As technology and user behavior change, residents rely more on search engines and AI-powered tools to find answers. They don't rely only on websites. For local governments, this raises the stakes. Public information must be accurate. It must also be optimized to appear where people are looking.
AI Content Advisor helps Communications teams keep up with these changes. It does this by automatically analyzing website pages and offering recommendations. These recommendations improve content quality and discoverability. Built specifically for government workflows, the tool provides actionable guidance. This guidance helps strengthen titles, descriptions, headings, readability, and FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions). These updates align with best practices for SEO and Answer Engine Optimization (AEO).
In addition, the tool surfaces outdated content in need of review. This helps ensure residents receive current and trustworthy information. This is especially important when that information appears in search results or AI responses outside of your website.
AI Content Advisor embeds insights directly within CivicPlus website solutions. This helps content teams make smarter and faster updates without disrupting their workflow.
Key Benefits
AI Content Advisor:
Aligns content with modern search and AI discovery patterns
Supports timely updates with stale content detection
Reduces manual effort through automated, page-level analysis
Seamlessly integrates into CivicPlus website tools
AI Content Advisor empowers local governments to meet residents where they are: online, in search, and in conversation.
SEO and AEO Recommendations
AI Content Advisor helps your pages reach more people. It does this by offering smart, actionable suggestions. These suggestions improve how your content appears in search results and conversational AI tools.
What Are SEO and AEO?
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) improves your content so it ranks higher in search engines like Google and Bing. This makes it easier for people to find your website.
AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) focuses on getting your content included in direct answers provided by tools like Google’s featured snippets, voice assistants such as Alexa or Siri, and AI-powered platforms like ChatGPT or Google Bard.
Many residents now use both search engines and AI tools to get quick answers. Optimizing for SEO and AEO helps ensure your content appears where people are looking.
Where You’ll See Recommendations
When editing a page in Municipal Websites Evolve or Municipal Websites Central, you’ll see a panel with SEO and AEO recommendations tailored to that specific page. These suggestions are based on best practices and are easy to follow, even without a background in SEO.
What the Recommendations Cover
AI Content Advisor provides feedback in five key areas:
Title: Make your page title clearer, more descriptive, and search-friendly.
Description: Write concise summaries that look good in search results and previews.
Headings: Assists with both the structure and wording of your headings to ensure they are clear, well-organized, and helpful for both users and search engines.
FAQs: Recommends question-based content that can appear in featured answers or voice assistant results.
Readability: Ensure your content is easy for a wide audience to read and understand.
Note:
You may also hear the term GEO, or Generative Engine Optimization. GEO is a newer approach. It focuses on helping content appear in AI-generated answers from tools like ChatGPT or Google Bard. AI Content Advisor does not show GEO-specific suggestions. However, many of the same improvements still help. This includes using clear language, structured headings, and concise FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions). These changes also support content visibility on emerging platforms.
Stale Content Report
Keeping your website up to date builds trust with residents. It also ensures that public information stays accurate and useful. The Stale Content Report helps you manage this by identifying pages that may be out of date. This allows you to review them at the right time, with minimal guesswork.
AI Content Advisor reviews all published pages and groups them into content categories. Each category has its own review cycle. The report calculates how long it has been since each page was last updated and highlights those that are overdue for review.
How It Works
Each page is assigned to one of six content categories based on its purpose. These categories determine how often that type of content should be reviewed. The report then scores pages based on how far past their review cycle they are, helping you prioritize which pages to update first.
Enable or Disable AI Content Advisor
For more information or to enable AI Content Advisor for your website, contact your Account Manager.
Once enabled, individual users can turn off AI Content Advisor at any time. They can do this by revoking their acknowledgment of the AI Policy. The policy is shown in the product the first time an AI feature is used. It can later be viewed and managed in the CivicPlus Account Service. For more details about the policy, see the AI Policy Agreement article. This article explains how to view or revoke your acknowledgment.
Customers may want to disable AI Content Advisor for their entire organization. To do this, they should contact their Customer Success Manager.