WordPress SEO

WordPress SEO Done Properly

WordPress powers over 40% of the web — but a WordPress install out of the box is not SEO-ready. The default settings expose tag archives and author pages for indexation, generate duplicate content, output slow page templates, and miss critical schema markup. Most WordPress sites are unknowingly competing against themselves in Google's index.

Getting WordPress SEO right requires working at three levels: the plugin layer (Yoast or RankMath configuration), the theme and code layer (template structure, heading hierarchy, image handling), and the content layer (keyword mapping, internal linking, content calendar). I cover all three.

SEO Plugin Configuration

Yoast SEO and RankMath are powerful tools — but only when configured correctly. Most sites leave them on default settings that actively harm SEO. A proper configuration audit covers:

• Crawlability settings — which post types, taxonomies, and archives to index or noindex
• Canonical tag setup to prevent cross-URL duplication
• XML sitemap configuration — what to include, what to exclude
• Schema markup — Article, BreadcrumbList, Organisation, WebSite
• Open Graph and Twitter Card meta for social sharing
• Robots.txt review and cleanup
• Title tag and meta description templating for posts, pages, and archives

Theme-Level Optimisation

Your theme determines much of your site's SEO performance independent of any plugin. I audit and fix:

• Heading hierarchy — H1 usage across templates, H2/H3 structure in content
• Image lazy loading, WebP format support, and alt text implementation
• Render-blocking CSS and JavaScript in the theme
• Structured data in theme templates (Article, Product, LocalBusiness)
• Mobile responsiveness and viewport configuration
• Breadcrumb plugin integration and schema output

WordPress Page Speed

WordPress sites notoriously suffer from slow load times — bloated plugins, unoptimised images, and poorly-cached themes compound over time. I diagnose and fix the real causes of poor Core Web Vitals scores:

• Caching plugin configuration (WP Rocket, W3 Total Cache, LiteSpeed Cache)
• Image optimisation — compression, format conversion, lazy loading
• Plugin audit — identifying plugins that add excessive JavaScript or CSS
• Database cleanup and query optimisation
• CDN setup and static asset delivery
• Critical CSS and render-blocking resource elimination
• Hosting assessment — PHP version, server response time, memory limits

Content Strategy for WordPress

WordPress's native post/page/category structure is ideal for a topic-cluster content strategy — if it's built intentionally. I map keyword opportunities to post types, design a pillar-cluster architecture, and create a content calendar with realistic publishing targets that compound over time.

What's Included

• Full WordPress SEO audit (technical, plugin, theme, content)
• Yoast or RankMath complete configuration
• Indexation and canonicalisation cleanup
• Theme-level heading and schema fixes
• Page speed audit and optimisation
• XML sitemap and robots.txt setup
• Keyword mapping and content strategy
• Monthly reporting and ongoing optimisation