Technical SEO advice online tends to list dozens of items with no sense of priority. In practice, a handful of technical issues account for most of the ranking impact on a typical WordPress site. Here’s what we’d actually spend time on, in order.
Crawlability and indexation come first
Nothing else matters if the page can’t be crawled or is excluded from the index. Check robots.txt, per-page meta robots tags, and canonical tags for accidental self-conflicts — a page that canonicalises to a different URL than the one being crawled is a surprisingly common WordPress misconfiguration, usually from a plugin default that wasn’t reviewed.
Page speed, specifically Core Web Vitals
Google has been explicit that Core Web Vitals are a ranking factor, and WordPress sites are disproportionately affected because of how easy it is to add plugins that each add their own script. Largest Contentful Paint is usually the worst offender — our LCP guide covers the most common fixes on WordPress specifically.
Mobile usability
Google indexes the mobile version of your site by default. A theme that looks fine on desktop but has tap targets that are too small, text that’s too small to read without zooming, or horizontal scrolling on mobile is being evaluated on those flaws, not on how it looks on your laptop.
URL structure and redirects
Changing a WordPress permalink structure without redirecting the old URLs is one of the most damaging technical mistakes we see, because it can silently drop rankings for pages that were performing well. Every changed URL needs a 301 redirect to its new location, and redirect chains longer than one hop should be flattened.
Structured data, but only where it applies
Schema markup doesn’t directly boost rankings, but it can improve click-through rate by enabling rich results, and it helps search engines understand page content unambiguously. It’s worth adding where it genuinely applies — articles, products, FAQs — and not worth forcing onto pages where it doesn’t fit. See our guide to schema markup on WordPress for what to prioritise.
What matters less than people think
A few things get outsized attention relative to their actual impact: exact XML sitemap formatting (as long as it’s valid and current, the details rarely matter), minor HTML validation warnings that don’t affect rendering, and chasing a perfect Lighthouse score of 100 rather than a genuinely fast page. Time spent there is usually better spent on content and internal linking.
An automated audit checks crawlability, Core Web Vitals, mobile usability, and structured data in one pass — and tells you which ones are actually worth fixing first on your site.
Run your free technical auditIf you want the full picture beyond the technical layer, our complete WordPress SEO audit checklist covers on-page and content factors too.