acquire.

“If you publish amazing, share-worthy content, people will share it with their own audiences across the social web, which leads to more incoming links to your site and more traffic,” Gunelius added. “People will stumble upon shared links to your content on social networks, social bookmarking sites, Pinterest, Twitter and so on, and they’ll click through to read it. If they like it, they might share it even further.”

Indeed, share-worthy content also often gets covered on blogs, which results in even more “quality” links back to your business site, Gunelius said. “Over time, your site develops tons of quality incoming links that are vital to boosting your site’s authority and search-engine traffic. Again, look at it through a long-term lens rather than a short-term one.” 


Jon Rognerud, founder of Small Business SEO, agreed. “Assuming you have a foundation, the most important thing you can do for SEO success today is ‘content creation plus content marketing,’” he said. “Some may not call this search-engine optimization, but really, SEO is all about building pages and content for the best user experience.”

SEO experts said that the new emphasis on “share-worthy content” has been rolling out during the past year as Google has tweaked its search engine to punish websites that use digital tricks to appear more popular and important than they really are. Essentially, businesses that heed Google’s crusade to rid the web of posers—and provide regular, fresh content that is truly valuable to the web—should do well on search engines. Those that persist in the digital black arts will not fare as well, the experts said.

“The old tactics of blog spamming, random social bookmarking and spinning content for article directories and blogs are dead,” Rognerud said. 


Moreover, Google has been giving higher ratings to businesses and other websites that are heavily involved in social media—a trend the SEO experts expect to continue for the foreseeable future. The upshot: Getting good rankings on the search engines is becoming more about creating an authentically interesting and valuable business website and less about how good you are at cyber trickery.

SEO Do’s

	The old tactics of SEO are dead, said Jon Rognerud, founder of Small Business SEO.

While the practice of SEO can seem daunting at first, experts said that business sites should do well on the search engines if they follow these basic best practices:

Create Share-Worthy Content: SEO experts recommend at least three posts per week, which ideally should include gripping text, stunning images and irresistible video. If you’re not a natural-born digital entertainer, consider hiring a good copywriter with graphics skills.

Get Social: For starters, join Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and Pinterest. Those are currently the Big Five social networks. Interact successfully and regularly on those, and you should see better returns on search engines.

Nail SEO Minutia: Proper keywords, page titles, tags and the like are the SEO fundamentals upon which all other SEO is based. It’s tedious, technical work—and it pays off. For a great guide on getting the techie stuff right, check out Google’s SEO Starter Guide.

Solicit Quality Links: Google is heavily rewarding business sites that have links from other extremely popular and valuable websites. Try to score as many links from these types of sites as possible. One way is to offer to guest blog for a popular site in exchange for a link back to your business site.

SEO-Optimize All Video: Web-marketing experts said that the future of the web is video—in the sense that most people logging onto the web will be consuming video more than any other medium. Google has seen the writing on the wall and is heavily rewarding business sites that optimize video properly. “Video optimization is one of the fastest ways for visibility in Google results,” said Small Business SEO’s Rognerud. For a guide, Google “SEO optimize video.”

Use Google Analytics: This is a free, powerful program that will analyze visitor activity on your business site and offer insights on how to improve the site experience and its popularity, and it is recommended by Brian Rotsztein, founder of Internet Marketing and an SEO expert. “It’s easy to find out things such as unique visitors, visitors from search engines, what pages are receiving the most traffic, where the traffic comes from, how users navigate and the ability to track for conversions,” he said. “It also integrates easily with Google Webmaster Tools and Adwords—Google’s pay-per-click advertising platform.”

Use SEOMoz: “It includes all the things you need as a beginner and/or a more seasoned SEO,” said Rognerud. “Google’s search algorithm has hundreds of variables, and things change often. In fact, more than 500 changes were made last year, according to Google. Keeping track of this is not easy. The SEOMoz platform helps you to understand what is going on beyond just factors on your website, but also technical issues such as broken links, redirects, robots issues and traffic stats as well as external factors.”

Consider Using WordPress: If you’re designing a new site or you’re willing to try something new, seriously consider using WordPress as the platform for your website. The reason: WordPress is designed, to a great degree, to automatically SEO-optimize your website. In fact, the auto-optimization is so powerful that the platform is regularly recommended by Google.

Get Educated: Give yourself a running start by accessing some time-tested guides that give you the inside track on SEO done right. To create an instant, free beginner’s SEO library, Google the following: “Google Webmaster Academy,” “Another Step to Reward High Quality Sites,” “Google’s SEO Report Card,” “Best SEO Tips and Practices for 2012,” “Search Engine Land’s Guide to SEO” and “How to Fix On-Page SEO Problems Using Bing Webmaster Tools.”

SEO Don’ts

Once you’ve got the SEO basics down, you may be tempted to use your new digital prowess to start gaming the search engines. As previously mentioned, this can easily morph into a fool’s pursuit. Here are some sleights-of-hand that can easily send you to the bottom of search-engine results, courtesy of “Content Marketing for Dummies” by Gunelius:

Read the complete article, "Your Strategy for 2013," in the April 2013 issue of SEMA News.

SEMA News—April 2013

HERITAGE

By Drew Hardin
Photo Courtesy Petersen Archive

Dick Scritchfield was a relatively new addition to the Car Craft magazine staff when he drew the assignment to cover the growing auto-stereo trend in the magazine’s January 1967 issue.

“If you haven’t already bolted a tape deck in that machine of yours, man, you’re either living outside of the ‘in’ group or have never heard an automotive stereo tape player in action,” he said in his opening paragraph. “Stereo might be great at home, but in a car—it’s something else. Just to drive along while listening to your favorite music coming at you from all directions is what most stereo owners refer to as the new surrounding sound.”

True surround sound, of the multi-speaker, mega-watt, AM/FM/CD/MP3/satellite/HD radio variety, is state-of-the-art in cars today. In 1967, Scritch was describing the birth of stereo in cars—a movement led by Ford in 1966—and the differences between four- and eight-track tapes.

“Bill Lear, manufacturer of the famous Lear Jet aircraft, set out with his engineers to design a cartridge and player that could handle eight sound tracks rather than only four,” Scritchfield wrote. That would allow a full one hour and 20 minutes of uninterrupted music. Ford’s choice of the eight-track player “started a feud akin to the early days of the 45 and 33 LP records. The four-track players had marketed more than 600,000 units when the eight-track Lear design was chosen as the Ford standard.”

Motorola stepped up to manufacture the Lear player in the quantities required by Ford, and “other members of the auto industry followed by offering eight-track players in their ’67 lines as optionals.”

In the opening photo for his guide, Scritchfield parked his iconic Ford roadster in front of a stereo store owned by actor Skip Young and his partner Bob Williams in Woodland Hills, California. To populate the photo, Scritchfield gathered several of the store’s employees around Young (at center in the photo), who, among other roles in the early days of television, played Wally in “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.” Young is holding a Muntz Stereo-Pak, one of several four- and eight-track players marketed by Madman Muntz.

“By keeping the price under $100, Muntz has been able to move his stereo units with tremendous acceptance,” said Scritch.

Tremendous acceptance for the time, maybe. But while the four- and eight-track manufacturers were duking it out for market share, a little-known device called the audiocassette was slowly improving in fidelity. Once it matched the eight-track for music reproduction quality, those big, bulky eight-track cartridges would become instant relics—or collectibles, depending on your point of view.

SEMA News—April 2013

HERITAGE

By Drew Hardin
Photo Courtesy Petersen Archive

Dick Scritchfield was a relatively new addition to the Car Craft magazine staff when he drew the assignment to cover the growing auto-stereo trend in the magazine’s January 1967 issue.

“If you haven’t already bolted a tape deck in that machine of yours, man, you’re either living outside of the ‘in’ group or have never heard an automotive stereo tape player in action,” he said in his opening paragraph. “Stereo might be great at home, but in a car—it’s something else. Just to drive along while listening to your favorite music coming at you from all directions is what most stereo owners refer to as the new surrounding sound.”

True surround sound, of the multi-speaker, mega-watt, AM/FM/CD/MP3/satellite/HD radio variety, is state-of-the-art in cars today. In 1967, Scritch was describing the birth of stereo in cars—a movement led by Ford in 1966—and the differences between four- and eight-track tapes.

“Bill Lear, manufacturer of the famous Lear Jet aircraft, set out with his engineers to design a cartridge and player that could handle eight sound tracks rather than only four,” Scritchfield wrote. That would allow a full one hour and 20 minutes of uninterrupted music. Ford’s choice of the eight-track player “started a feud akin to the early days of the 45 and 33 LP records. The four-track players had marketed more than 600,000 units when the eight-track Lear design was chosen as the Ford standard.”

Motorola stepped up to manufacture the Lear player in the quantities required by Ford, and “other members of the auto industry followed by offering eight-track players in their ’67 lines as optionals.”

In the opening photo for his guide, Scritchfield parked his iconic Ford roadster in front of a stereo store owned by actor Skip Young and his partner Bob Williams in Woodland Hills, California. To populate the photo, Scritchfield gathered several of the store’s employees around Young (at center in the photo), who, among other roles in the early days of television, played Wally in “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.” Young is holding a Muntz Stereo-Pak, one of several four- and eight-track players marketed by Madman Muntz.

“By keeping the price under $100, Muntz has been able to move his stereo units with tremendous acceptance,” said Scritch.

Tremendous acceptance for the time, maybe. But while the four- and eight-track manufacturers were duking it out for market share, a little-known device called the audiocassette was slowly improving in fidelity. Once it matched the eight-track for music reproduction quality, those big, bulky eight-track cartridges would become instant relics—or collectibles, depending on your point of view.

The U.S. Department of Commerce is hosting a series of seminars around the country aimed at providing American businesses with strategies for protecting and enforcing a company’s intellectual property rights (IPR) when exporting to foreign markets and advice for avoiding common pitfalls. Participants will have the chance to ask export questions related to patents, trade secrets, trademarks, copyrights and domain names. At the conclusion of each Road Show, participants can take advantage of one-on-one consultations with intellectual property experts to get targeted advice.  

For more information on a specific session, click on the links below to register and/or e-mail the contact person.   

SEMA also provides its members with general information about patents, trademarks and copyright through material posted on the website www.sema.org/IPR. For issues beyond protecting IPR, SEMA recommends reading the "Sourcing" article posted on the website. Questions? Contact Stuart Gosswein at stuartg@sema.org.  


Arlington, Virginia

April 18, 2013
Contact: Judy.Kornfeld@trade.gov

Cincinnati
April 23, 2013

Register
 here
Contact: Kara.Sweeney@trade.gov

Austin, Texas
April 30, 2013

Contact: Karen.Parker@trade.gov

Registration has not yet opened for the following sessions. SEMA will publicize contact information as soon as it is available.

New York
May 6, 2013

New Orleans
May 14, 2013

Houston
May 16, 2013

Boston
May 21, 2013

San Jose, California (Silicon Valley)

May 30, 2013

Portland, Oregon
June 20, 2013

Newport News, Virginia

June 24, 2013

Los Angeles

June 25, 2013

San Diego

June 27, 2013

Minneapolis

September 12, 2013

Milwaukee
September 17, 2013

Madison, Wisconsin
September 18, 2013

Raleigh, North Carolina
TBD

Baltimore

TBD

By Linda Spencer

	The ’13 Ford Ranger T6 4x4 double cab is powered by a 2.5L five-speed gasoline engine. SEMA, in partnership with the United States Department of Commerce, purchased the vehicle in the Middle East. It was designed in Australia and assembled in South Africa.

SEMA-member manufacturers are invited to measure the ’13 Ford Ranger T6—a global one-ton pickup that is popular worldwide but not sold in the United States or Canada. SEMA purchased the vehicle in a partnership with the United States government to provide American companies difficult-to-access vehicles so they can create export-ready products.

The Ranger, which was selected by a panel of automotive press and experts, won the 2013 International Pickup Award, beating out the Isuzu D-Max and Volkswagen Amarok, among other vehicles in the category. Members can choose one of two Measuring Sessions to be held Wednesday, April 17, at SEMA's Diamond Bar, California, headquarters and Tuesday, May 14, at Dearborn, Michigan-based Link Engineering. There is no charge to participate.

Register now to attend one of the Measuring Sessions. 

Initial sales figures are in for 2012. Of those countries reporting their data, IHS Global Insight reports South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Argentina, Brazil and Thailand are in the top five in terms of sales.

Country		CY 2012		Estimate 2013
South Africa		15,804		17,397
Saudi Arabia		13,503		12,646
Argentina		12,356		18,146
Brazil		8,388		19,892
Thailand		6,632		7,367
United Arab Emirates		4,028		4,486
Indonesia		3,815		4,894
United Kingdom		2,818		2,697
New Zealand		2,815		2,677
Germany		2,183		2,178
Malaysia		1,939		4,229
Kuwait		1,680		1,783
Oman		1,295		1,518
France		1,082		1,595
Chile		1,003		2,971
Mexico		1,001		16,082

Source: SEMA calculations from IHS Global Insight data.

By Linda Spencer

	The ’13 Ford Ranger T6 4x4 double cab is powered by a 2.5L five-speed gasoline engine. SEMA, in partnership with the United States Department of Commerce, purchased the vehicle in the Middle East. It was designed in Australia and assembled in South Africa.

SEMA-member manufacturers are invited to measure the ’13 Ford Ranger T6—a global one-ton pickup that is popular worldwide but not sold in the United States or Canada. SEMA purchased the vehicle in a partnership with the United States government to provide American companies difficult-to-access vehicles so they can create export-ready products.

The Ranger, which was selected by a panel of automotive press and experts, won the 2013 International Pickup Award, beating out the Isuzu D-Max and Volkswagen Amarok, among other vehicles in the category. Members can choose one of two Measuring Sessions to be held Wednesday, April 17, at SEMA's Diamond Bar, California, headquarters and Tuesday, May 14, at Dearborn, Michigan-based Link Engineering. There is no charge to participate.

Register now to attend one of the Measuring Sessions. 

Initial sales figures are in for 2012. Of those countries reporting their data, IHS Global Insight reports South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Argentina, Brazil and Thailand are in the top five in terms of sales.

Country		CY 2012		Estimate 2013
South Africa		15,804		17,397
Saudi Arabia		13,503		12,646
Argentina		12,356		18,146
Brazil		8,388		19,892
Thailand		6,632		7,367
United Arab Emirates		4,028		4,486
Indonesia		3,815		4,894
United Kingdom		2,818		2,697
New Zealand		2,815		2,677
Germany		2,183		2,178
Malaysia		1,939		4,229
Kuwait		1,680		1,783
Oman		1,295		1,518
France		1,082		1,595
Chile		1,003		2,971
Mexico		1,001		16,082

Source: SEMA calculations from IHS Global Insight data.

By Linda Spencer

Barry Adler (second from left), president of Quick Time Performance, a manufacturer of electronically controlled exhaust cutouts, said that it is important for the company to be in at the early stages of the Chinese specialty-equipment market. “We can help educate them with our products,” he said, “and exporting is the largest growth potential we have. We are putting more money and time into developing this overseas business than in growing our domestic sales.”

Manufacturers of suspension, air-intake and performance exhaust systems, among other products, have already registered to participate in the 2013 SEMA China Business Development Tour in Beijing, September 11–14. Grants from the United States government to help defray costs are available for qualified companies. The three-day program includes exhibiting at a trade show open only to pre-qualified buyers from throughout China, touring retailers and wholesalers of specialty products and a briefing by United States government officials.

Each year this popular trip sells out. Register now!

For more information, please contact Linda Spencer at lindas@sema.org.

By Linda Spencer

Barry Adler (second from left), president of Quick Time Performance, a manufacturer of electronically controlled exhaust cutouts, said that it is important for the company to be in at the early stages of the Chinese specialty-equipment market. “We can help educate them with our products,” he said, “and exporting is the largest growth potential we have. We are putting more money and time into developing this overseas business than in growing our domestic sales.”

Manufacturers of suspension, air-intake and performance exhaust systems, among other products, have already registered to participate in the 2013 SEMA China Business Development Tour in Beijing, September 11–14. Grants from the United States government to help defray costs are available for qualified companies. The three-day program includes exhibiting at a trade show open only to pre-qualified buyers from throughout China, touring retailers and wholesalers of specialty products and a briefing by United States government officials.

Each year this popular trip sells out. Register now!

For more information, please contact Linda Spencer at lindas@sema.org.