WordPress
The Technical Work That Actually Affects Visibility
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First, can it be indexed?
- Search engine visibility is not switched off in settings — this happens more than you would think
- No accidental noindex on important pages
- The sitemap exists, is current and is submitted
- Nothing important is blocked in robots.txt
A staging site left indexable, or a live site left blocked after launch, are two of the most common and most damaging technical faults.
Titles and descriptions
Every page needs a written title and meta description. Defaults and duplicates are wasted opportunities on the most visible text you control.
Check for duplicates specifically — several pages sharing a title is common and it confuses both search engines and searchers.
Structure
- One h1 per page, describing the page
- Logical heading hierarchy beneath it
- Canonical tags correct, particularly with categories and pagination
- Clean URLs without dates or numbers where they add nothing
Then the crawl
| Check | Common finding |
|---|---|
| Broken internal links | Several, usually from old edits |
| Redirect chains | Old redirects pointing at old redirects |
| Missing alt text | Widespread |
| Orphan pages | Usually two or three, sometimes important |
| Thin pages | Old posts and empty archives |
Do it twice a year
Technical problems accumulate quietly through ordinary editing. A crawl every six months catches them while they are small.
Half a day, twice a year, and the site stays healthy rather than needing a rescue.
Frequently asked questions
Which SEO plugin should we use?
The mainstream options are all adequate. What matters is filling in the fields, which is the part usually skipped.
Do we need structured data?
For local businesses, articles and products, yes — it affects how results appear. Elsewhere it is optional.
How often should we crawl the site?
Twice a year for a stable site, quarterly if you publish frequently.
Is technical work enough on its own?
No. It removes obstacles; content and links earn the visibility. Both are needed.
Not sure what is holding your site back?
A crawl and an afternoon usually finds it. Happy to run one and tell you what matters.