WordPress Technical SEO Settings: What to Check in Your Dashboard
Most technical SEO advice applies to any website: use HTTPS, have a sitemap, keep pages fast, fix broken links. Our technical SEO checklist covers those basics for every platform. This guide is narrower. It covers the settings inside WordPress itself, and inside the SEO plugin most WordPress sites run, that can quietly help or hurt how Google crawls and indexes your site.
These are the settings we check first when a WordPress site is not showing up the way it should. None of them needs code. All of them can do real damage if they are wrong. For the words, titles and headings on each page, see our companion guide to WordPress on-page SEO.
1. Search Engine Visibility (Settings, then Reading)
At the bottom of Settings, then Reading is a tick box labelled “Discourage search engines from indexing this site”. It is meant for sites under construction. When it is ticked, WordPress adds a noindex tag to your pages, which tells Google not to show them in search results. WordPress changed to this method in version 5.3, as its core team explained in changes to prevent search engines indexing sites. It also switches off WordPress’s built-in sitemap.
If it stays ticked after launch, the whole site can drop out of Google. It is the first thing to check if a WordPress site is missing from search. Make sure it is unticked on the live site.
2. Permalinks (Settings, then Permalinks)
Permalinks control what your page addresses look like. The “Plain” option gives addresses like yoursite.co.za/?p=123, which tell neither visitors nor Google anything about the page. “Post name” gives yoursite.co.za/your-page-title/, which is what most business sites should use.
The important warning: set this once, at the start. Changing the permalink structure on an established site changes the address of every post at once. Every old address that Google has indexed and other sites link to will break unless it is redirected. If you have to change it, plan the redirects first (see section 7).
3. Your Sitemap: One, Not Two
Since version 5.5, WordPress creates its own sitemap at /wp-sitemap.xml, as the core team described in new XML sitemaps functionality in WordPress 5.5. SEO plugins such as Rank Math and Yoast SEO usually switch that off and create their own sitemap instead, often at /sitemap_index.xml.
What to check:
- Only one sitemap is submitted in Google Search Console, and it is the one your site actually uses. An old sitemap from a previous plugin that now returns an error just creates noise.
- It lists only pages you want in Google. Most SEO plugins let you choose which content types appear in the sitemap. Leave out the ones covered in the next section.
- It updates. Publish a test post and check it appears.
4. Tag, Category, Author and Attachment Pages
WordPress automatically creates extra pages that many owners never see. Some are useful, many are thin duplicates that add nothing in Google.
| Page type | What it is | Usual setting for a business site |
|---|---|---|
| Category pages | A list of posts in one category | Keep indexed if categories are real topics with several posts |
| Tag pages | A list of posts with one tag | Often noindex, especially if tags are used loosely and most have one or two posts |
| Author pages | A list of posts by one author | Noindex, or turn off, on a site with a single author: it just repeats the blog |
| Date archives | Posts by month or year | Usually noindex or off |
| Attachment pages | A page for every uploaded image or file | Off, redirected to the file itself |
Attachment pages deserve a special note. For years WordPress created a separate page for every image you uploaded, which could fill Google with hundreds of near-empty pages. Since WordPress 6.4, new installations turn attachment pages off by default, but sites that existed before the upgrade keep them on, as explained in the core team’s note on changes to attachment pages. If your site is older than that, check whether yours are still live, and use your SEO plugin’s setting to redirect them to the file.
Your SEO plugin is where you set each of these to indexed or noindex. Change them in one careful pass, not piecemeal.
5. Noindex on Individual Pages
SEO plugins let you mark any single page or post as noindex. That is useful for thank-you pages, cart and checkout pages, login pages and internal landing pages that should not appear in Google. It is also easy to tick by accident, or to copy onto a new page when you duplicate an old one.
Check the Page indexing report in Google Search Console for pages listed under “Excluded by noindex tag”. If a page you want found appears there, open it in the editor and check the plugin’s settings box for that page.
6. Canonical Tags
A canonical tag tells Google which address is the main version of a page when the same content can be reached at more than one address. Your SEO plugin sets these automatically, and for most pages the default (the page points to itself) is right.
Where WordPress sites tend to go wrong:
- A custom canonical set on the wrong page, so a page points Google at a different page and drops out of the results itself.
- WooCommerce products reachable through several category paths or filter addresses.
- HTTP and HTTPS, or www and non-www, both loading. Under Settings, then General, the WordPress Address and Site Address should both use your final
https://address, and your host should redirect every other version to it.
7. Redirects
Every time you delete a page, change its address or merge two posts, the old address needs a permanent (301) redirect to the most relevant page that still exists. Otherwise visitors and Google hit a “page not found” error, and the ranking the old page had built up is lost. Google recommends keeping redirects from a site move for at least a year.
On WordPress you can manage these without touching server files. The free Redirection plugin is widely used, and some SEO plugins, such as Rank Math, include a redirect manager. Use one tool for redirects, not several, so you always know where a redirect lives.
8. Staging and Development Sites
Many WordPress hosts offer a staging copy of your site for testing changes. Two things go wrong with these:
- The staging site gets indexed. A copy of your site on a different address competes with your real one. Google’s own guidance is that robots.txt is not a mechanism for keeping a page out of Google; use a noindex setting or, better, password-protect the staging site.
- The staging settings get pushed to the live site. When staging is copied over the live site, the “Discourage search engines” box or a blocking robots.txt can come with it. After every push from staging, recheck section 1.
9. Plugins and Theme: The Speed Side
Page speed and Core Web Vitals are part of the page experience signals Google considers, although Google is clear that good scores alone do not guarantee rankings. On WordPress, the usual causes of a slow site are a heavy page builder, too many plugins loading scripts on every page, and uncompressed images. Rather than repeat it here, our guide to why your WordPress site is slow walks through how to find and fix them.
A Quick WordPress Settings Check
| Setting | Where | What it should be |
|---|---|---|
| Search engine visibility | Settings, then Reading | Unticked on the live site |
| Permalinks | Settings, then Permalinks | Post name (and not changed without redirects) |
| Site addresses | Settings, then General | Both use your final https address |
| Sitemap | SEO plugin, then Search Console | One sitemap, submitted, listing only wanted pages |
| Tag, author, date archives | SEO plugin | Noindex unless they are genuinely useful |
| Attachment pages | SEO plugin or WordPress option | Off, redirected to the file |
| Page-level noindex | Each page’s SEO box | Only on pages that should not be found |
| Redirects | One redirect tool | Every removed or renamed page redirected |
| Staging site | Host control panel | Password-protected and not indexed |
Want Someone to Check It for You?
If your WordPress site is missing from Google or has dropped, our SEO Rescue is a once-off R2,500 service: three hours of focused work that includes fixing indexing problems and sitemaps, and setting up Google Analytics and Search Console. For ongoing care, Monthly SEO Maintenance is R850 a month. Plugin and core updates are handled separately through website maintenance at R450 an hour, agreed before work starts. Neither SEO service can guarantee a ranking.
If you are still choosing a platform, our comparison of static websites, WordPress and a custom CMS explains where WordPress fits.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is my WordPress site not showing up on Google?
Check Settings, then Reading first: if “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” is ticked, WordPress tells Google not to index your pages. Then check your SEO plugin has not set the page to noindex, that the page is in your sitemap, and use URL Inspection in Google Search Console to see what Google finds. A brand new site can also simply need time to be crawled.
Should I noindex tag and category pages in WordPress?
Category pages are worth keeping indexed if each one is a real topic with several posts. Tag pages are often thin, with only one or two posts each, so many business sites set them to noindex. Author pages on a single-author site usually repeat the blog and are best set to noindex too.
What are WordPress attachment pages, and should I turn them off?
They are separate pages WordPress creates for each uploaded image or file. They rarely have useful content. New WordPress installations since version 6.4 have them off by default, but older sites may still have them on. Most business sites should turn them off and redirect them to the file.
Can I change my WordPress permalinks without losing rankings?
Only if every old address is redirected to its new one with a permanent 301 redirect. Changing the permalink structure changes the address of every post at once, so plan the redirects before you make the change, and check them afterwards.
Rank Math or Yoast: which is better for WordPress technical SEO?
Both handle the settings in this guide: sitemaps, noindex controls, canonical tags and archive settings. The bigger difference to your results is that whichever you use is configured properly, rather than left on its defaults. Use one SEO plugin, not two, because two can output conflicting tags.
