- Article
- Intermediate
- 2 minutes read
- Reviewed August 4, 2026
A WordPress SEO audit evaluates whether important content can be discovered, indexed, understood and used effectively.
The audit should produce prioritized actions, not only a list of tool warnings.
Define Scope
Record the website purpose, audiences, priority content, target regions, recent migrations, available analytics and known incidents.
Crawl the Website
Collect URLs, status codes, redirects, canonicals, robots directives, titles, descriptions, headings, internal links, depth, pagination, structured data and images.
Review Indexing
Compare sitemap URLs, crawl inventory and Search Console.
The goal is not to index every route. It is to index every important canonical page.
Audit Architecture
Review navigation, hubs, breadcrumbs, orphan pages, taxonomy design, archive usefulness, URL consistency and pagination.
Review Important Pages
Assess search intent, title, H1, description, heading structure, completeness, evidence, media, internal links, CTA and freshness.
Technical Review
Inspect HTTPS, mobile rendering, performance, JavaScript, robots.txt, noindex, canonicals, sitemaps, status codes, redirects, 404s, schema and international annotations.
Prioritize
Consider severity, number of affected URLs, business value, effort, dependency, risk and reversibility.
Fix broad access, indexing and canonical errors before polishing low-priority descriptions.
Verify Improvements
Crawl again, inspect representative URLs, validate redirects and schema, submit updated sitemaps and monitor Search Console over an appropriate period.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should every crawler warning be fixed?
No. Evaluate whether it affects important users, URLs or objectives.
What should be fixed first?
Prioritize access, status-code, indexing, canonical and migration errors affecting important pages.
Continue Learning
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Next section: [Accessibility](/resources/wordpress-manual/accessibility/)