How to audit your WordPress site’s SEO

Even the best WordPress sites can run into SEO issues over time. Broken links, slow pages, duplicate content, and outdated keywords quietly hold your site back from ranking and driving results.

A regular SEO audit helps you catch these problems early and gives you a clear roadmap to fix them. In this guide, we’ll show you exactly how to audit your WordPress site so you can keep it performing at its best.

What is an SEO audit?

An SEO audit is a comprehensive evaluation of your website’s health. It analyzes your site’s ability to appear in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Think of it as a report card for your website.

It grades your site on various factors that Google and other search engines consider important.

These factors usually fall into three main buckets:

• Technical SEO: How well search engines can crawl and index your site (site speed, mobile-friendliness, security).
• On-Page SEO: The content on your site (keywords, meta descriptions, headings).
• Off-Page SEO: Your site’s authority (backlinks, social signals).

While you can technically check these elements manually, it is incredibly time-consuming and leaves room for human error. Most professionals use an automated tool to scan the site instantly.

For example, SEOptimer.com is a great SEO audit tool that can audit your WordPress site’s SEO and reviews over 100 data points to identify problems holding your site back.

Why are SEO audits important?

Here is why regular auditing is non-negotiable for serious website owners:

• Algorithm Changes: Google updates its search algorithm thousands of times a year. What worked six months ago might be hurting your rankings today. An audit ensures you are compliant with the latest standards.
• Competitor Analysis: Your competitors aren’t standing still. If they are auditing their sites and fixing issues while you aren’t, they will eventually overtake you in the rankings.
• User Experience (UX): SEO isn’t just for robots. Many ranking factors, such as page speed and broken links, directly impact how real people experience your site. A healthy site keeps visitors happy and engaged.

Technical SEO audit

The first step in your WordPress audit is the technical foundation. If Google can’t access or read your site, your content doesn’t matter.

Check Indexing and Crawlability

Your pages need to be “indexed” to show up in search results.

Sometimes, a simple setting in WordPress can accidentally hide your whole site from Google. Go to Settings > Reading in your WordPress dashboard and ensure the box that says “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” is unchecked.

Analyze Site Speed

Page speed is a major ranking factor. A slow site frustrates users and causes them to bounce (leave immediately). You can use plugins to help with caching, but first, you need to know if speed is an issue.

Running a scan with SEOptimer will give you a performance grade. It checks response times and page load speeds, helping you identify if large images or bad code are slowing you down.

Mobile-Friendliness

With the majority of web traffic coming from mobile devices, Google uses “mobile-first indexing.”

This means it looks at the mobile version of your site first to determine your ranking.

Your audit should confirm that your WordPress theme adjusts correctly to smaller screens and that buttons are clickable without zooming.

On-page SEO audit

Once the technical foundation is solid, look at the actual content on your pages. This is where you tell Google what your business is actually about.

Review Title Tags and Meta Descriptions

Every page on your WordPress site should have a unique title and meta description. These are the snippets that appear in Google search results.

• Titles: Should be under 60 characters and include your main keyword.
• Descriptions: Should be under 155 characters and act as a “sales pitch” to get clicks.

If you have hundreds of pages, checking this manually is a nightmare.

An auditing tool can scan all your pages at once to find missing, duplicate, or truncated meta tags.

Inspect Header Tags (H1, H2, H3)

Search engines use headers to understand the structure of your content. Your main title should be an H1, main sections H2, and so on.

A common mistake in WordPress is using multiple H1 tags on a single page, which can confuse search bots. Ensure your hierarchy is logical and clear.

With each audit you run with SEOptimer, you’ll see your site’s header tag usage.

Check for Keyword Cannibalization

This sounds scary, but it just means you have two different pages trying to rank for the exact same keyword.

When this happens, you are essentially competing with yourself. Your audit should reveal which pages rank for which keywords so you can merge or differentiate content as needed.

Backlink audit

Off-page SEO is primarily about backlinks which are links from other websites pointing to yours. Google views these as “votes of confidence.” However, not all votes (backlinks) are good for your SEO.

Identify Toxic Links

Links from spammy, low-quality, or gambling sites can actually hurt your reputation with Google. You need to review your backlink profile to ensure the sites linking to you are legitimate.

Find Link Building Opportunities

A good audit doesn’t just find problems; it finds opportunities.

By using SEOptimer’s Backlink Research tool, you can analyze your own profile and even look at competitors. This helps you understand where they are getting their authority from and how you can replicate their success.

You can also see an overview of your backlink profile in each SEOptimer SEO Audit.

Here you can see your site’s Domain Strength, Page Strength, Total Backlinks, Top Backlinks, and much more.

Monitor progress

Fixing your site once is great, but SEO is an ongoing process. You need to track your progress to see if your changes are working.

Regular Reporting

Let’s be honest, manually creating reports in Excel is tedious.

This is where automation saves the day.

SEOptimer offers automated SEO reporting that can generate reports in seconds to show improvements in your SEO score, keyword rankings, and technical health.

Users can set up a schedule for reports to run weekly or monthly, and then be automatically emailed to their chosen email address.

Track Keyword Rankings

You need to know if you are moving up or down in the search results.

In each audit, you’ll also see a “Top Organic Keyword Rankings” table which shows you the top 10 keywords driving traffic to your site.

Or you can use a tracking tool to monitor your target keywords by country and device type. This data tells you if your content strategy is working or if you need to pivot.

Start optimizing your WordPress site today

Ignoring your website’s health is a risk you cannot afford to take. A slow, broken, or unoptimized site drives customers straight to your competitors.

By conducting a thorough audit, you can uncover the technical glitches and content gaps that are hurting your visibility. While the checklist might seem long, you don’t have to do it alone.

SEOptimer simplifies the entire process. Whether you need to run a comprehensive technical crawl, check your backlinks, or generate professional reports, it provides the complete SEO suite you need to succeed.

Don’t let hidden errors kill your rankings. Enter your URL today and get your free website analysis.