Technical SEO for WordPress: 12 Critical Checks Most Site Owners Miss
Your Content Won't Rank If Google Can't Crawl It Properly
You can write the best blog post in the world, but if your site has technical SEO issues, Google may never rank it — or never even find it. Technical SEO is the foundation that everything else sits on: your keywords, your content strategy, your backlinks. None of it matters if the foundation is cracked.
The challenge is that technical SEO problems are invisible to most site owners. Your site looks fine in a browser. Your content reads well. But underneath, there might be broken canonical tags, missing schema markup, crawl errors, or orphaned pages that search engines can't reach.
Here are 12 technical SEO checks that most WordPress site owners overlook.
The Checks You're Probably Missing
1. Canonical Tag Conflicts
WordPress plugins can create conflicting canonical tags — your SEO plugin says one thing, your theme says another, and a pagination plugin adds a third. When Google encounters conflicting canonicals, it picks one on its own, and it may not be the one you want. Audit your pages for duplicate or conflicting canonical tags by checking the HTML source of key pages.
2. Orphaned Pages
An orphaned page has no internal links pointing to it. Google discovers pages primarily through internal links — if a page isn't linked from anywhere on your site, it might as well not exist. This commonly happens with old landing pages, test pages, or content that was removed from navigation but not deleted.
3. Missing or Duplicate Meta Descriptions
While meta descriptions aren't a direct ranking factor, they heavily influence click-through rates from search results. Duplicate meta descriptions across pages signal to Google that your content isn't differentiated. Every page should have a unique meta description between 120-160 characters.
4. Schema Markup Gaps
Schema markup (structured data) helps Google understand what your content is, not just what it says. Most WordPress sites have minimal or no schema markup, missing opportunities for rich snippets that dramatically improve search result visibility. Key schema types for WordPress sites include:
- Article/BlogPosting — For blog content
- Organization — For your business entity
- Product — For WooCommerce products
- FAQ — For FAQ sections (generates expandable search results)
- BreadcrumbList — For navigation hierarchy
- LocalBusiness — For businesses with physical locations
5. Broken Internal Links
Every broken internal link is a dead end for both users and search engine crawlers. They waste your crawl budget and create a poor user experience. Over time, as content gets moved, renamed, or deleted, broken links accumulate silently. A site that's been running for three years typically has dozens.
6. Image Alt Text Gaps
Missing alt text on images isn't just an accessibility issue — it's a missed SEO opportunity. Google Image Search drives significant traffic for many sites, and alt text is the primary signal Google uses to understand image content. Check that every meaningful image has descriptive alt text (decorative images can use empty alt attributes).
7. XML Sitemap Issues
Your XML sitemap should include all indexable pages and exclude everything else. Common issues: sitemaps that include noindexed pages, redirect URLs, or 404 pages. These waste crawl budget and send mixed signals to search engines.
8. Stale Content
Content that hasn't been updated in over a year signals to Google that it may no longer be relevant. This is especially damaging for "best of" lists, year-specific guides, and technology articles where freshness matters. Regularly audit your content and update or consolidate stale posts.
9. Missing Heading Hierarchy
Using heading tags (H1-H6) incorrectly — skipping levels, using multiple H1s, or using headings for visual styling rather than structure — makes it harder for search engines to understand your content's organization.
10. Redirect Chains
When Page A redirects to Page B, which redirects to Page C, you have a redirect chain. Each hop in the chain dilutes PageRank and adds latency. Over years of site changes, redirect chains of 3-4+ hops are common and detrimental.
11. Mixed Content Warnings
If your site serves over HTTPS but loads some resources (images, scripts, stylesheets) over HTTP, browsers flag mixed content warnings. This can prevent resources from loading and signals to Google that your HTTPS implementation is incomplete.
12. Readability and Content Quality
Google's helpful content system evaluates whether content is written for humans or search engines. Content with poor readability scores, keyword stuffing, or thin substance gets demoted. Your content should score well on readability assessments (Flesch-Kincaid) and provide genuine value beyond what's already ranking.
Automating Technical SEO Audits
Manually checking all 12 of these issues across every page of your site is practically impossible — and the issues recur as your site evolves. This is where Oracle, the SEO & Content Strategist comes in.
Oracle continuously monitors your WordPress site for technical SEO issues at $15/month:
- Technical SEO audits — Automated scanning for all the issues above, with prioritized recommendations
- Meta tag optimization — Identifies missing, duplicate, or poorly optimized titles and descriptions
- Schema markup management — Recommends and helps implement the right structured data for your content types
- Broken link detection — Continuously scans for internal and external broken links
- Content quality scoring — Analyzes readability, keyword usage, and content depth
- Stale content detection — Flags content that needs updating based on age and declining traffic patterns
Technical SEO isn't glamorous, but it's the difference between content that ranks and content that gets buried. Oracle turns these invisible checks into an automated process that runs continuously, catching issues before they impact your rankings.