WordPress powers about 43% of the web, and it's where SEO outcomes diverge most. We help WordPress sites that should rank but don't — through technical audit, stack rationalisation, content architecture and the editorial cadence the platform actually rewards.
WordPress SEO is the practice of getting WordPress sites to rank in Google and other search engines, accounting for the platform's specific surfaces: theme rendering, plugin behaviour, the WordPress query loop, taxonomies (categories and tags), and the popular SEO plugins (Yoast, Rank Math, SEOPress) that most sites use as their on-page configuration layer.
It is different from "general SEO" because the levers are platform-specific. A "remove unused JavaScript" recommendation on a static React site means changing the build pipeline; on WordPress, it usually means uninstalling three plugins and replacing one theme. The diagnosis is similar; the playbook is not.
Most WordPress sites we audit have the same five issues: plugin conflict (one plugin's stylesheet overriding another's selectors), tracker bloat (analytics, heatmap, A/B test tools all loaded synchronously), index bloat (every tag and date archive indexable by default), unfocused content architecture (no clear pillar pages, no internal linking strategy), and schema inconsistency (the SEO plugin emits a partial Article graph but conflicts with the theme's hand-rolled markup).
We work with WordPress sites that fall into one of four shapes:
The technical issues we encounter on 80% of WordPress audits:
A typical mid-life WordPress site has 25–60 active plugins. Each plugin loads its own JavaScript and CSS on every page request unless its developer was careful — and most aren't. We audit the plugin set, identify the four to seven plugins that account for ~70% of front-end weight, and either deactivate, replace, or load-defer them. Result: typically 30–50% reduction in initial JavaScript transfer, which translates to a 20–30% improvement in LCP.
Premium WordPress themes ship with built-in analytics, heatmap, "page builder live preview", and A/B test infrastructure that loads even when those features aren't being used. We strip them out. This is usually a 200–500 ms LCP improvement on the home page alone.
WordPress' default behaviour is to index every tag, category, date archive, and author archive. On a site with 2,000 articles and 4,000 tags, this means 4,000+ low-quality archive URLs in Google's index, diluting the site's topical authority. We rationalise the taxonomy (delete redundant tags, consolidate categories, set noindex on date archives by default) and watch indexed-URL count drop by 60–80% with simultaneous improvement on remaining URLs' rankings.
The two most popular WordPress SEO plugins ship with sensible defaults but most installs are configured wrong. Common errors: title templates that emit duplicate or missing brand suffixes, schema settings that emit conflicting Article graphs, sitemap configuration that excludes important post types or includes admin pages, robots.txt overrides that block useful pages. We audit the configuration and fix it in one session.
WooCommerce sites and plugin-driven WordPress sites often expose their internal search and faceted-filter URLs to crawlers. Google indexes thousands of `?s=…` and `?filter_color=…` URLs, which compete with canonical product/category pages. We block these via robots.txt, canonical tags, and (where needed) noindex headers — and clean up Google's already-indexed cache via removal requests.
WordPress + Yoast emits a partial Article graph by default. Themes often inject their own hand-rolled schema for "review", "rating", "FAQ" content blocks. The two graphs conflict; Google reads neither correctly. We consolidate to a single schema source (typically the SEO plugin) and add `BreadcrumbList`, `FAQPage` and `Person` author schema where appropriate.
Each engagement is shaped to the site, but the building blocks are:
A typical 90-day onboarding:
Week 1–2 — Discovery and technical audit We crawl the site, pull Search Console data, set up CrUX monitoring, inventory plugins and theme, and produce the audit document. You get a written report and a prioritised fix list.
Week 2–4 — Quick wins We ship the top 10–15 technical fixes ourselves or hand them to your dev team with implementation specs: canonicals, indexation cleanup, plugin rationalisation, the largest LCP regressions. By end of week 4, your Core Web Vitals should be measurably better and your indexed-URL count meaningfully lower.
Month 2–3 — Content and architecture We produce the topical map, agree on pillar pages, and start the editorial calendar. By end of month 3, the first 6–10 new or rebuilt pages are live.
Month 3+ — Authority work Outreach begins once the technical and content foundation can hold the inbound traffic. We don't acquire links to a site that will dilute them through bad architecture.
Ongoing — Monthly reporting and strategy review A 60-minute call each month: what moved, what we're shipping next, what the data is telling us. Plus a written weekly summary.
Our pricing is the same across all engagements: USD 1,000/mo retainer for the standard programme, with Custom for migrations, multi-site rollouts, or in-house team embeds. We don't charge a separate "WordPress" premium — the work is what it is.
Selected case studies available on request — see our cases page for the engagements we can speak about publicly.
We'll crawl your site, pull your Search Console data, and send you a one-page summary of what's working, what's holding you back, and what we'd ship first. No obligation, no sales call required.