WordPress SEO Checklist

A simple checklist to improve your WordPress site Ranking.

General

• Strict usage of domain with or without www
• Install Google Analytics
• Setup Google Search Console
• Setup permalink structure with Post Name (Friendly URLs)
• Install a WordPress SEO Plugin (Yoast SEO)
• Pages can be indexed
• HTTPS is used on all pages
• Sitemap is available (Yoast SEO)
  • Remove tags from sitemap
  • Don't index image attachment pages
  • Send sitemap to Google Search Console
• Robots.txt is available
• Structured data is used where possible
  • Test structured data (Google structured data testing tool)
• Social markup
• Breadcrumbs
• 404 page is available
• Correct language set in HTML tag
• Charset is set
• HTML is valid
• Is mobile friendly (Google's mobile friendly testing tool)

Resources

• JavaScript combined in one file
• JavaScript minified
• JavaScript is compressed
• No JavaScript inline
• CSS combined in one file
• CSS minified
• CSS is compressed
• CSS: No usage of @import
• No CSS inline
• HTML minified
• Static files are compressed with gzip or brotli
• Static files are pre-compressed on the server
• HTML is compressed with gzip or brotli
• Usage of correct image formats
• Usage of responsive images
• Images are optimized (TinyPNG for WordPress)
• Image are cached in the browser
• SVG files are minized
• SVG files are used where possible
• Only fonts that are used are loaded
• Browser cache is used efficiently
• Expires, cache-control and max-age headers for static resources is set to 1 year

Content

• Header tags used
• Meta descriptions used
• All images have alt text
• Add internal links (at least 3-5 links)
• Add external links (at least 2 links)
• All external links open in new tab or window
• No Duplicate Content
• Focus keyword optimization
  • Title
  • First paragraph
  • Permalink
  • Image alt text
  • Content
  • Meta description
• Yoast analysis of all post

License

MIT License © WordPress SEO Checklist