WordPress SEO: What actually matters.

Check the visibility box

Under Settings > Reading there’s an option called “Discourage search engines from indexing this site”. It’s meant for the build phase and is easy to forget at launch. While it’s ticked, WordPress asks search engines not to index your site.

Readable permalinks

Under Settings > Permalinks you choose what your addresses look like. “Post name” gives short, readable URLs like /wordpress-seo-checklist/. Set this at the start: if you switch later, you need redirects for every old address.

Exactly one SEO plugin

WordPress has no meta description field of its own. That’s what SEO plugins such as Yoast SEO, Rank Math, All in One SEO or SEOPress are for. They add fields for page title and meta description, an XML sitemap, canonical tags and structured data.

Which one you pick matters less than using only one. Two SEO plugins at once produce duplicate meta tags and sitemaps.

Tidy up categories and tags

Every category and every tag creates its own archive page. A hundred tags with one post each are a hundred thin pages. Work with a few clear categories, give each post one main category, and set tag archives to noindex in your SEO plugin if you don’t maintain them.

Speed: hosting, caching, images

Slow WordPress sites usually share the same causes: tight hosting, no caching, oversized images, plus heavy page builders and plugins that load scripts on every page. Measure with PageSpeed Insights, turn on a caching plugin or your host’s caching, and upload images at the size you actually need.

Images with alt text

Every image in the media library has a field for alternative text. Describe what’s in the picture. WordPress automatically creates several image sizes and lazy-loads images until they scroll into view, which helps your speed.

Link internally

New posts should link to older ones and vice versa. Google finds new pages faster, and readers stay longer. Use descriptive anchor text instead of “click here”, and link most often to your most important pages.

Updates and security

Outdated plugins and themes are a common way in for attackers, and a hacked site full of spam links loses its rankings fast. Keep WordPress, plugins and theme up to date, delete what you don’t use, and make regular backups.