1. Make Sure Your Website is Visible to Search Engines
You will want to make sure that your website is visible to search engines like Google and Bing.
WordPress has a built-in option to prevent search engines from crawling your website. If you’ve enabled that option, then Google or any other search engine will not list your site in the search results.
To view the setting, you can head over to Settings » Reading from your WordPress dashboard. After that, ensure that the ‘Search Engine Visibility option is not checked.
If it is enabled, then simply uncheck the ‘Discourage search engines from indexing this site’ option and click the ‘Save Changes’ button.
2. Your site should be using SSL
An SSL certificate encrypts the connection between your user’s browser and your website server.
Google and other search engines will give priority to secure website that use HTTPS over those that are still using HTTP.
You can check if your site is secure by looking for a padlock sign in your browser’s search bar. Google will also display a message that says your site is unsecure.
If you don’t have an SSL certificate, check with your web host to see what they offer. Many hosts offer free web SSL certificates. Also check wpbeginner.com for information on how to obtain an SSL.
3. Find and Fix Broken Links on Your Website
A broken link (or dead link) occurs when a link goes to a page that no longer exists at that URL. In such cases, you’ll see a 404 not found error when you click on the broken link.
Some commons reason why you see a 404 error is because the WordPress site was moved to a new domain, the page was deleted, or it was moved to a new location.
Having a lot of broken links can be bad for your site’s SEO. They can have a negative impact on your keyword rankings and user experience, since search engines and website users won’t find the page they’re looking for.
That’s why it’s important to look for dead links and fix them. WordPress plugins can help you find and fix broken links.
4. Are you the meta description?
Meta description tags are snippets of HTML code that help search engines like Google to understand what a page is about, so it can rank it for relevant searches.
Description tag. Search engines will use this information to understand the content of the page. Usually the title tag and meta description are displayed in search results.
Meta descriptions are short text that appears under your post title and URL on search engine page results. They help in describing your article to search engines and users.
5. Is your website mobile friendly?
Google uses your site’s mobile version for indexing, instead of desktop. If you want to boost your rankings, then your website needs to be mobile-ready.
To find out how mobile-friendly your website is, you can use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool. Simply enter your site’s URL and click the ‘Test URL’ button.
The tool will now analyze your website and show the test results whether your site is mobile-ready or not.
From wpbeginner.com article 11-Point WordPress SEO Audit Checklist to Boost Your Rankings
