Technical SEO is most useful when it clarifies a website’s structure and removes friction for people. I use a staged workflow so that a long audit becomes a small set of actions the team can prioritise.
1. Establish the baseline
Start with a crawl, the index coverage report and a sample of real landing pages. Record the preferred domain, HTTP status codes, canonical tags, robots rules and sitemap. Search for duplicate titles, missing descriptions, orphan pages and links that lead to redirects or errors.
Look at templates, not only URLs
WordPress sites often share templates. A single template issue can affect many pages, so group findings by pattern. Review archive pages, pagination, media attachments and taxonomy pages before deciding whether they should be indexed.
2. Make the site understandable
Build a shallow, logical navigation that reflects how people describe the services. Use descriptive internal links, one clear H1 per page and headings that create a useful outline. Keep the important copy in the HTML and make sure key content is not hidden behind an interaction that search crawlers cannot access.
- Map each important page to one search intent.
- Choose a concise, specific title and description.
- Connect related pages with natural anchor text.
- Set canonical and redirect rules deliberately.
3. Remove performance friction
Compress hero images, reserve image space to avoid layout shifts and load only the scripts each page needs. Test on a mid-range phone. Performance is part of usability, and a smoother landing page supports both organic visits and paid traffic.
4. Measure the changes
Record the URL, issue, action and verification date for every fix. Re-crawl after deployment, inspect representative URLs and monitor the conversions that matter to the business. SEO becomes easier to manage when technical work is connected to a clear user outcome.
For a review of a site’s structure and search foundations, get in touch. You can also read the WordPress launch checklist for the pre-launch handoff.
