The truth is, your dealership’s online success is only as strong as the platform it’s built on—and too often, those platforms are the problem. In the competitive dealership market, SEO (search engine optimization) and GEO (generative engine optimization) are critical to ensuring those looking for a vehicle find you, whether in organic results, AI overviews, or an AI chat. But when outdated website platforms gatekeep access to your own website and follow antiquated, potentially harmful SEO practices on your site, you may end up at a performance standstill.
High-performing websites are essential in the world of car dealerships, but the platforms meant to support them are often the very thing holding them back. Wondering if this is impacting your automotive SEO or GEO strategy? Here are four ways your website provider might be holding you back from success.
#1 Locking Pages and Features
One of the most significant roadblocks when it comes to optimizing dealership sites is a lack of access. For one, website providers often lock certain pages, preventing you or your SEO partner from making updates. Some providers go as far as locking down all navigational pages—even the homepage—meaning you don’t have the freedom to make changes to these pages as you want or need.
That’s not the only place where access issues exist, either. Some providers may lock tools in the back end of the site, such as redirect manager tools. This means that if you find a 404 on your site, you may not be able to fix it right away because you have no way to redirect the broken page.
Even aside from the fact that you and your chosen partners should have full control over your website, this is a problem. Not only is it frustrating when simple changes require opening a ticket with the site provider instead of being able to make them yourself, but this process leads to the updates being further delayed. It also leaves more room for error—ever heard of too many cooks in the kitchen? And that’s not even to mention the fact that sometimes, the site provider pushes back.
#2 Pushing Back on Making Updates
Delayed updates and errors in the execution of your request can be frustrating, but even worse is when site providers push back on making the requested edits. Sometimes, a site provider may state that they also don’t have access to make the change you’re requesting or that it flat out “can’t be done.” Other times, they may claim they’ve escalated your ticket to another team, and then you never hear back. Regardless, it’s pushback. We see this a lot, especially lately, as we are working on optimizing schema markup for our clients to improve their AI visibility.
When it comes down to it, ticket systems may not always be reliable when it comes to making changes to your website. You may see slow responses, refusal to help, or even customer support representatives who don’t know what you’re asking for or how to assist. In some cases, this ultimately leads to the work you or your SEO provider has done not getting implemented on your website, which means wasted time, wasted money, and a less-optimized site. This should never happen.
#3 Doing Their Own “SEO”
Site providers pushing back on making requested updates to your website can be frustrating, but even worse is when they do that on top of using outdated tactics to “optimize” your site. If your website provider sells SEO as an afterthought add-on, it may not be helpful, and you may want to reconsider checking that box.
Too often, we see site providers filling websites with duplicate content, content that targets keywords no one is searching for, and even keywords that aren’t relevant to dealerships at all. We’ve even had site providers write over fully optimized content, replacing it with cookie-cutter, fill-in-the-blank content that is utilized across numerous dealerships. Sometimes, this content even includes internal linking that brings visitors further away from a sale, like a link in content on your “new inventory” page that links to the homepage.
The fact of the matter is that your site provider shouldn’t be filling your website with content and links that could potentially lead to getting flagged for duplicate content or that appear spammy. They especially shouldn’t write over content or meta titles that were already optimized by you or your SEO provider. Implementing poor SEO practices and undoing the good SEO practices on your site could have a massive impact on your online success.
#4 Ignoring Load Times
The last way we see site providers restricting performance on dealership websites isn’t something they’re doing; it’s something they may not be doing: paying attention to load speed. Because of the outdated infrastructure, many dealership sites are very slow.
Load speed should not be ignored. Not only is it a ranking factor, but it also impacts whether someone stays on your site, which can determine whether or not they convert.
Unfortunately, your SEO provider cannot address issues with site speed. If your website is loading slowly, the fix lies in the hands of your site provider. With that said, your SEO provider can always run a core web vitals test on your site and tell you where the pain points are, which can help you have a conversation with your site provider about site speed and what needs to be resolved. If you ignore a slow site, you may never see the full potential of your SEO strategy.
Advocate for Your Success
When looking at the success of your SEO strategy, it’s important to remember that there are numerous factors in play. If you aren’t seeing the impact you had hoped to see, it may be worth it to ask yourself:
- Do I/Does my SEO partner have access to all the pages and tools needed to fully optimize my site?
- Are there pending tickets to have something implemented or fixed that my site provider has not completed/refused to complete?
- Is my site provider adding cookie-cutter content to my website? Are there tons of pages on my site that say the same thing with only a couple of words or a geo difference?
- Has my site provider undone any of the work that I/my SEO partner have done to optimize my site?
- Is my website loading slowly? Is it full of unnecessary scripts?
If you said yes to any of those questions, your website platform may be preventing you from reaching your full organic potential. This is essential to remember when gauging whether or not your SEO strategy is working; you should consider all factors to determine what needs to change or be worked on next.
Have questions about your automotive SEO strategy or how your website provider is impacting it? Contact us at Wikimotive. We’re always here to help you identify pain points and opportunities to grow your dealership’s visibility.