The Complete 11-Point SEO Audit Checklist for WordPress Websites

Performing in-depth SEO audits regularly is a best practice among experienced webmasters for discovering issues hurting your WordPress website‘s organic search performance.

By following a comprehensive SEO audit checklist covering both on-page and technical factors, you can identify problems early and take corrective actions to maintain strong rankings.

After 15+ years optimizing websites, I‘ve refined an 11-point WordPress SEO audit checklist that covers what I‘ve found to be the most critical elements impacting rankings.

In this guide, I‘ll walk through exactly what to look at in each section and provide fixes for common problems website owners encounter.

Why SEO Audits Are Crucial for Your WordPress Site

Many website owners only look at their search engine rankings and traffic numbers to determine whether their SEO is working. The problem is that by the time you see a decline in rankings, the issues have already been hurting you for a while!

That‘s why routinely performing SEO audits on your WordPress site is so important – they help you detect factors negatively impacting your organic search performance early.

You can then address them before they escalate and dramatically hurt your rankings and traffic.

Benefits of SEO Audits:

• Find technical problems lowering your SEO
• Identify on-page optimization opportunities
• Remove security threats and malware
• Discover issues hurting user experience
• Evaluate new SEO optimization opportunities
• Track SEO success over time
• Maintain search visibility as Google‘s algorithms evolve

SEO audits give you the insights needed to form an action plan for optimizing your website‘s ability to rank.

I recommend performing a full SEO audit 1-2 times per year, with quick monthly health checks to catch any new issues cropping up.

Now let‘s get into the 11-step SEO audit checklist…

1. Verify Website Crawlability by Search Engines

The first thing to audit is whether search engine bots can properly crawl and index your WordPress site. Without proper indexing, it doesn‘t matter how strong your SEO is across other factors.

To verify crawlability:

• Check for any settings blocking search engines from crawling your site in WordPress under Reading > Discourage search engines
• Fetch your pages as Google in Google Search Console to identify crawl errors
• Submitproblematic URLs for inspection in Google Search Console
• Review server logs for 500 errors, 403 forbidden access, 404 not found pages
• Confirm your XML sitemaps can be accessed by search bots
• Verify your robots.txt file is not incorrectly blocking pages

Here are some example crawl errors you may encounter:

Crawl Error	Description
500	Internal server error
403	Access forbidden, page blocked
404	Page not found

Seeing crawl errors in Search Console should be investigated immediately, as they directly prevent search engine indexing.

Fix any technical problems on the server-side and optimize WordPress SEO settings to allow full site crawling.

2. Analyze Site Indexation in Google and Bing

After confirming crawlability, the next step is reviewing whether your website pages are actually indexed by Google and Bing as expected.

Even if your site is technically crawlable, you may still have problematic pages that fail to get indexed due to other issues.

To analyze site indexation:

• Search site:yourdomain.com in Google to see indexed pages
• Check index coverage report in Google and Bing webmaster tools
• Identify poorly indexed pages flagged in Search Console
• Review indexing gaps for important pages and brand name site architecture
• Verify pages you want indexed do not contain noindex meta tag

Pages may fail to get indexed if they have technical SEO issues, thin content, or broken internal links. Strengthen internal links to important pages and improve technical SEO to boost indexing.

3. Audit Your Website Page Speed

Google has explicitly confirmed site speed impacts search rankings, making it an essential element to optimize. Using PageSpeed Insights and WebPageTest, benchmark your current performance:

Metric	Good	Needs Improvement	Poor
Mobile PageSpeed Score	90+	50-89	< 50
Desktop PageSpeed Score	95+	70-94	< 70
TTFB (Time to First Byte)	< 200 ms	200 – 600 ms	> 600 ms
Load Time	< 2 s	2 – 4 s	> 4 s

Slow page speed hurts user experience which increases bounce rate. Optimize images, enable caching plugins, leverage content delivery networks (CDNs), and minimize redirects to improve performance.

4. Check Mobile Friendliness with Google Tool

With the majority of searches happening on mobile devices, having a slow or unusable site on mobile can drastically impact organic traffic and conversions.

Using Google‘s Mobile-Friendly Test, analyze:

• Mobile usability errors
• Tap targets too small for fingers
• Content wider than mobile screens
• Poor readability on mobile
• Slow mobile performance

Switch to a responsive mobile-friendly WordPress theme if needed to provide good user experience.

5. Review Internal Linking Structure

A proper internal linking structure helps establish information architecture and pass authority across your site.

When conducting an internal link audit:

• Identify orphan pages with no internal links
• Find overoptimized pages hogging too many internal links
• Check for broken links and resolve with redirects
• Assess contextual relevance of anchor text used on internal links
• Ensure internal links lead users and search bots to related content

Focus on fixing broken links and building internal links between closely related content using keywords in anchors.

6. Verify SEO Optimized Title Tags and Meta Descriptions

Title tags and meta descriptions represent critical on-page SEO elements that impact click-through rate from search engines.

For title tags:

• 55-60 characters is optimal
• Unique title for each page
• Primary keyword appears early in title

For meta descriptions:

• Between 135-160 characters
• Each page has unique description copy
• Descriptions compellingly summarize page content

Check that both titles and descriptions meet length guidelines and entice clicks by users in search engines.

7. Review Other Technical SEO Factors

Beyond title tags and meta descriptions, there are other technical elements on each page that impact SEO if improperly implemented:

• Headings: Proper heading structure using H1, H2 tags
• Images: Relevant alt text descriptions
• Schema markup: Added to enhance search appearance
• Duplicate content: Thin or duplicate content hurts rankings

Remediate any technical SEO issues discovered on your pages to help search engine bots better understand content.

8. Audit Server Configuration and Performance

Your web server configuration and performance also influence SEO in terms of site speed and bot access.

When reviewing backend server factors:

• HTTPS – Migrate site to SSL certificate for security
• Response time – Under 200 ms is good
• Redirects – Proper 301s implemented for changed pages
• Caching – Tested and enabled
• Bot blocking – Overly aggressive rules prevent indexing

Good response time, redirects, and caching all enhance user experience and site speed. Avoid overly restrictive bot blocking rules.

9. Check Reports in Google and Bing for SEO Warnings

Google and Bing webmaster tools also provide reports identifying specific issues and underperforming pages for further diagnosis:

• Google Search Console enhancements report
• Google Search Console manual actions report
• Google Analytics site speed report
• Google Mobile-Friendly Test
• Bing Webmaster Tools site issues and debug

Pages flagged in these reports likely have crawl errors, speed problems, mobile usability issues, security warnings, or other errors negatively impacting their ability to rank well.

10. Analyze Your Backlink Profile and Opportunities

While not as crucial as other factors in this SEO audit checklist, assessing your existing backlink profile can provide insights into:

• New quality link building tactics
• Toxic links needing disavowal
• Competitor link gaps to close

Conduct backlink analysis using tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Moz. Focus efforts on building new contextual links from relevant websites over low-quality links.

11. Track Keyword Ranking Changes Over Time

The final step is monitoring changes in keyword rankings for your target SEO keywords to gauge performance gains after optimizing issues discovered during audits.

• Select primary keywords based on search volume and competitiveness
• Check current Google rankings for target keywords
• Track ranking changes in Search Console
• Set up rank tracking in tools like SEMrush, Moz, or Serpstat
• Compare rankings vs. competitors

Frequently tracking keyword ranking positions provides visibility into both opportunities and SEO successes as you optimize your website over time.

Continuously Improve Your WordPress SEO with Audits

Regularly optimizing your WordPress website through rigorous SEO audits following this comprehensive 11-point checklist is key for maintaining strong organic search visibility and performance.

Issues discovered during your audit become new tasks on your SEO roadmap to boost your rankings. By catching and correcting problems early, you can avoid declines in traffic and rankings before they have significantly built up.

I recommend performing a full SEO audit 1-2 times per year using this checklist, along with quick monthly health checks. This SEO audit cadence enables you to stay ahead of the latest Google updates and keep your WordPress site optimized to reach its highest potential search rankings.