Best SEO Checklist
ONE FOCUSED ACTION

Audit WordPress site for accurate indexability and crawlability settings.

Indexability optimization

1 checklist items

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    Why this matters

    WordPress sites require careful configuration of SEO plugins, canonical tags, robots.txt, and sitemaps to ensure pages are crawlable and indexable without conflicts or duplication.

    A STARTING-POINT EXAMPLE

    Hypothetical standard operating procedure

    Adapt this example to your site, access, tools, and change process. It is our suggested procedure, informed by the sources below.

    1. Review active SEO plugins to confirm only one manages titles, metadata, and sitemaps to avoid conflicts.
    2. Check canonical tags on important pages for correctness and self-referencing where appropriate.
    3. Audit robots.txt to ensure it does not block any pages intended for indexing, test with online tools.
    4. Validate XML sitemap contains only canonical, indexable URLs and is referenced in robots.txt.
    5. Use Google Search Console to verify crawl and index data matches intended coverage.

    Watch for

    Incorrect plugin overlaps, misconfigured canonicals, or robots.txt blocks may prevent indexing and degrade SEO performance.

    Definition of done

    All key WordPress pages have correct SEO settings, no conflicting plugins, sitemap includes only canonical URLs, and robots.txt does not block important pages.

    Sources & attribution

    1. WordPress SEO Checklist for Publishers: On-Page and Technical Basics ↗
    2. Multilingual SEO checklist: What to verify before launch ↗

    Original checklist wording and example SOP by Best SEO Checklist, using source-grounded AI assistance. Editorial contact: Ted Kubaitis, @tedkubaitis on Teams. Check current source guidance before implementation.