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WordPress Website SEO Checklist: 12 Fixes

6 minute read Updated 4 November 2026

Start in Settings: make sure search engines are not being turned away, choose readable addresses and use one https address for the whole site. Then work page by page on titles, descriptions, headings and image alt text, and check the sitemap, robots.txt, speed and redirects.

Before you start

You need to be logged in to WordPress as an administrator, because most of these settings live under Settings in the left-hand menu. Do the steps in order. The first three are site-wide switches, and a mistake in any of them affects every page at once. The rest are page-by-page work. If a word is unfamiliar, the SEO glossary explains it in plain English.

Step 1: Make sure search engines are allowed in

Go to Settings → Reading and find Search engine visibility. The box labelled Discourage search engines from indexing this site should be empty on a live site. Click Save Changes if you changed it.

This box is often ticked while a site is being built and then forgotten. When it is ticked, WordPress adds a robots meta tag with noindex to your pages. Google’s documentation says a noindex rule keeps a page out of its search results. One ticked box can hide the whole site. Our audit reports these pages under pages excluded from the index.

Step 2: Choose readable page addresses

Go to Settings → Permalinks. The Plain option gives addresses like example.com/?p=123, which say nothing about the page. Post name gives example.com/sample-post.

Google recommends readable words in addresses rather than long ID numbers, and hyphens rather than underscores between words. WordPress uses hyphens in post names already.

Be careful on a site that is already live. Changing this setting changes the address of every post. Old links and old search results will then point at addresses that have moved, so plan redirects (Step 10) before you switch.

Step 3: Use one https address for the whole site

Go to Settings → General and look at WordPress Address (URL) and Site Address (URL). On most sites they are the same. Both should start with https://, and both should use the same choice of www or no www.

Your host must have a security certificate installed before you change these fields, so ask them first. If the fields are greyed out, they are set in a file on the server, and your host or developer can change them.

Google says it prefers https pages over equivalent http pages when it chooses which address to show. When several versions of a page exist, it picks one, so the http, https, www and non-www versions of each page should all lead to a single address. Check what your old addresses do with the redirect checker.

Step 4: Write a clear Site Title and Tagline

Still in Settings → General, fill in Site Title and Tagline. WordPress’s own documentation says most themes show the Site Title at the top of every page and in the browser’s title bar.

Use your real business name, not a placeholder. Google’s guidance on titles says the home page is a reasonable place to brand your title, and that titles should be descriptive and concise.

Step 5: Check that your sitemap exists

Since version 5.5, WordPress makes a sitemap for you at yoursite.com/wp-sitemap.xml. Open that address in your browser. You should see a list of sitemaps for your posts, pages and other content.

Two things can change this. If the box in Step 1 is ticked, WordPress turns the sitemap off. And if you use an SEO plug-in, it may provide its own sitemap at a different address, so look in that plug-in’s settings.

Google treats a sitemap as a hint, not a promise that every address will be crawled. You can tell Google about it in Search Console, or with a Sitemap: line in your robots.txt file. Test yours with the sitemap validator.

Step 6: Check robots.txt

Open yoursite.com/robots.txt. WordPress serves a basic one automatically if you have not added your own file, and it lists the sitemap from Step 5.

Look for any Disallow line that covers pages you want found, or the folders that hold your theme’s styles and scripts. Google’s documentation notes that it needs CSS and JavaScript files to render a page. If robots.txt blocks a page, Google cannot read that page, so it never sees a noindex tag on it either. Test any address with the robots.txt tester.

Step 7: Give every page its own title and description

WordPress uses the title you give a post or page in its browser title. It has no field for a meta description. To set a separate search title or a description for each page, most people install an SEO plug-in. Yoast SEO and Rank Math are two common choices. Neither is required, and you only need one.

Google asks for titles that describe each page and are different from page to page, without the same words repeated. For descriptions, Google says it mostly builds the snippet from the page’s own text, but it sometimes uses the meta description. It also says identical descriptions on every page are not helpful. Check any page with the meta tag checker, and see how it may look in results with the search snippet preview.

Step 8: Use headings in order

WordPress’s documentation says the page title is usually the main heading (H1), and the headings you add in the editor should be H2, H3 and so on. Add a heading with the Heading block. To change its level, select the block and choose H1 to H6 in the block settings on the right.

Avoid adding a second H1 inside the post, and do not use headings just to make text bigger. The editor’s Document Overview shows your headings as an outline. You can also run the page through the heading checker.

Step 9: Describe your images

Every meaningful image needs alt text. In the editor, select an Image block and fill in Alternative text in the block settings. To set it once for an image you reuse, go to Media → Library, click the image and fill in Alt Text. Purely decorative images can be marked as decorative instead.

Google says alt text is the most important extra detail you can give about an image, and that it also helps people who use screen readers. It also suggests short, descriptive file names, so rename IMG_0042.jpg before you upload it.

Step 10: Redirect pages you move or delete

When a page’s address changes, the old address should send visitors to the new one with a permanent redirect. Google says it shows the new address in search results when a redirect is permanent. To set one up, use a redirect plug-in or ask your host.

After any change, test the old address with the redirect checker. Then run the broken link checker on your main pages to catch links that now lead nowhere.

Step 11: Check speed and mobile layout

Google’s Core Web Vitals guidance asks for the main content to appear within 2.5 seconds of a page starting to load. Large images are a common cause of slow pages. In the Image block, the Resolution setting lets you insert a smaller size than the full upload.

Test your home page and your most important pages with the page speed test. Then check how they behave on a phone with the mobile-friendly test. If the layout breaks on a phone, the theme is usually the cause.

Step 12: Add structured data only where it is true

Structured data is extra code that describes a page to search engines, for example that it is an article or a local business. Many themes and SEO plug-ins add it for you. Google’s policies say it must match what visitors can see on the page and must not be misleading. Check what your pages carry with the schema validator.

Check the whole site at once

The steps above are quick for one page and slow for fifty. Lala SEO runs 136 checks across your site, free for up to 300 pages. If you prefer to stay in WordPress, the free Lala SEO plug-in adds a Run audit button under Tools → Lala SEO; the crawl runs on our servers, and the plug-in guide shows the setup. Every check is listed, with what it looks for, on the checks page.

The bottom line

On WordPress, the biggest wins are three settings: search engines allowed in, readable permalinks and one https address. Start with those today, then work through titles, headings, images and redirects one page at a time. A free audit shows which pages still need attention.

This article is general guidance. Fixing what it describes makes a page easier for search engines to reach and read; it cannot promise a ranking. We are not affiliated with Google or endorsed by it, and cannot see inside how it ranks pages, so we make no ranking predictions. Lala SEO is independent and not affiliated with WordPress. WordPress is a trademark of its owner.