There’s good and bad news for SEO this month. Firstly, WordPress has introduced a significant update in version 6.5, enhancing search engine optimization (SEO) capabilities with native support for the ‘lastmod’ element in sitemaps.
This feature allows search engines to crawl websites more efficiently by understanding the last modification date of the content, potentially increasing site visibility, especially important for those doing weekly blog articles.
This update is a result of the collaborative efforts within the WordPress developer community, including Google’s Gary Illyes, recommend upgrading to the latest WordPress to take full advantage of this SEO improvement.
The Bad News – Paid Shop vs Organic SEO
Just about everyone has been talking about Google AI Overviews, and for good reason. This affects all of us in the PPC or SEO game, and really anyone with a website. Gartner has predicted organic traffic will fall 25%, with some industries already seeing much greater impacts.
Although the above tweaks will help tell Google of your new content, it’s clear that simple blog organic ranking with remain difficult. Anyone who does a Google search today will note the dramatic increase in paid advertising over organic news or information results displayed. This ‘strategy’ was well described in a recent Search Engine Journal article entitled Google To Prioritize AI Overviews Ads Over Organic Search.
This means that those running an ECommerce/WooCommerce website and are willing to buy Google Advertising, will always rank well. This perhaps confirms that SEO free ride is long over in 2024. Ranking well, especially for eCommerce websites won’t be easy now. Short answer is to get out your cheque book and run Google Adwords as well as optimising website structure and speed on mobile devices. If you need assistance setting this up or optimizing WooCommerce SEO and for Google, contact us below…