In the fast-paced world of digital marketing, you need to be ahead of the game. Google and WordPress updates have had a big impact on SEO.
E-E-A-T and user experience were highlighted again in the March 2024 Broad Core Update, which rewarded sites with knowledge, authority, and trust with higher rankings. According to Searchmetrics, sites with strong E-E-A-T signals saw an average 15% increase in visibility.
Also, Google is putting more emphasis on AI-powered search improvements. With the release of the Multitask Unified Model (MUM) in June 2024, Google can understand more complex queries and provide more detailed answers, even in different languages and modalities.
According to early research, MUM has increased featured snippet accuracy by 20%, giving users a smoother and more educational search experience. In this post, we’ll cover these changes and how they impact your WordPress SEO.
Core Updates and SEO
Google’s core updates have significantly impacted SEO. The updates have mainly targeted low-quality content. Sites with well-researched, original, and informative content have generally seen an increase in rankings, while sites with thin, duplicate, or unhelpful content have seen a decline. The March 2024 core update and spam update, for example, significantly deindexed sites with unhelpful, irrelevant, or unoriginal content.
The combined impact of the fall 2023 and March 2024 updates reduced low-quality content in search results by 45%, above Google’s initial estimate of 40%. This shows the significant impact of these updates on the overall search landscape. The August 2024 core update further rewarded sites that were already following Google’s best practices on content and optimization.
One of the main takeaways from these updates is to align your content with user intent. Google’s algorithms are improving their understanding of the meaning and purpose behind search queries. Sites that provide content that answers user needs will rank better.
Note that core updates can sometimes cause temporary spikes or drops in traffic due to changes in keyword search results. For example, a site might see a temporary drop in traffic if it was ranking for an unrelated keyword and the core update corrects this by removing the irrelevant ranking.
Tools and Resources
Here are some tools and resources to help you optimize for the recent core updates:
Google Search Console: Free tool to see how your site is performing in Google search. Helps you find technical issues, track rankings, and overall site health.
SEMrush: All-in-one SEO tool with keyword research, competitor analysis, and site audit. Helps you find areas to improve and track progress.
Ahrefs: Strong in backlink analysis and competitor research. Helps you see your website’s backlink profile, find link-building opportunities, and track your competitors’ SEO strategies.
PageSpeed Insights: This tool to analyze your website’s speed and get recommendations.
Screaming Frog: Technical SEO tool that crawls your website and finds technical issues that might be affecting your rankings.
While these tools will help you optimize for current updates, it’s also a good idea to stay informed about Google’s plans to prepare for upcoming changes.
Page Experience: Google now considers factors like HTTPS, secure browsing, mobile friendliness, and intrusive interstitials when ranking websites. Since more than 50% of all website traffic comes from mobile devices worldwide, mobile optimization is key to SEO.
Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness
Creating excellent content that demonstrates EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) is more important than ever, as Google places a growing focus on these qualities.
What is E-E-A-T?
Experience: This is the first-hand or practical knowledge the website or content creator has of the subject. A travel blog by someone who has been to many places would be considered to have experience.
Expertise: Expertise is the ability and in-depth knowledge of a particular field. High expertise would be a scientific paper by a researcher in the field or a medical article by a doctor.
Authoritativeness: The reputation and credibility of the website, the content creator, or both are related to authoritativeness. Industry awards, peer recognition, or citations from other trusted sources often prove this.
Trustworthiness: Credibility includes the website’s and its content’s reliability, honesty, and safety. This covers things like HTTPS connections, transparent privacy policies, and factual information.
Why E-E-A-T Matters?
Search engines prioritize content that demonstrates E-E-A-Tsince it offers users the most trustworthy and useful information. These characteristics boost the likelihood that websites and content producers will rank higher in search results, increasing exposure and organic traffic.
WordPress: Powering the Web
Over 40% of all websites are on WordPress, the world’s number one content management system. Its huge plugin ecosystem, user-friendly interface, and regular updates make it the perfect platform for SEO.
Gutenberg Editor: The Gutenberg block editor has changed the way we create content in WordPress. Its drag-and-drop interface and customizable blocks let you create beautiful, SEO-friendly content.
Performance Improvements: WordPress has always been about making websites faster. Recent changes have sped up page loads by optimizing database queries, reducing JavaScript execution time, and adding lazy loading for images.
The Future of WordPress SEO
Google’s changes and WordPress’s updates mean there are some cool SEO opportunities.
AI-Powered Content Optimisation: Readability, keyword optimization, and overall SEO performance can now be improved with AI-driven technologies that analyze content. Research shows that content optimization can increase organic traffic by up to 30%.
Voice Search Optimisation: Content optimization for voice searches is becoming increasingly important as Siri and Alexa become more popular.
Schema Markup: Rich snippets and more visibility in search results can come from adding schema markup in WordPress so search engines can understand your content better. Stats show sites with schema markup get 30% more clicks.
Summary
The potential for WordPress SEO are endless and the future is bright. You can make sure your website stays at the top of search engine results by using WordPress’s features, keeping up with Google’s changes, and embracing future technology.
Recall that SEO is a continuous endeavor. Sustained success requires constant observation, evaluation, and adjustment. If you accept the modifications and continue to be proactive, your WordPress SEO journey will provide amazing results.
