WordPress SEO Checklist: 30 Steps for a New Site

This page gives you a WordPress SEO checklist of 30 steps I run on every new WordPress site before and after launch, grouped by settings, structure, content, speed and Search Console, so nothing gets missed.

How do I make my WordPress site SEO friendly?

You make a WordPress site SEO friendly by getting the core settings right, building a clear structure, writing helpful pages with unique titles, keeping the site fast, and connecting it to Google Search Console. None of this needs coding, and most of it takes one afternoon on a new site.

Google’s own SEO Starter Guide says the same basics apply to every site: help Google find your pages, make titles and snippets clear, and write content people find useful. WordPress just gives you the switches to do it.

Below is the checklist I use. I split it into groups so you can hand each group to the right person, whether that is a developer, a writer or you.

Group 1: Core settings (steps 1 to 7)

1. Go to Settings, Reading and make sure “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” is unchecked on the live site.
2. Set Settings, Permalinks to Post name, so URLs read like /wordpress-seo-checklist/ instead of /?p=123.
3. Install an SSL certificate and make sure every page loads on https.
4. Choose one version of the domain (www or non-www) and redirect the other to it.
5. Set the Site Title and Tagline in Settings, General to describe the business, not “Just another WordPress site”.
6. Delete the “Hello world!” sample post and the Sample Page.
7. Rename the default “Uncategorized” category to a real topic.

Group 2: Structure (steps 8 to 13)

1. Plan 4 to 8 main categories that match what customers search for.
2. Build a main menu that links to your service pages and key categories.
3. Keep important pages within three clicks of the homepage.
4. Use tags only if you will reuse them on several posts; otherwise skip them.
5. Decide which archives (tag, date, author, attachment pages) should stay out of the index.
6. Add breadcrumbs through your theme or SEO plugin.

Group 3: On-page basics (steps 14 to 21)

1. Write a unique SEO title for every page and post.
2. Write a meta description that summarises the page in one or two sentences.
3. Use one H1 per page and logical H2 and H3 headings.
4. Keep slugs short and readable, using hyphens between words.
5. Add descriptive alt text to meaningful images.
6. Link from each new post to at least two related pages with descriptive anchor text.
7. Add an About page and author details so visitors know who is behind the content.
8. Add structured data that fits the page type, such as Organization or Article, through your SEO plugin.

Group 4: Speed and experience (steps 22 to 26)

1. Use hosting with a current PHP version and enough resources for your traffic.
2. Turn on page caching through your host or a caching plugin.
3. Resize and compress images before upload, and serve WebP where possible.
4. Remove plugins and theme features you do not use.
5. Test key pages on mobile and fix anything that shifts or loads slowly.

Group 5: Search Console and monitoring (steps 27 to 30)

1. Verify the site in Google Search Console.
2. Submit the XML sitemap from your SEO plugin, or the WordPress core sitemap at /wp-sitemap.xml.
3. Inspect the homepage and one key service page with the URL Inspection tool.
4. Check the Page indexing report weekly for the first month and fix new errors.

If you prefer a printable version with extra technical checks, my free SEO audit checklist covers the same ground with a PDF.

Is WordPress good for SEO by default?

WordPress is a solid base for SEO by default, but it is not fully optimised out of the box. It produces clean HTML, lets you edit titles and slugs, and generates a basic XML sitemap, yet the default permalink option and some archive pages need attention.

The WordPress permalink documentation lists Plain as the default structure, which produces URLs like ?p=123. These work, but they tell users nothing about the page. Switching to Post name on day one avoids having to redirect old URLs later, since the same guide warns that permalinks should not be changed once set.

The other common gaps are thin archive pages (tags, dates, attachments) and themes that load heavy scripts. Neither is a WordPress flaw as such; they come from defaults that suit blogs more than business sites.

Which SEO plugin is best for WordPress?

The best SEO plugin for WordPress is the one you will configure properly and keep updated; Yoast SEO, Rank Math and All in One SEO all handle titles, descriptions, sitemaps, canonical tags and noindex controls well. The plugin matters far less than the settings you choose inside it.

Here is how I decide for clients, based on what the site owner actually needs rather than feature lists.

Only run one SEO plugin at a time. Two plugins writing titles and sitemaps cause duplicate tags, and I see this mistake often when a site changes hands.

What WordPress SEO mistakes do I see most often?

The most common WordPress SEO mistake I see is a live site still set to “Discourage search engines”, usually left on after a developer finished the build. It quietly adds a noindex tag to every page.

Across thousands of link building orders I check the target pages before placing links, and these issues come up again and again:

• Live sites with the discourage setting still checked.
• Service pages with the same title as the homepage.
• Hundreds of tag pages holding one post each.
• Images uploaded at 4000 pixels wide and resized only by the browser.
• No internal links pointing to the pages the owner most wants to rank.
• A robots.txt rule blocking a folder that holds CSS or important pages.

If you suspect a robots.txt problem, run the URL through my free robots.txt tester before changing anything.

What does this checklist look like on a real new site?

Notice that the expensive part was not the fixes. It was finding them. That is why I run the full list even on small sites.

What should I do after the checklist is complete?

After the checklist, your focus shifts to publishing useful content and earning links, because settings only remove barriers; they do not create demand. Plan one or two pages a month that answer real customer questions.

Keep each new page tied into your structure with internal links, and preview titles and descriptions in a SERP snippet preview before publishing. Once the foundations are stable, links from relevant sites help Google discover and trust your pages.

If you would rather have the setup done for you, my WordPress website design service ships every site with this checklist already completed.

Frequently asked questions