Are you worried that your WordPress site isn‘t living up to its full potential in search results? Wondering if there are hidden technical issues holding back your rankings and traffic? You‘re not alone.
Many WordPress site owners know SEO is important but struggle to keep up with all the moving parts. That‘s where an SEO audit comes in handy.
In this guide, I‘ll walk you through an 11-point WordPress SEO audit checklist to help you uncover and fix common issues. Whether you‘re an SEO novice or a seasoned pro, you‘ll learn actionable tips to improve your on-page and technical SEO.
By the end of this post, you‘ll be able to:
- Identify quick wins to boost your search rankings
- Resolve critical errors that can hurt your SEO
- Implement WordPress SEO best practices
- Create an ongoing SEO monitoring and optimization process
Sound good? Let‘s dive in!
What is an SEO Audit?
An SEO audit is a process of evaluating your website‘s search engine friendliness. It involves checking various factors that influence your organic search rankings and traffic, such as:
- On-page elements like page titles, headings, content, internal linking
- Technical aspects like sitemaps, page speed, schema markup, site security
- User experience factors like mobile responsiveness and site navigation
- Off-page factors like backlink profile and online reputation
Image source: Backlinko
According to a study by Ahrefs, 91% of web pages get zero organic search traffic from Google. The main reasons?
- 66% of pages have zero backlinks
- 17% of pages have duplicate, missing, or poorly written title tags
- 42% of pages have no meta descriptions
A thorough SEO audit can reveal these kinds of issues so you can fix them and start ranking better. SEO auditing tools can help automate the process, but it‘s important to understand what to look for.
WordPress SEO Audit Checklist for 2024
Ready to assess your WordPress site‘s SEO health? Follow these 11 steps:
1. Verify your site is accessible to search engines
First things first: make sure search engines can crawl and index your WordPress site. If your site is blocked from indexing, it won‘t show up in search results at all.
To check this, go to Settings > Reading in your WordPress dashboard. Look for the "Search Engine Visibility" option and make sure the box is unchecked.
You can also use the "site:yourdomain.com" search operator on Google to see if your pages are indexed. If you see results, you‘re good to go.
2. Install an SSL certificate for HTTPS
Google has been using HTTPS as a ranking signal since 2014. Sites with an SSL certificate and HTTPS encryption may get a slight rankings boost over unsecured HTTP sites.
More importantly, HTTPS protects your site visitors‘ sensitive data like login credentials, payment info, etc. It‘s a must for eCommerce sites, membership sites, or any site with user logins.
To move your WordPress site from HTTP to HTTPS, you‘ll need to install an SSL certificate. Many web hosts now offer free SSL certificates with Let‘s Encrypt.
Follow this step-by-step guide to switch your WordPress site to HTTPS.
3. Set a preferred domain version
Is your site accessible at both the www and non-www versions of your URL (http://yoursite.com and http://www.yoursite.com)? Ideally, it should redirect to one or the other to avoid duplicate content issues.
You can set your preferred domain in WordPress under Settings > General. All other URL variations should redirect to this primary version.
It‘s also smart to specify your canonical domain in Google Search Console. This tells Google which version to show in search results. Follow these steps to set your preferred domain.
4. Create and submit an XML sitemap
An XML sitemap is a file that lists all the important pages on your site. It helps search engines discover and prioritize your content for crawling and indexing.
While sitemaps don‘t directly boost rankings, they can help get your pages indexed faster. Yoast explains: "A sitemap is a way to tell Google what pages on your site you want to be indexed. In its simplest form, a sitemap is an XML file that lists all URLs on your site."
If you‘re using the All in One SEO plugin for WordPress, it can automatically generate your XML sitemap. Just go to All in One SEO > Sitemaps and enable the "Sitemap" setting.
Once you‘ve created your sitemap, submit it to Google and Bing via their respective webmaster tools. This encourages them to crawl your site more frequently and thoroughly.
5. Find and fix broken links
Broken links (links that lead to 404 error pages) are not only frustrating for users but can hurt your SEO. Too many broken links may cause search engines to view your site as neglected or low quality.
Use a tool like Ahrefs‘ Site Audit or Screaming Frog to crawl your site and find broken links. These could be internal links to pages you‘ve deleted or renamed, or external links to resources that no longer exist.
Once you‘ve identified broken links, you have three options:
- Replace the link with an updated, working URL
- Remove the link entirely
- Redirect the broken URL to a relevant, existing page on your site
The All in One SEO plugin also includes a handy Redirection Manager. It lets you easily set up 301 redirects to send users and search engines from old, broken URLs to new ones.
6. Optimize your page titles and meta descriptions
Page titles (also called title tags) and meta descriptions are HTML tags that provide a brief summary of a page‘s content. They appear in the search results to help users and search engines understand what a page is about.
Page titles are a confirmed Google ranking factor, so it‘s important to optimize them with your target keywords. Ideally, keep your titles under 60 characters and include your main keyword near the beginning.
Meta descriptions don‘t directly impact rankings, but they can influence whether searchers click through to your site. Well-written, compelling meta descriptions with relevant keywords can boost your click-through rates.
To add SEO titles and meta descriptions in WordPress, use a plugin like All in One SEO or Yoast SEO. You can set default formats for your post types as well as customize individual posts and pages.
7. Improve your internal linking
Internal links are hyperlinks from one page on your site to another. They help users navigate your site, establish your site‘s information hierarchy, and distribute link equity (ranking power).
When it comes to internal linking for SEO, keep these best practices in mind:
- Use descriptive, keyword-rich anchor text for your internal links
- Link to relevant pages that will be useful for users
- Use follow links (rather than nofollow) for internal links you want to pass link equity to
- Include a few internal links in every new piece of content you publish
Tools like Link Whisper or the All in One SEO Link Assistant can help automate internal linking suggestions as you write.
8. Optimize your images
Images make your content more engaging and memorable, but they can also slow down your site if not optimized properly. Large image files are one of the most common culprits of slow loading times.
Before uploading images to WordPress, compress them with a tool like TinyPNG. This reduces the file size without sacrificing quality.
Also, be sure to include descriptive file names and alt text for every image. Alt text helps visually impaired users and search engines understand an image‘s content. Use relevant keywords naturally.
Finally, consider using an image CDN like Cloudinary to further speed up image loading. A CDN serves images from a network of global servers so they load quickly for users anywhere.
9. Improve your site‘s loading speed
Speaking of speed, improving your WordPress site‘s overall loading time is crucial for both rankings and user experience. Google has used page speed as a ranking factor since 2010, and it‘s only become more important over time.
Here are a few ways to speed up your WordPress site:
- Choose a fast, reliable web host
- Use a lightweight, well-coded WordPress theme
- Activate caching and minification plugins like WP Rocket or Autoptimize
- Use a CDN to serve static files like images, CSS, and JavaScript
- Optimize your images and videos
- Clean up your WordPress database regularly
Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, or WebPageTest to test your site‘s loading time and get optimization recommendations.
10. Ensure your site is mobile-friendly
More than half of all web traffic now comes from mobile devices. Is your WordPress site optimized for mobile users?
Google uses mobile-first indexing, meaning it primarily crawls and indexes the mobile version of websites. If your site doesn‘t perform well on mobile devices, your rankings could suffer.
To check if your WordPress site is mobile-friendly, enter your URL into Google‘s Mobile-Friendly Test tool. It will analyze your site and highlight any usability issues like small text, clickable elements too close together, etc.
If your site fails the mobile-friendly test, prioritize making these improvements:
- Switch to a responsive WordPress theme that adapts to any screen size
- Increase font sizes and button sizes for easy reading and tapping
- Minimize popups, ads, and interstitials that obstruct content
- Optimize forms and checkout processes for mobile users
11. Monitor your organic keyword rankings
Finally, keep track of your target keyword rankings as an ongoing part of your SEO audit process. Significant ranking drops could indicate technical issues, on-page problems, or competitive threats that need your attention.
To monitor your organic keyword rankings, use tools like Google Search Console, Semrush, Ahrefs, or Moz Pro. Check your rankings at least monthly, if not weekly, to spot any issues early on.
Pay attention to changes in your average position, search volume, click-through rate, and number of ranking keywords. Investigate further if you notice any major fluctuations.
Also, consider tracking your competitors‘ keyword rankings for comparison. This can help you identify topics or keywords to target with new content.
Bonus Tip: Set up Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a free tool that helps you monitor your site‘s presence and performance in Google search results. It‘s a goldmine of data straight from Google.
Use Search Console to:
- Check your site‘s indexing status and crawl errors
- View your organic search traffic and click-through rates
- See which keywords your site is ranking for
- Identify pages with high impressions but low clicks
- Get alerted to manual actions or security issues
If you haven‘t already, follow these steps to set up Google Search Console for your WordPress site.
Conclusion
Whew, that was a lot to cover! But don‘t feel overwhelmed. Treat this WordPress SEO audit checklist as an ongoing process, not a one-time project.
To recap, here‘s what you should check regularly to keep your WordPress site in tip-top shape for search engines:
- Site accessibility for search engines
- HTTPS security
- Preferred domain settings
- XML sitemaps
- Broken links
- Page titles and meta descriptions
- Internal linking
- Image optimization
- Site speed
- Mobile-friendliness
- Organic keyword rankings
Remember, SEO is a long game. Small improvements in each of these areas can compound over time to significantly boost your search traffic and rankings.
Use tools like All in One SEO to automate some of these checks and optimizations. But don‘t neglect the manual review process. Your human eye can spot issues and opportunities that tools might miss.
By making this SEO audit checklist a regular part of your WordPress maintenance routine, you‘ll be well on your way to higher rankings and more organic traffic in 2024 and beyond.
I‘d love to hear from you: Which step in this SEO checklist do you think is most important for WordPress sites? Let me know in the comments!
