A practical on-page SEO checklist for a WordPress site

Most ranking problems on small and medium sites come from a handful of basics. Work through this list page by page, starting with your most important pages.

Each page

• Title: unique, describes the page, and stays roughly under 60 characters so it is not cut off in results.
• Meta description: a plain summary of about 150 characters that gives a reason to click. Google may rewrite it, but a good one helps.
• One H1 that matches the topic, followed by H2 and H3 headings in a logical order.
• Useful, original content that answers the question a visitor came with. Avoid padding, copied text and near-duplicate pages.
• Clean address: short, readable, lowercase, and stable. If you must change one, add a 301 redirect from the old address.

Images and speed

• Give every meaningful image a short, accurate alt text; leave it empty for purely decorative images.
• Compress images, set width and height, and lazy-load the ones below the first screen.
• Use a caching plugin and keep the number of active plugins reasonable.

Links

• Link new posts from related older posts, and link key pages from your menu and footer.
• Use descriptive link text instead of "click here".
• Fix or remove broken links, and redirect retired pages to the closest current page.

Site-wide

• HTTPS everywhere, with one preferred version of the address (with or without www) and redirects from the other.
• A sitemap submitted in Search Console, and a robots.txt that does not block content you want found.
• A canonical tag on each page so duplicates point to the preferred version.
• Structured data (for example Organization on the home page and Article on posts) so search engines can read the basics reliably. Test it with Google's Rich Results Test.
• A mobile-friendly layout: readable text, tap targets that are easy to hit, and no horizontal scrolling.

Monitor

Check Search Console once a week for indexing errors, manual actions and security issues, and look at which queries bring visitors. Improve the pages that already get impressions but few clicks first; that is usually the fastest gain.

What to avoid

Buying links, mass posting comments or forum replies with links, automated directory submissions and other link schemes violate Google's spam policies and can lower a whole site's visibility. Earn links by publishing things people want to cite.