A practical technical SEO checklist for WordPress publishers

Start with access and status

Before changing copy, confirm the article is publicly reachable without a login, returns a successful response, and is not blocked by robots.txt, an X-Robots-Tag, or a noindex meta tag.

Give the page one clear identity

Use a unique title, a useful meta description, one descriptive H1, and a canonical URL that matches the preferred public URL. Avoid creating several URLs that show the same article.

Help crawlers discover the article

Include the article in the XML sitemap, link to it from a relevant category or related article, and keep important pages within a few meaningful clicks from the home page.

Make the content deserve the visit

Answer the searcher's question directly, add original detail, cite sources where helpful, and review the article on mobile. Structured data can clarify the page type, but it cannot replace useful content.

Inspect after publishing

Use Search Console URL Inspection to check the live URL, user canonical, Google-selected canonical, and crawl status. A submission is a request to crawl, not a guarantee of indexing.