WordPress SEO service – fix the theme, plugins, speed and structure

WordPress SEO starts with the core settings

The first part of any WordPress SEO service is a check of the admin settings. Each takes minutes, and a single miss can keep search engines from reading your site properly.

• Search engine visibility: under Settings → Reading, make sure "Discourage search engines from indexing this site" is unchecked
• Permalinks: avoid URLs like "?p=123"; choose a readable structure with the post name, ideally early in the site's life
• HTTPS: the whole site loads on https, and http and www variants redirect to one version
• XML sitemap: the built-in WordPress sitemap or your SEO plugin's sitemap is submitted in Search Console
• One SEO plugin: Yoast SEO, All in One SEO or a similar plugin, used alone, with a title and description set for each key page

Two SEO plugins at once often print duplicate titles or sitemaps. Open "View page source" in your browser and check that each page has one title tag and one meta description – it reveals a surprising number of issues.

Why WordPress sites stall in search

If the settings are fine and results still do not come, the cause is usually in how the site is built. Check whether any of these apply.

• The theme wraps the logo or site name in an h1, so every page has two
• Tag pages, date archives and attachment pages with little content are indexed in large numbers
• Several posts target the same topic, so search engines cannot tell which one to rank
• Dozens of plugins are installed and mobile pages take several seconds to load
• PHP, the theme or plugins have not been updated in a long time, causing errors or broken layouts
• Posts rarely link to each other, so important pages are hard to reach

The Pages report in Search Console shows why URLs are not indexed and whether unintended URLs are getting in – a good map of where to start. Crawling and indexing are covered in more depth in our guide to technical SEO.

How to review your theme and plugins

The theme and plugins make the biggest difference in WordPress SEO. A theme you like visually can still hold the site back if its HTML is heavy or it no longer receives updates. Use these criteria when choosing or reviewing one:

• Heading structure: one h1 per page, with h2 and h3 following the content
• Weight: no CSS or JavaScript loaded for features you do not use
• Updates: regular releases that keep pace with new WordPress versions
• Block editor support: writers can format posts without touching HTML

For plugins, list what each one is for, then remove the unused ones, the ones that duplicate each other and the ones that have not been updated for a long time. Take a backup first and test on a staging copy. If you want updates and backups handled on an ongoing basis, see WordPress maintenance.

Speed and Core Web Vitals

Google publishes Core Web Vitals as measures of page experience: LCP (how fast the main content appears), INP (how quickly the page responds to input) and CLS (how much the layout shifts). On WordPress, these fixes usually help most:

• Resize images before upload and use a light format such as WebP
• Turn on page caching through a plugin or at the server
• Run a recent PHP version that your theme and plugins support
• Cut heavy home page sliders and scripts that load on every page without need
• Give images and banners a set width and height to stop layout shifts

Test your home page and your most visited pages in PageSpeed Insights to see which elements slow them down. Step-by-step fixes are in our guide to site speed improvement.

Site structure, internal links and structured data

The last layer is the structure of the whole site, so search engines and readers both understand which page covers what.

• Categories: a small set organized by service or topic, with each post in one category
• Breadcrumbs: show where a page sits, from home to category to post
• Internal links: link related posts to the service pages that lead to inquiries
• noindex: keep thin tag pages and internal search results out of search
• Structured data: output organization, breadcrumb and FAQ markup correctly through your SEO plugin or theme

On sites with many posts, merging similar articles into one and adding 301 redirects from the old URLs often helps the remaining page gain strength. When you merge, keep the post with the most impressions in Search Console as the main one.

How UNANOBO handles WordPress SEO: a free demo first

Send UNANOBO the address of your WordPress site. We review the settings, theme, plugins, speed and structure, list what needs fixing and build a free demo that reflects the improved setup. You open it on a computer and a phone, see the lighter, clearer pages for yourself and then decide whether to go ahead.

The process is simple: free demo, feedback, launch, growth. The founder handles every project personally, so you keep one contact from the first review to improvements after launch. Everything runs by message, in Japanese or English. Search Console and GA4 stay in your name; we only ask for access.