WordPress SEO is mostly plumbing. Installing an SEO plugin does not do it, despite the plugin’s cheerful green lights suggesting otherwise. Here is what actually needs setting up, and what to ignore.
Key takeaways
- An SEO plugin is a control panel, not a strategy. It lets you set things. It does not decide what they should be.
- Check one box first: Settings, Reading, “Discourage search engines” must be unticked. This single checkbox hides more launched sites than anything else.
- Search Console beats Analytics for SEO. It tells you what people searched, what you ranked for, and what they did not click.
- The green light is a readability heuristic, not a ranking. Writing to satisfy it produces oddly repetitive prose.
Before anything else: are you visible at all?
Go to Settings, then Reading, and look at “Search engine visibility”. If “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” is ticked, nothing else in this article matters.
That box exists so you can build a site privately. It gets ticked during development and forgotten at launch with remarkable regularity, producing a site that is perfect, live, and invisible.
Second check: search site:yourdomain.com in Google. If nothing comes back, you are not indexed, and that is the only problem worth solving today.
The settings that actually matter
Permalinks
Settings, Permalinks, choose “Post name”. You want /your-page/, not /?p=123.
Do this before publishing. Changing it later changes every URL on the site, and every one then needs redirecting.
Titles and meta descriptions
This is the main job your SEO plugin does. Each page gets a title that appears in search results and a description beneath it.
Write them for a human deciding whether to click. Keep titles to roughly 60 characters so they are not truncated, put the distinguishing words first, and do not ship five pages all titled “Home”.
The description does not affect ranking directly. It affects whether anyone clicks, which is the part you actually care about.
XML sitemap
Your SEO plugin generates one automatically. Your job is to submit it once in Search Console and then check occasionally that it contains what you expect, and not four hundred tag archives nobody should be reading.
Canonical URLs
These tell Google which version of a page is the real one when several URLs show the same content. The plugin handles this by default and you rarely need to touch it, but it is worth knowing what the field is for before you change it.
The parts the plugin cannot do for you
Deciding what each page is for
One page, one purpose. If two pages target the same search, Google has to choose between them, often picks neither convincingly, and both underperform.
This is the most common serious problem on established WordPress sites, and no plugin setting fixes it. It is fixed by merging pages and redirecting the weaker one.
Writing headings that describe the content
One H1 per page, which is normally the title. H2 for each main section, H3 for subsections beneath an H2. Do not skip levels, and do not pick a heading level because of how big the text looks.
Internal linking
Links between your own pages help readers and help Google understand which pages matter. Use descriptive anchor text: “our web development services” rather than “click here”.
Check what your related-posts feature is actually recommending, too. If it is sending readers to irrelevant content, it is wasting the most prominent internal link on the page.
Image handling
Descriptive filenames, real alt text, and files that are not enormous. A 4MB hero image is a speed problem, and speed is a ranking factor and an abandonment cause in equal measure.
Things people worry about more than they should
- Keyword density. Not a thing. Write naturally and the words appear.
- The plugin’s traffic-light score. A readability heuristic. Green is pleasant, not causal.
- Meta keywords. Ignored by search engines for many years.
- Submitting to hundreds of search engines. There are two that matter in most markets, and both find you without help.
- Publishing frequency for its own sake. Ten thin posts do less than one good one, and cost more to maintain.
What to do instead
Connect Search Console and leave it a month. Then look at two reports.
Queries: what people actually typed to reach you. It is rarely what you assumed, and it is the most useful free data you have.
Pages with impressions but no clicks: you rank, and nobody clicks. Either the title needs work, or the query wants something your page is not, and only reading the query tells you which.
That second report is the closest thing to a free list of specific improvements you will ever get.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need an SEO plugin for WordPress?
Practically, yes. Without one you cannot easily control titles, descriptions, canonical URLs or the sitemap. Yoast, Rank Math and All in One SEO all cover this; the differences between them matter far less than the arguments suggest.
Why is my WordPress site not appearing in Google?
Check Settings, Reading first: if “Discourage search engines” is ticked, that is your answer. Otherwise search site:yourdomain.com to confirm whether you are indexed at all, then check Search Console for crawl errors. New sites also simply take time.
How long does WordPress SEO take to work?
Typically months rather than weeks, and longer on a new domain. Technical fixes such as an unticked noindex box can show up within days; content and authority build slowly and unevenly.
Is Yoast or Rank Math better?
Both do the core job well. Rank Math includes more in its free tier, Yoast has a longer track record. Pick one and configure it properly rather than switching between them, because migrating settings is more disruptive than either choice.
Does page speed affect WordPress SEO?
Yes, though it is one factor among many rather than a dominant one. Its larger effect is on behaviour: slow pages get abandoned before they are read. On WordPress the usual fixes are caching, correctly sized images, and removing plugins you do not use.
