While having fresh content on your dealership’s website is important in ensuring potential customers are met with the latest and most up-to-date information to inform their shopping, it’s also one of the top signals that LLMs and AI models use to source content as a citation in its answers. Whether you’re looking to appear on ChatGPT, Gemini, traditional Google Search (and its AI features), or other LLMs, all of these sources regularly crawl to find the latest and most relevant pages to each search. Because of this, content on your site that features old statistics and dead links can make you less likely to be sourced, as they can signal to the crawlers that your content may not be as truthful, relevant, or informational as other sources.
Old blog content on your website can, and should, be updated to present the best and most latest information, revise outdated stats, improve formatting and readability, fix broken technical elements, and more. To find the blog pieces most apt for these updates, it’s best to section it into a couple phases: first, start by finding them with an audit, then move into a triaging system, which helps you figure out the ones to fix or retire.
Read on as I go over how to handle this entire blog updating process, and make your content even more appealing to potential customers and LLMs!
Dealership Blog Update Phase 1: The Audit
This first phase involves you locating exactly which blogs may either not be performing well, are just generally outdated, or have technical issues. Auditing your content, be it blogs or landing pages, helps you identify which are in need of help, consolidation, deletion, or are good as they are. This can be done with many different analytics tools you have at your disposal, such as both Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and Google Search Console (GSC), allowing you to easily see which blogs aren’t performing as they used to.
You are specifically looking to flag blogs with the following:
- Outdated model years (“2021 Honda Accord Review”)
- Outdated industry benchmarks
- Deals that are no longer active (such as service deals you are no longer offering)
- Broken links
- Vague, poorly cited, or conflicting information
- Formatting that is not structured for AI crawlability and readability for customers
How to Find Blogs Using Google Search Console
- Go to the “Performance” section.
- Select a desired date range, such as the last 6 months or full year.
- Navigate to “Pages.”
- Check boxes for CTR and Average Position (to further see ranking deficiencies).
- Sort through both Clicks and Impressions from low to high.
- Look for blogs with high impressions, but few clicks.
- Once you find them, click on a specific URL, and switch to the Queries tab to see keywords that are driving those impressions, which can help in updating the intent of the blog.
- Assess the blog, looking for the flags listed above.
How to Find Blogs Using GA4
- Make sure you're looking at organic traffic by changing the filter as needed.
- Set a desired date range, such as the last 6 months or full year.
- Go to “Engagement,” then “Landing Pages.”
- If you have a /blog/ directory, search /blog/ in the search bar so that only your blogs are listed.
- Sort by Sessions, Users, and Engagement Metrics in ascending order to locate low-performing blogs.
- Open the blogs and assess them, looking for the flags listed above.
Dealership Blog Update Phase 2: The Triaging System
Once you have flagged blogs that need updating, section the content into two types: the “Refresh” pile, and the “Retire” pile. Blogs in the Refresh pile are still of worthwhile topic quality, but contain elements that need to be fixed, such as outdated data, broken technical elements, formatting issues, and more. Blogs in the Retire pile are too vague, no longer valuable, thin on content, cover redundant topics, or are just generally outdated and cannot be salvaged.
How to Fix the Refresh Pile
To fix blogs in the Refresh pile, you must address the flagged issue that got them put there in the first place:
- Outdated/conflicting Information: Update the information in the blog with new data and statistics.
- Poor Formatting/Readability: Blogs should have proper elements, like clear sections using H1 and H2 headings, have the answers in the intro paragraph so it’s easy for AI features and users to source immediately, along with humans and AI-pleasing formatting and keywords. Keep blogs easy to digest for readers through use of bulleted and numbered lists, tables, and concise, straight-to-the-point sentences.
- Broken Links: Replace links to pages that no longer exist with current pages, or rework the content to link to a more relevant page instead. Take this opportunity to implement redirects that may not already be in place.
- Vague/Poorly Cited: Rewrite the blog, using supporting data and citations to raise the overall quality.
How to Fix the Retire Pile
Fixing blogs in the Retire pile all boils down to whether or not there is usable information in them:
- If there’s no usable information on the blog, such as a blog about a service deal you are no longer offering, it should be deleted. Instead of just deleting it and moving on though, make sure you put a redirect from that now deleted blog to a blog/landing page where the most correct information on the topic can be found. If it doesn’t exist yet, it may just be best to create a new blog!
- If there is usable information, consolidate it and include where possible in an update to a current blog, then delete and redirect the old blog.
Refresh Your Blogs With Our Team at EDealer
A mass of old blogs on your site does you no good if they aren’t properly up-to-date, formatted, full of useful information, and just plain ‘ol readable, for both people and AI. Your website needs focused, up-to-date blogs and pages that are optimally structured for both your future customers and AI. All of this can be hard to tackle and be time-consuming, but our SEO & Content team is on hand to do it all for you! Our SEO packages, including content marketing, Local SEO, and Technical SEO, help keep your dealership’s content fresh so you keep getting cited and seen online in AI features and models. Contact us, and let us improve your online presence with high-quality content today!
