WordPress is flexible, which is exactly why audits of WordPress sites find so many surprises: plugins, themes and archives all change what Google sees.
The checks to run
- Indexability. Confirm key pages return 200, are not noindexed and are not blocked in robots.txt.
- Canonicals. Each page should canonicalise to itself (or to the one preferred duplicate) on the https, single-host URL.
- Redirects. One hop from old to new URL; no chains or loops; http→https and www/non-www resolved.
- XML sitemap. Lists only indexable, canonical 200 URLs and is submitted in Search Console.
- Title tags. Unique, include the primary keyword early, and fit roughly 580 pixels.
- Meta descriptions. Unique and persuasive; treat length as a click-through concern, not a ranking one.
- Headings. One clear H1 that matches the page topic; logical H2/H3 outline.
- Internal links. No orphan pages; important pages within three clicks of the homepage; descriptive anchor text.
- Broken links. Fix internal 404s and links that go through redirect chains.
- Images. Descriptive alt text, compressed formats, explicit dimensions to avoid layout shift.
- Structured data. Valid schema for products, articles, breadcrumbs or local business, matching visible content.
- Speed & Core Web Vitals. Check LCP, INP and CLS on templates, not just the homepage.
WordPress-specific pitfalls
- Tag, author, date and attachment archives can create large amounts of thin, duplicate content; noindex the ones with no value.
- Check the Discourage search engines setting under Settings → Reading is off in production, a classic post-launch mistake.
- Multiple SEO or caching plugins can output duplicate meta tags and conflicting canonicals.
- Pagination and comment pagination create duplicate URLs; ensure they are canonical or disabled.
- Theme templates often wrap the logo in an H1; fix this so each page has one meaningful H1.
How to prioritise
Start with anything that stops pages being crawled or indexed (robots, noindex, canonicals, redirects), then fix titles and headings on your highest-traffic pages, then work down. Don't spend a day on cosmetic warnings while indexing problems exist. A whole-site crawl groups results by impact so you can work in that order.
Download the free audit checklist (XLSX) to track these checks across clients or sites.
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