How Often Should a Dealership Publish Content?
One of the most common questions from dealership marketing teams. The answer depends on your size, goals, and content type. Here's a practical framework for publishing cadence that compounds.
Quality beats quantity, but consistency beats both. The best cadence is one you can sustain.
The real answer depends on your dealer size, team capacity, and the types of content you need. A single rooftop with one marketing person has a very different optimal cadence than a 20-store group with a centralized content team. Here's how to think about it.
Publishing Cadence by Dealer Size
Single Rooftop
4–8 pieces/month
Focused on local service content, model pages, and seasonal campaigns. Quality over volume - every piece earns its place.
Multi-Rooftop Group (3–10 stores)
8–20 pieces/month
Shared research across stores, localized execution per location. Central strategy with per-store customization.
Large Dealer Group (10+ stores)
20–50+ pieces/month
Centralized strategy with brand voice governance. Per-store customization at scale with systematic content operations.
Content Type Frequency Guide
Not all content follows the same cadence. Here's how often to publish and update each type.
Model Research Pages
Update quarterly per model
Service/Maintenance Guides
Publish seasonally, update annually
FAQ Content
Ongoing - publish as real questions emerge
Comparison Pages
Publish for each new model year
GBP Posts
Weekly minimum
Blog/Resource Content
2–4 per month
Content Compounds
10 articles in month 1 won't make a visible difference. But 10 articles per month for 12 months means 120 pieces driving organic traffic. Each new piece strengthens existing content through internal links, broadens your topical authority, and gives search engines more reasons to trust your domain.
This is the unfair advantage of consistency. Competitors who publish in bursts and then go quiet never reach the tipping point. The dealerships that win are the ones that show up every week, every month, every quarter.
Illustrative Growth Curve
Month 1
10 articles
~100 organic visits
Month 6
60 articles
~2,000 organic visits
Month 12
120 articles
~8,000+ organic visits
Don't Publish for the Sake of Publishing
Volume without quality is worse than publishing nothing. Google's helpful content system evaluates your site as a whole - a flood of thin content can suppress rankings for even your best pages. If you can't maintain quality at higher volumes, publish less.
Every piece you publish should:
Answer a real question from a real buyer
Include proper schema markup
Link to related content on your site
Be reviewed by a human before going live
If you can't maintain quality at a higher cadence, it's better to publish 4 excellent pieces per month than 12 mediocre ones.
Publishing Cadence FAQ
Is publishing more always better?
No. Publishing more low-quality content can actually hurt your site. Google's helpful content system evaluates your site holistically - if a significant portion of your content is thin or unhelpful, it can suppress rankings for your entire domain. Publish as much as you can while maintaining quality standards.
Should I focus on new content or updating old content?
Both, but if your existing content is outdated or underperforming, updating it should take priority. Refreshing old content with current information, better structure, and proper schema markup often delivers faster ranking improvements than publishing something entirely new. A good rule: spend 70% of effort on new content and 30% updating existing pages.
How long before content starts ranking?
New content typically takes 3–6 months to reach its ranking potential, though some pages can rank within weeks for low-competition queries. The timeline depends on your domain authority, the competitiveness of the topic, and how well the content is structured and linked. Consistency matters more than any individual piece - a steady publishing cadence builds domain authority over time.
What if I can only publish 2 articles a month?
Then publish 2 excellent articles a month. Consistency at a sustainable pace beats an ambitious schedule you can't maintain. Two well-researched, properly structured pieces per month give you 24 articles in a year - enough to build meaningful topical authority if you're strategic about what you publish. Focus on your highest-intent topics first.
Does AI-generated content count?
Google doesn't penalize AI-generated content by default - they penalize unhelpful content regardless of how it was produced. AI-assisted content that's reviewed by a human, fact-checked for accuracy, and genuinely helpful to readers is perfectly fine. But mass-producing AI content without editorial oversight will eventually hurt your site. The bar is helpfulness, not production method.
Related Resources
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