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A WordPress SEO audit checklist gives you a structured way to find and fix every issue that is stopping your site from ranking — without missing anything important. Most WordPress sites have at least a dozen fixable SEO problems that are silently costing them traffic. This guide walks through every check, in order, so you can run a complete audit yourself or know exactly what to ask a professional to cover.
A proper WordPress SEO audit checklist covers six areas: technical SEO, Core Web Vitals and performance, on-page optimisation, content quality, mobile usability, and backlinks. Work through them in that order — technical issues undermine everything else, so fixing them first means your other improvements actually take effect.
When to Run a WordPress SEO Audit Checklist
Run a full WordPress SEO audit checklist at minimum once per quarter. Also run one immediately after any of the following:
- A significant rankings drop (more than 20% traffic loss over 4 weeks)
- A site redesign or theme change
- A WordPress, plugin, or theme update that coincides with a ranking change
- Migrating to a new domain or hosting provider
- Adding a large amount of new content or product pages
For active Irish business sites publishing content regularly, a monthly check of the most critical technical items is worth the time.
Step 1: Technical SEO Audit Checklist
Technical issues are the foundation. A site with broken crawling, indexing problems, or duplicate content cannot rank well regardless of how good the content is.
Check Google Search Console for Errors
Start in Google Search Console — it is free and gives you direct data from Google about how your site is being crawled and indexed. Go to Indexing → Pages and review each status category:
- Error — pages Google tried to index but could not. These need to be fixed immediately.
- Valid with warnings — indexed but with issues (common: indexed but blocked by robots, or duplicate without canonical).
- Excluded — pages intentionally or unintentionally kept out of the index. Review this list carefully — it often contains pages that should be indexed but have been accidentally excluded.
Use the URL Inspection tool to check any specific page’s index status and see the last crawl date.
Check Your robots.txt
Go to yourdomain.com/robots.txt and verify it is not accidentally blocking important pages. A common WordPress mistake is leaving Disallow: /wp-admin/ in place (correct) but also having Disallow: / somewhere that blocks the entire site (catastrophic). Rank Math and Yoast both generate robots.txt automatically — check what they are outputting.
Verify Your XML Sitemap
Your sitemap should be accessible at yourdomain.com/sitemap_index.xml (Rank Math) or yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml (Yoast). Check that it is submitted in Google Search Console under Indexing → Sitemaps. Confirm it includes all published posts and pages, and excludes noindex pages, drafts, and tag archives.
Fix Broken Links (4xx Errors)
Broken internal links waste crawl budget and create a poor user experience. The free version of Screaming Frog SEO Spider crawls up to 500 URLs at no cost — enough for most small Irish business sites. Run a crawl, filter by Response Code 404, and fix every broken internal link either by updating the link or adding a 301 redirect. The paid licence is £199/year and removes the 500 URL limit for larger sites.
Check for Duplicate Content
WordPress creates duplicate content opportunities by default: category archives, tag archives, author archives, paginated pages, and filtered URLs all potentially duplicate your core content. In Rank Math, go to Titles & Meta → Taxonomies and set tag and author archives to noindex if they contain little unique content. Ensure every post has a canonical tag pointing to its own URL.
Confirm HTTPS Is Working Correctly
Every page on your site should load over HTTPS with no mixed content warnings. Check your browser’s padlock icon on several pages — if it shows a warning, there is mixed content (HTTP resources being loaded on an HTTPS page). Run your homepage through whynopadlock.com to identify the exact resources causing the issue.
Step 2: WordPress SEO Audit Checklist — Core Web Vitals and Performance
Google’s Core Web Vitals are ranking factors. The thresholds to aim for are: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) under 2.5 seconds, Interaction to Next Paint (INP) under 200 milliseconds, and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) under 0.1. As of mid-2026, less than 56% of sites globally pass all three — meaning most sites have room to improve here.
Check your Core Web Vitals in Google Search Console under Experience → Core Web Vitals. This shows real user data (field data) not lab scores. For a detailed breakdown of exactly what causes failures and how to fix each metric, the Core Web Vitals fix guide for Irish WordPress sites covers every metric step by step.
Key performance checks to include in your audit:
- Is a caching plugin (WP Rocket, LiteSpeed Cache) installed and configured?
- Are images compressed and served in WebP format?
- Is a CDN (Cloudflare free plan or similar) active?
- Are render-blocking scripts deferred or loaded asynchronously?
- Is the server response time (TTFB) under 600ms?
Step 3: On-Page SEO Audit Checklist
Once technical issues are resolved, work through on-page optimisation for your most important pages — homepage, service pages, and top-performing blog posts.
Title Tags
Every page needs a unique title tag that includes the target keyword and stays under 60 characters. In Screaming Frog, filter by Page Titles → Missing, Duplicate, or Over 60 Characters to find all issues at once. Your focus keyword should appear at the beginning of the title where possible.
Meta Descriptions
Meta descriptions do not directly affect rankings but they control click-through rates from search results. Every page should have a unique meta description of 120–155 characters that includes the target keyword and a clear reason to click. Filter in Screaming Frog for Missing or Duplicate meta descriptions.
Heading Structure
Each page should have exactly one H1 that matches the intent of the target keyword. H2s should cover the main subtopics. H3s break down subsections. Common WordPress issues: multiple H1s (often caused by themes adding a second H1 for the site title or post title), no H1 on pages built with a page builder, or a heading hierarchy that skips levels (H1 → H3 with no H2).
Internal Links
Internal links distribute authority across your site and help Google understand which pages are most important. For every key page, check: Does it receive internal links from other pages? Does it link out to related content? Are the anchor texts descriptive (not “click here”)? For WooCommerce stores, category pages should link to related subcategories and top products, and product pages should link back to their category.
Image Alt Text
Every image should have descriptive alt text that includes the relevant keyword where natural. In Screaming Frog, go to Images → filter by Missing Alt Text. For large media libraries, Rank Math’s bulk editor can help add alt text at scale without editing each post individually.
Step 4: Content Audit
Thin, outdated, or duplicate content weakens your overall site authority. A content audit identifies what to update, consolidate, or remove.
Export all published posts from Google Search Console’s Performance report, sorted by impressions. Identify pages with impressions but low clicks (poor title or meta description), pages ranking on page two or three for valuable keywords (candidates for updating and expanding), and pages with no impressions at all over 90 days (candidates for noindex or consolidation).
For Irish WordPress sites specifically: content that targets generic keywords without any Irish or geographic context will rarely compete with UK or US sites for those terms. Adding Irish market context — pricing in euros, Irish regulations, Irish examples — is one of the fastest ways to improve rankings for locally relevant searches.
Step 5: Mobile Usability
Google uses mobile-first indexing, meaning the mobile version of your site is what Google primarily crawls and ranks. Check Google Search Console under Experience → Mobile Usability for reported issues. Common WordPress mobile problems include:
- Text too small to read (below 12px font size)
- Clickable elements too close together (buttons, links)
- Content wider than the screen (usually caused by a fixed-width element)
- Interstitials or pop-ups that block the main content on mobile
Test your site at search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly for a quick pass/fail check. For any issues reported there or in Search Console, they are usually theme or CSS problems that a developer can fix quickly.
Step 6: Backlink Audit
Backlinks remain one of Google’s strongest ranking signals. Your audit should check: how many sites link to you, the quality of those links, whether you have any toxic or spammy links pointing at you, and which pages attract the most backlinks.
Google Search Console shows your backlinks under Links → External Links. For more detailed analysis — including domain authority, anchor text distribution, and lost links — Ahrefs or SEMrush are the professional tools of choice, though both require a paid subscription.
For Irish businesses, check specifically whether you have listings on Irish directories (Golden Pages, Kompass Ireland), local Chamber of Commerce sites, and any industry-specific Irish directories relevant to your sector. These are typically easier to acquire than editorial backlinks and carry strong local authority signals.
Recommended Tools for Your WordPress SEO Audit Checklist
You do not need to pay for every tool to run a solid audit. Here is a practical stack:
- Google Search Console (free) — crawl errors, index coverage, Core Web Vitals, backlinks, keyword performance. Start here every time.
- Screaming Frog SEO Spider (free up to 500 URLs, £199/year for unlimited) — broken links, duplicate content, missing meta, heading issues, redirect chains.
- Google PageSpeed Insights (free) — Core Web Vitals lab data and specific recommendations for improvement.
- Rank Math (free WordPress plugin) — on-page SEO scoring, sitemap, schema markup, robots.txt management.
For sites over a few hundred pages, Screaming Frog’s paid licence is worth the £199/year — running a full crawl manually is the only reliable way to catch broken links and duplicate content at scale.
How Often to Run Each Check
- Weekly: Check Google Search Console for new crawl errors or manual actions.
- Monthly: Core Web Vitals review, internal link check on new content, broken link scan.
- Quarterly: Full technical crawl with Screaming Frog, content audit, backlink review, on-page check across top 20 pages.
- After any major change: Redesign, migration, bulk content upload — run the full checklist immediately.
Getting Professional Help With Your WordPress SEO Audit Checklist
Running through this checklist yourself is entirely possible, but interpreting the results and prioritising fixes correctly takes experience. A 404 error on an obscure tag archive is not the same priority as a canonical pointing at the wrong URL on your homepage — and the list of issues a full crawl surfaces can be overwhelming without context.
If your WordPress site has seen a significant traffic drop, is failing Core Web Vitals, or you have never had a formal SEO audit done, a professional audit will identify what is actually worth fixing first. The OnWebPoint SEO service for Irish businesses covers a full technical audit, on-page review, and an actionable priority report — so you know exactly what to fix and in what order.
For WooCommerce stores, the audit process has additional layers around product schema, category page optimisation, and duplicate content from filtered URLs — all covered in the WooCommerce SEO Ireland guide. And if your audit reveals speed issues as a root cause, the WordPress speed optimisation cost guide covers what a professional fix involves and what it typically costs in Ireland.
The WordPress SEO audit checklist above gives you everything you need to identify your site’s issues. The question after the audit is not whether to fix them — it is which ones to fix first to get the fastest return in rankings and traffic.
