WordPress SEO audit: what to check yourself and how to read the report
A WordPress SEO audit is a review of the whole site for whatever gets in the way of Google and visitors: indexing blocks, missing or repeated titles and descriptions, 404 errors, thin content, images without descriptions and weak linking. You can check most points yourself in the admin. Leave site speed and server errors to a specialist or your host.
Author: The TellMyShop team. A guide for WordPress site and WooCommerce store owners: the cause, the manual fix and the same work in a chat conversation.
Last updated: · 6 min read
What an audit covers, and what it does not
The word “audit” means different things in different offers. Some send an automatic report with a percentage score, others a document of several dozen pages with a competitor analysis. For the owner of a small site something simpler matters: a list of specific problems, with a URL for each, and who will fix it.
A good starting point is Google's SEO starter guide. It describes what Google really pays attention to and helps you filter out advice that sounds serious but changes little.
The checklist: 12 points
The table links each checkpoint with its place in the admin and the person who usually fixes it.
| Area | What to check | Where | Who fixes it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Visibility | whether “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” is unticked | Settings → Reading | you |
| Visibility | whether important pages have noindex | SEO plugin below the editor | you |
| URLs | whether URLs use words instead of ?p=123 | Settings → Permalinks | you, carefully on a live site |
| Titles in Google | whether each important page has its own title up to 60 characters | SEO plugin | you |
| Descriptions in Google | whether descriptions are not empty or repeated | SEO plugin | you |
| Duplicates | whether two posts share the same title and topic | post list | you |
| Content | whether important pages have more than a few sentences | editor | you |
| Headings | whether long posts have subheadings | editor | you |
| Images | whether images have alt text | Media → Library | you |
| 404 errors | which old URLs lead nowhere | Search Console or a plugin with a 404 log | you |
| Technical health | updates, HTTPS, errors | Tools → Site Health | you or whoever looks after the site |
| Speed | load time on a phone | PageSpeed Insights | whoever looks after the site, host |
The Site Health tool has been built into WordPress since version 5.2 and splits results into critical, recommended and passed. It is described in the Site Health screen documentation.
The order of a do-it-yourself audit
If you are doing an audit for the first time, go in this order. The first steps can explain the problem before you get to the rest.
- Check for blocks. Settings → Reading, and noindex on the home page and the three most important subpages. One ticked option can hide the whole site.
- Open Search Console. The Pages report shows how many URLs Google has indexed and why it skipped the rest. If you do not have it, set up an account. How to read the exclusion reasons is explained in the Search Console help on the page indexing report.
- Review titles and descriptions. Start with the pages that sell: your offer, contact, the most important categories and products.
- Collect 404 errors. Redirect URLs that get visits to their equivalents. How to do it is in the guide on the 301 redirect in WordPress.
- Check the content. Expand pages with only a few sentences or merge them with similar ones.
- Fill in image alt text. Pages with traffic first. Details in the guide on alt text in WordPress.
- Finally, speed and technical issues. Show the results to whoever looks after the site or to your host.
How to tell a good report from a useless one
After the audit you get a report. Before you pay for it or start acting on it, check three things.
A good report points to specific URLs. “Improve meta descriptions” is advice. “The /services/ page has an empty description, suggested description: …” is a plan. A good report sets the order: at the top the things that will help most, at the bottom cosmetics. A good report also says who does what, because you can fix some things yourself in five minutes, while others need a developer.
Be wary of reports that promise a position in Google, give a single percentage score with no list of problems, or tell you to fix things that are not visible on the site because they concern other systems.
What a site review with the chat looks like
The ready task “Site review and fix plan” in the TellMyShop plugin for WordPress and WooCommerce works in TellMyShop Free, which only reads the site and changes nothing. Your chat (Claude or ChatGPT) checks the technical health, reviews the SEO of posts, pages, categories and WooCommerce products, collects 404 errors from the last 30 days and fetches the home page as Google sees it. The SEO review covers the 300 most recently changed items by default, and up to 2,000 on request.
Below is a sample excerpt from such a report. The numbers and URLs are examples.
You: Review my site and tell me what to fix first.
Your chat: Three things for this week:
1. 14 posts with no Google description, including the 5 most visited guides.
2. The /services/ page returns a 404 and had 38 visits in 30 days, the new content is at /garden-design/.
3. Two posts on pruning roses have almost the same title and compete with each other.
Plan: 23 fixes. I'm leaving site speed and the PHP update to whoever looks after the site.
Card status: waiting for your “yes”An example fix from the plan:
old version: Google description: none
new version: Google description: How and when to prune climbing roses, step by step, with a calendar of jobs for spring and autumn.
The report ends with a table: the problem, the count, why it matters and who will do it, meaning the chat, you or a developer. The “chat” rows are fixes the chat makes in TellMyShop Pro in the same conversation: titles and Google descriptions in batches, post content, redirects, image alt text, category and product descriptions. It works in batches of up to 50 items, shows 2 or 3 style samples with the first batch, and you see every change in a preview before saving. You can undo most changes from the change history.
What the chat will not do: it will not speed up your hosting, measure speed the way PageSpeed Insights does or analyse links from other sites. Nor does it promise a position in Google. When a problem needs the server or the theme, the report says so plainly.
We describe the plugin and TellMyShop Free on the TellMyShop for WordPress and WooCommerce page, and licence prices are on the pricing page. When the report shows that a specific page is not indexed, the guide WordPress page not showing in Google will help.
After the audit
Start with three things from the top of the list, not with everything. After a month, look at Search Console and compare the number of indexed pages and clicks. Run the next full review after a few months or after a big change on the site. You will find more guides on the blog.
Questions and answers
Is Yoast or Rank Math enough instead of an audit?
Not entirely. An SEO plugin rates one post at a time, while you edit it. The TellMyShop audit looks at the whole site: duplicate titles across posts, pages blocked from indexing, 404 errors, gaps in categories and products. One complements the other.
How often should I audit the SEO of a WordPress site?
A full review every few months is enough for most small sites. Run one as well after every big change: a new theme, a migration, a switch of SEO plugin or a sudden drop in traffic in Search Console.
Will an SEO audit improve my Google ranking?
The audit itself changes nothing, it only shows what to fix. Fixes remove obstacles, but your position also depends on the competition, content quality and links from other sites. An honest auditor does not promise a specific place in the results.
Is a free audit worth anything?
Yes, if it says exactly what to fix and on which pages. A report with just a percentage score and general advice gives you little. A good report points to specific URLs, the current state, the proposed change and the order of work.
What in a WordPress audit needs a developer?
Site speed, server errors, theme configuration and problems with files on the server. Titles, Google descriptions, content, image alt text, redirects and internal links you can fix in the admin yourself or with the help of a tool.
WordPress is a trademark of the WordPress Foundation. WooCommerce is a trademark of Automattic Inc. Claude is a trademark of Anthropic PBC. ChatGPT and OpenAI are trademarks of OpenAI. TellMyShop is not affiliated with these companies.