WordPress SEO Checklist

I keep a core set of checks that I run on every new WordPress site. The order is deliberate: anything that blocks crawling or indexing comes first.

• Verify Settings > Reading has 'Discourage search engines from indexing this site' unchecked. I missed this once and the site sat invisible for three weeks.
• Set permalinks to Post name under Settings > Permalinks. Clean URLs help both users and crawlers, and they prevent the weird query-string bloat that WordPress defaults to.
• Install an SEO plugin (I use Yoast or Rank Math) and let it generate your XML sitemap. Submit that sitemap to Google Search Console immediately. Without a sitemap, discovery of new pages can take days longer.
• Confirm HTTPS is active and that HTTP traffic redirects to HTTPS. I use a 301 redirect via .htaccess for this. No SSL means Chrome flags the site as not secure.
• Run a crawl with Screaming Frog or Sitebulb. I look for 4xx and 5xx errors, redirect chains longer than two hops, and pages with no internal links pointing to them. Fixing these early saves crawl budget.
• Set canonical tags on every page. Most SEO plugins do this automatically, but I check a handful of random posts to be sure.
• Add title tags and meta descriptions to every post and page. For content-heavy sites, I use a template tag structure in the plugin and then customise the top 20 pages.
• Check that headings (h1–h3) follow a logical hierarchy. One h1 per page, supporting h2s and h3s. I've seen too many themes dump multiple h1s on a single post.
• Optimise images: compress them, add descriptive alt text, and set lazy loading. I aim for each page image to be under 100 KB.
• Address performance: enable caching via a plugin like WP Rocket, minify CSS and JS, and test [Core Web Vitals](/core-web-vitals/) on a few representative pages. If Largest Contentful Paint is above 2.5 seconds, I investigate the server or a CDN.
• Build a sensible internal linking structure. I ensure every important page has at least three internal links pointing to it. Orphaned content ranks poorly.
• Add relevant [schema markup](/schema-markup/) for the site type. For a blog, I use Article schema; for a local business, LocalBusiness. The SEO plugin usually handles the basics, but I check with Google's Rich Results Test.

This list looks long, but most items are one-time fixes. The real cost is forgetting a step, not doing the work.

The checklist tempts you to keep tweaking. I stop when the answer to each question is yes: Is the site crawlable? Are the indexable pages accessible? Are canonical tags present and correct? Do most pages load within 2.5 seconds of First Contentful Paint? If yes, I ship it.

I draw the line before image compression obsession. Shaving 10 KB off a photo that appears on one page is less impactful than writing a paragraph that earns a featured snippet. Performance matters, but perfect scores on Lighthouse can lure you into diminishing returns. I aim for a 'good' LCP and First Input Delay, not a perfect 100.

Duplicate content is another stopping point. I check for thin or near-duplicate pages with a [technical SEO audit](/technical-seo/), but I don't rewrite every two‑sentence product description unless it's in a competitive niche. Google handles minor duplication better than it used to.

Finally, I stop because the checklist is a foundation, not a ranking guarantee. Once the technical basics are solid, I shift time to content quality and user intent. If the site has a clear URL structure, unique titles, and a working sitemap, the remaining gains come from the words on the page, not the settings behind it.

I left the 'Discourage search engines' checkbox ticked for three weeks after launching a client site. I had assumed the SEO plugin would override it. It doesn't. Now I check that setting first and confirm with Google Search Console's URL Inspector that the page is indexable.

I blocked /wp-includes/ in robots.txt without realising it also blocked some CSS and JavaScript files Google needed to render page layouts. The result: Google saw blank pages for weeks. Now I only disallow directories I've verified don't affect rendering. I use the robots.txt testing tool in Search Console to check.

I obsessed over meta keywords for months in 2018. I added comma-separated lists to every post, believing they were still a ranking factor. They weren't. The time spent on keywords could have fixed redirect chains or cleaned up [duplicate content](/duplicate-content/) on tag archives.

I also ignored [pagination](/pagination/) on my first large WordPress site. Category pages stacked thousands of posts without rel=next/prev. Google indexed every page, but none of them ranked because each was a weak page of excerpts. Now I set the 'break pages' limit in the reading settings and use proper pagination markup.

The pattern: big mistakes come from assumptions. Assume nothing. Verify everything with a crawl and a search console check.