How to Optimize Your WordPress Site‘s Technical SEO: The Ultimate Checklist for 2024
Are you confident that your WordPress site is fully optimized for technical SEO? While many site owners focus on content and keywords, technical on-page elements are just as critical for achieving high rankings and organic traffic. Overlooking aspects like site speed, indexing, and schema markup could mean leaving significant SEO opportunities on the table.
In this guide, we‘ve put together the ultimate technical SEO checklist for WordPress sites in 2024. We‘ll walk through 15 key items to assess and optimize, with specific action steps and expert tips for each one. By following this framework, you can ensure your site has a rock-solid technical foundation to support your ongoing SEO efforts.
Let‘s dive into the checklist:
Ensure your site is visible to search engines
First things first – can search engines even find your WordPress site? Do a quick "site:" search for your domain in Google and see if your pages show up. If not, check that you haven‘t accidentally ticked the box to "Discourage search engines from indexing this site" under Settings > Reading in WordPress. This can happen if your site was previously in development or maintenance mode.Assess crawling and indexing status
Beyond basic visibility, you‘ll want to make sure search engines can properly crawl and index your content. Connect your site to Google Search Console to see coverage reports showing any crawling or indexing errors that need to be fixed. Look for issues like server errors, redirect loops, or blocked resources. You can also test the indexing status of individual URLs using the URL Inspection tool.Install an SSL certificate
Website security is a must for technical SEO. Google has stated that HTTPS is a lightweight ranking signal, so you should use a secure encryption certificate (SSL) sitewide. Many web hosts now offer free SSL certificates – check with your provider. Then, implement 301 redirects from HTTP to HTTPS versions of your URLs. You can also use a WordPress plugin like Really Simple SSL to handle the HTTP > HTTPS redirection automatically.Find and fix broken links
Broken links are bad news for user experience, and they can also hurt your SEO if search engines have trouble crawling your site. Use a tool like Ahrefs or Screaming Frog to scan your site for 404 errors, then update any broken internal links and set up 301 redirects for external links as needed. For more automated monitoring and fixing of broken links on an ongoing basis, try the Link Whisper WordPress plugin.Resolve any duplicate versions of your site
To avoid "duplication" issues that can dilute your site‘s authority, choose a preferred version of your domain (with or without "www") and redirect all other versions to that primary one. You can specify your preferred domain under Settings > General in WordPress. Then, use the Yoast SEO plugin to set up a canonical URL for each page pointing to the primary version. This tells search engines which URL to index and rank.Structure your URLs for SEO
Your WordPress permalink settings and individual page/post URL slugs can have an impact on SEO. Choose a concise, descriptive permalink structure like domain.com/post-name/. Avoid overly complex or generic structures with numbers, symbols or dates. For individual pages and posts, craft URL slugs that accurately reflect the content (using keywords where appropriate), use hyphens to separate words, and keep them as short as realistically possible.Make your site mobile-friendly
With Google using mobile-first indexing, your site‘s "mobile friendliness" is crucial for SEO. Run your key pages through Google‘s Mobile-Friendly Test tool to identify any usability issues on mobile devices. Most importantly, make sure you‘re using a responsive WordPress theme that dynamically adapts your site‘s layout for different screen sizes. Avoid common mobile SEO pitfalls like unplayable content, slow mobile load times, and blocked resources.Improve your Core Web Vitals
Page experience has become increasingly important to SEO, and Core Web Vitals are a key component. These metrics measure loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability. Aim for Largest Contentful Paint under 2.5s, First Input Delay under 100ms, and Cumulative Layout Shift under 0.1. Use Google‘s PageSpeed Insights or Chrome User Experience Report to assess your Core Web Vitals and get tips to optimize. Implementing WordPress performance best practices like caching, image compression, and minimal plugins can help boost your scores.Optimize internal linking
Strategic internal linking helps establish your site architecture, spreads link equity, and guides search engines to your most important content. But orphaned pages with no internal links can be a problem. Conduct a site crawl using Screaming Frog or SiteBulb to find pages with zero internal links pointing to them. Add contextual links where appropriate, or consider deleting/redirecting low-value pages with no inbound links. The Link Whisper WordPress plugin can help automate relevant internal linking suggestions too.Generate and submit XML sitemaps
XML sitemaps give search engines a full list of your site‘s important pages to crawl and index. They‘re especially useful for large sites or ones that aren‘t well internally linked. You can use the free version of the Yoast SEO plugin to automatically generate XML sitemaps. Be sure to submit your sitemaps to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. You may also consider creating separate sitemaps for images, videos, or news content and submitting those too.Implement schema markup
Schema markup is code that helps search engines better understand your content and display rich snippets on the results page. This can boost your organic CTR with visual elements like review stars, recipe info, event details, and more. While adding schema used to require manual coding, the Schema Pro plugin for WordPress makes implementation much easier. It offers pre-set schema types for articles, events, products, recipes, videos, and more.Optimize your robots.txt file
Your WordPress site‘s robots.txt file tells search engines where they can and can‘t go when crawling your site. Make sure yours isn‘t blocking important pages or folders by mistake. If you don‘t have a robots.txt file, you can create one using the Yoast SEO plugin under Tools > File editor. In general, allow crawling for key content pages and directories like /wp-content/uploads/, but block sensitive areas like /wp-admin/. Include the URL of your XML sitemap as well.Scan for malware regularly
If Google detects malware, spam, or other security issues on your site, your rankings can tank. Proactively scan your WordPress site for malware and vulnerabilities on a regular basis using a tool like Sucuri SiteCheck. If any issues are found, follow the steps in our guide to clean up a hacked WordPress site. Keep your WordPress software, themes, and plugins updated, and consider using a security plugin like Wordfence for added protection.Use server-side rendering
How your site‘s JavaScript is executed can affect SEO. Client-side rendering, where JS is processed on the user‘s device, can be problematic because search engines may not wait for all content to load before indexing the page. With server-side rendering, your content is fully loaded before it‘s delivered to the user or search engine crawler. For WordPress sites with a lot of dynamic content, consider using a static site generator or server-side rendering tool to ensure your JavaScript content is visible and indexable.Monitor technical SEO over time
Staying on top of technical SEO is an ongoing process. Just because your site is error-free and optimized today doesn‘t mean new issues can‘t pop up tomorrow, especially if you‘re regularly publishing new content or making site changes. Use Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools to monitor your site‘s technical health over time and get alerts of any new crawling/indexing issues. For even more in-depth reporting, consider a dedicated site auditing tool like Ahrefs, Moz Pro, or Semrush.
By working your way through this technical SEO checklist for WordPress, you can rest assured that your site is putting its best foot forward to search engines. Of course, this is just one piece of the SEO puzzle – you‘ll still need to focus on keyword research, on-page optimization, building backlinks, and creating great content.
But getting the technical foundation right will make your other SEO efforts that much more impactful. A fast, secure, crawlable site with no errors will have the best chance of rising to the top of the organic search results and driving qualified traffic in 2024 and beyond.
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