D&P Performance was stuck on DealerSpike: same template, same limitations, same SEO ceiling as a thousand other dealers. I moved them to a custom-built site and gave them what DealerSpike, DX1, and ARI can't: control.
Every one of these was costing D&P Performance leads, rankings, and money.
DealerSpike generates URLs like /about-us-atvs-utvs-snowmobiles-dealership--info. Google reads that as noise. Clean URLs rank better.
Template bloat means slow load times. Google penalizes slow sites. Your competitors with faster sites get shown first.
Your site uses the same template as hundreds of other DealerSpike dealers. Your customers can't tell you apart from the guy three towns over.
No access to robots.txt, limited schema, no custom landing pages. You're paying for a platform that actively prevents you from ranking.
DX1, ARI, PSM, Interact, and the rest of the dealer-platform world work the same way: your website is bundled into a monthly fee, built on a shared template, and your content lives inside their system. The dealer three towns over is on the same platform with the same pages, and Google can't tell you apart.
If you're on any of them, the migration is the same. The case study below happens to be DealerSpike.
A side-by-side comparison of what D&P had vs. what they have now.
| Feature | DealerSpike | Custom-Built |
|---|---|---|
| URL Structure | /about-us-atvs-utvs-snowmobiles-dealership--info | /about |
| Page Speed (Mobile) | ~75 | 90+ |
| Custom Landing Pages | Not available | Unlimited |
| Schema Markup | Limited / none | Full LocalBusiness, Product, Service |
| Blog / Content CMS | Basic, template-locked | Full CMS, any layout |
D&P Performance has been a trusted powersports dealership in Cedar City, Utah since 1978. But their online presence was stuck on a 10-year-old DealerSpike .net site that looked like every other dealer on the platform.
The old site couldn't rank for service keywords because DealerSpike wouldn't let them create custom service pages. They couldn't target “UTV repair Cedar City” or “Can-Am service Southern Utah” because the template didn't support those pages.
I migrated D&P to a fully custom .com in a single cutover — 301 redirects on all four domain variants, path-matched deep-page redirects, zero template code carried over. Then launched a 10-post SEO campaign with schema, FAQ markup, GBP posts, and social distribution.
The result: +127% search impressions in 8 weeks. 18 keywords on page one within 6 weeks, including #1 for “snowmobile dealer Cedar City” and top-3 for “UTV repair Cedar City,” “Can-Am dealer Cedar City,” and “side by side Cedar City.” Their service department went from daily openings to booked six weeks out. D&P now outranks competing dealers on 3 of 4 head-to-head search terms.
Everything it takes to move your dealership off a template platform and onto a site you own.
Brand pages, service pages, inventory pages, blog. Old DealerSpike URLs mapped to clean new ones with permanent redirects, so rankings carry over instead of resetting.
Your DMS or inventory feed connected to the new site. Units display, filter, and update the way they do now, on a site that loads three times faster.
Pre-qualification, credit apps, and OEM lead forms connected. Where a vendor blocks embedding, I build the workaround so it still converts.
"UTV repair [your city]," "Can-Am service," "Polaris parts": a page for each, structured the way Google reads them. This is the thing DealerSpike wouldn't let D&P build.
LocalBusiness, Product, and Service markup. Mobile PageSpeed in the 90s.
What you stop paying the day you cancel.
I watch rankings, traffic, and inventory sync for two months and fix anything that drifts.
Code, content, domain, hosting accounts. No platform, no bundle, no rent.
No, if the migration is done right. Google ranks pages, not platforms. Every old URL gets a permanent redirect to its new address, Google follows it, and the ranking moves with it. D&P held their rankings through cutover and then gained, because the new site is faster and has pages the old one couldn't.
Where dealers get hurt is a migration that skips the redirect map, or a platform that won't let you export your content cleanly. Both are solved problems here. The 60-day monitoring window exists so nothing slips through.
D&P was paying $850 a month for DealerSpike — that's $10,200 a year, $30,600 over three years, for a site they didn't own, couldn't fully edit, and shared with hundreds of other dealers. DX1 and ARI run similar numbers.
A custom migration starts at $8,500 for a single-location dealer, quoted after the audit for multi-location or heavy inventory setups. Split half at start, half at launch. After launch, hosting and upkeep is $350/month if you want me handling it, and the platform fee stops.
Most dealers break even inside 10–12 months on fees alone, before counting a single extra lead.
Eight weeks from kickoff to launch. No downtime. No lost rankings.
SEO audit of your current DealerSpike site. Competitive analysis. Keyword mapping. Content strategy.
Custom design based on your brand. Built from scratch on a modern platform. Every page optimized.
Service pages, brand pages, local landing pages. Schema markup. Internal linking architecture. Blog setup.
DNS migration. 301 redirects from old URLs. Google Search Console setup. Training on your new CMS.
Eight weeks assumes a single-location dealer with a standard inventory feed. Multi-location and custom integrations are scoped in the audit.
20+ years of software development experience. Not templates. Not a marketing agency that outsources the work. I write the code myself, right here in Southern Utah.
Yes. Whatever DMS or feed you use now connects to the new site. If your feed is only available inside the platform's ecosystem, we'll sort out an export path in the audit.
Custom sites can meet OEM brand requirements; several manufacturers actually prefer them over template sites. If you're using co-op dollars, we'll confirm eligibility before starting.
No. D&P is in Cedar City; the migration process is the same anywhere. Audit, build, and cutover all happen remotely, and you get my direct number either way.
It isn't. The new site is built on a staging address while DealerSpike stays live. Cutover is a DNS change.
Yes. You own the code. Take it anywhere.
I'll send back a written audit within two business days: your PageSpeed, your URL problems, the service keywords your competitors aren't targeting, and what a migration would cost.