How to Audit Your WordPress Site's SEO

WordPress powers over 40% of the web. That's the good news — there's a massive ecosystem of plugins, themes, and guides. The bad news? Most WordPress sites have SEO problems hiding in plain sight.

Not because WordPress is bad at SEO. It's actually quite good out of the box. The problems come from misconfigured plugins, bloated themes, and assumptions that "installing Yoast" means SEO is handled.

This guide walks through the most common WordPress SEO issues, how to find them with AuditMySite's free scanner, and how to fix each one.

The "I Installed Yoast So I'm Good" Problem

Yoast SEO (and Rank Math, and All in One SEO) are excellent plugins. But installing them doesn't automatically fix your SEO. They're tools — they still need configuration.

Here's what goes wrong:

• Default title tag format is wrong — Yoast's default format often produces titles like "Home — My Site Name" or uses separator characters that waste valuable title space. Check that every page has a unique, keyword-focused title under 60 characters.
• Meta descriptions left blank — Yoast shows a green light for content length, but many people skip the meta description field entirely. Google will auto-generate one, but it's usually worse than what you'd write.
• XML sitemap includes junk — By default, Yoast's sitemap includes tag archives, author archives, and media attachment pages. These dilute your crawl budget. Go to Yoast → Search Appearance and disable anything you don't want indexed.
• Schema markup conflicts — If your theme also outputs schema, you can end up with duplicate or conflicting structured data. Run your URL through Google's Rich Results Test to check.

Heavy Themes Kill Your Performance

That premium theme you bought? It probably loads 15 JavaScript files, 8 CSS files, and a dozen Google Fonts. Page builders like Elementor and Divi add even more weight.

Performance matters for SEO. Not just because of Core Web Vitals — slow sites have higher bounce rates, which signals to Google that users aren't finding what they need.

What to check:

• Unused CSS and JS — Most WordPress themes load their entire CSS bundle on every page, even if that page only uses 10% of the styles. Plugins like Asset CleanUp or Perfmatters let you selectively disable scripts per page.
• Render-blocking resources — JavaScript and CSS files that block the browser from rendering the page. Move non-critical JS to the footer and defer what you can.
• Too many HTTP requests — Each plugin can add its own CSS and JS files. Twenty plugins might mean 40+ extra requests. Audit your plugins and remove anything you're not actively using.
• Unoptimized images — WordPress doesn't compress images aggressively by default. Use ShortPixel or Imagify to compress existing images, and make sure new uploads are handled automatically.

Plugin Bloat: The Silent SEO Killer

Every WordPress plugin adds code. Some add a lot of code. The typical WordPress site has 20-30 plugins installed, and at least a third of them are either unused, redundant, or could be replaced with a few lines of code.

Common offenders:

• Social sharing plugins — These often load heavy JavaScript on every page for buttons that nobody clicks. A few lines of HTML linking to share URLs works just as well.
• Slider plugins — Revolution Slider and similar tools load massive JS/CSS bundles. Sliders also tend to hurt conversions. Consider replacing them with a static hero section.
• Multiple caching plugins — Having more than one caching plugin causes conflicts, not better caching. Pick one (WP Rocket, W3 Total Cache, or LiteSpeed Cache) and remove the rest.
• "All-in-one" security plugins — Wordfence is solid but heavy. If your host already provides server-level security (like Cloudflare or Sucuri), you might not need it.

Missing Alt Text on Images

This one's embarrassingly common. WordPress makes it easy to upload images, but it doesn't force you to add alt text. The result: sites with hundreds of images and zero alt attributes.

Alt text matters for two reasons:

• Accessibility — Screen readers use alt text to describe images to visually impaired users. Missing alt text means your site isn't accessible.
• Image SEO — Google uses alt text to understand what an image shows. It's one of the few direct signals for Google Image Search rankings.

The fix: Go through your media library and add descriptive alt text to every image. For new content, make it a habit. AuditMySite flags every image missing alt text so you don't have to check manually.

WordPress-Specific Technical Issues

Beyond the usual SEO checks, WordPress sites have some platform-specific gotchas:

• Permalink structure — The default WordPress URL structure uses ?p=123 format. Change it to "Post name" in Settings → Permalinks. If your site is already live, set up 301 redirects from the old URLs.
• Category and tag pages — WordPress creates archive pages for every category and tag. If you have dozens of tags with one post each, that's dozens of thin content pages. Noindex tags you don't want indexed, or consolidate them.
• www vs. non-www — Make sure your site redirects one to the other. Check Settings → General in WordPress, and set up a redirect in your .htaccess or hosting panel.
• Mixed content — After migrating to HTTPS, some internal links and image URLs might still reference HTTP. Use a search-and-replace tool (like Better Search Replace) to update all internal URLs to HTTPS.
• Comment spam pages — If comments are enabled, spammers create paginated comment archives that dilute your site's quality. Disable comments on pages, and use Akismet or similar on posts.

How to Run a Full WordPress SEO Audit

Here's the fastest way to find all these issues:

1. Scan your homepage — Go to AuditMySite and paste your URL. You'll get a scored report across Technical SEO, On-Page, Content, Performance, Mobile, and Accessibility in about 30 seconds.
2. Check your most important pages — Scan your top 5-10 pages individually. Homepage, service pages, and top blog posts. Each page can have different issues.
3. Use the AI fix prompts — For every issue found, there's a copy-paste prompt you can use with ChatGPT or Claude to get a WordPress-specific fix. No guessing.
4. Compare with a competitor — Use the Compare tool to see how your site stacks up against a competitor in your space.
5. Export and prioritize — Export the results as CSV, sort by impact, and work through the list. Fix the high-impact items first.

WordPress SEO Isn't Hard — It's Just Neglected

Most WordPress SEO problems aren't complicated. They're configuration issues, forgotten settings, and accumulated bloat. The fix is usually straightforward once you know what's wrong.

The key is actually auditing your site regularly. Not once when you launch — monthly, at minimum. Plugins update, content changes, and new issues creep in.

Run a free scan now and see where your WordPress site stands. It takes 30 seconds, and you might be surprised by what you find.