10 WordPress SEO Tips the Plugin Won't Handle for You

Most lists of WordPress SEO tips are really lists of SEO plugin settings.

Those matter. But plugins sit on top of WordPress, and the CMS underneath makes its own decisions about redirects, sitemaps, media pages and robots tags.

These 10 tips cover that layer. For the full settings audit, use my WordPress SEO checklist instead.

1. Change Post Slugs Freely, but Page Slugs Carefully

WordPress quietly protects you when you rename a post. It doesn't do the same for pages.

When you change the slug of a published post, WordPress stores the old slug.

If someone requests the old URL and it would otherwise 404, WordPress sends them to the new one with a 301.

The function behind it, wp_old_slug_redirect, has one line that matters here: it does not attempt a redirect for hierarchical post types.

Pages are hierarchical. So are some custom post types.

Here's what that means in practice:

• Posts: rename the slug and the old URL usually keeps working.
• Pages: rename the slug and the old URL breaks unless you add a redirect yourself.
• Moving a page to a new parent: its URL changes too, with no automatic redirect.

Before you tidy up page URLs, list the old and new addresses and add 301s through your SEO plugin or a redirect plugin.

For bigger clean-ups, build a proper redirect map first.

2. Read the Core Sitemap Index for Forgotten Post Types

The core sitemap is the fastest way to see every content type WordPress is publishing.

Since WordPress 5.5, core has generated a sitemap index at /wp-sitemap.xml. According to the WordPress 5.5 sitemaps announcement, it covers all public and publicly queryable post types and taxonomies, plus author archives and the homepage.

That's useful even if your SEO plugin replaces it.

Open whichever sitemap index your site actually uses and read the list of child sitemaps.

You'll often find content types nobody remembers creating:

• Portfolio or project items from an old theme
• Testimonials or team members stored as their own post type
• Taxonomies added by a page builder or an events plugin
• A users sitemap listing author archives on a one-author site

Each of those is a set of URLs Google can crawl, and on larger sites they eat into your crawl budget.

For every one, decide whether it deserves to rank. If not, remove it from the sitemap and noindex it in your SEO plugin.

3. Check Whether Your Site Still Has Attachment Pages

Attachment pages depend on how old your WordPress install is.

Every image you upload can get its own page, usually holding nothing but the image.

WordPress 6.4 changed the default. According to the 6.4 attachment pages note, new installs have them switched off and redirect those URLs instead.

Sites upgraded from older versions keep attachment pages switched on.

So a site launched years ago can still be producing a thin page for every upload.

Here's a quick way to tell. Open any item in the media library.

If you see "View attachment page", they're on. If you see "View media file", they're off.

If they're on, you have two options:

• Switch the setting off. It's stored in an option called wp_attachment_pages_enabled, which a developer can change with WP-CLI.
• Use your SEO plugin's setting to redirect attachment URLs to the file or the parent post.

Either way, check Search Console afterwards for attachment URLs still sitting in the index.

4. Let One System Write the Robots Meta Tag

WordPress writes its own robots meta tag now. Plugins and themes sometimes write another one.

Since version 5.7, core has a Robots API.

The 5.7 robots announcement explains that it adds max-image-preview:large by default to sites that want to be indexed. That directive allows search engines to show large image previews.

If you tick "Discourage search engines" under Settings → Reading, core outputs noindex, nofollow instead.

Problems start when an older plugin or theme prints its own robots tag alongside the core one.

Two tags with different instructions are a mess you don't want Google to untangle.

The test takes a minute:

1. Open a post and view the page source.
2. Search for name="robots".
3. Count the results.

You want one robots meta tag per page. If you see two, find which plugin or theme adds the extra one and switch that feature off.

And keep max-image-preview:large unless you have a specific reason to restrict image previews.

5. Use Parent Pages to Build Service Hierarchies

Parent pages let you group related pages without a plugin or a custom post type.

The Parent setting sits in the page sidebar and only appears for hierarchical post types, such as pages.

With post-name permalinks, a child page's address includes its parent's slug.

That's a simple way to build a clean structure for a service business:

The parent becomes a natural hub. Give it real copy and links to every child, rather than leaving it as an empty folder.

Two cautions.

First, plan the hierarchy before you publish. Moving a page later changes its URL, and as tip 1 explains, pages don't get automatic redirects.

Second, keep it shallow. Two levels is plenty for most sites.

6. Check Headings in the Outline Tab Before You Publish

The block editor has a built-in heading checker most people never open.

Click the Document Overview icon in the top toolbar and switch to the Outline tab.

According to WordPress.org's block editor documentation, it shows the word count, reading time, block count and the document outline, meaning your headings and how they nest.

Use it as a pre-publish check:

• Start content headings at H2. Most themes print the post or page title as the H1, so another H1 in the content creates two.
• Don't skip levels. An H4 straight after an H2 usually means someone picked a heading for its size.
• Make headings describe the section. "Overview" and "More info" tell Google nothing.

It takes ten seconds per post.

Then check one published page in the browser, because some themes and builders add headings of their own around your content. Heading structure is one of the first things I fix in on-page SEO work for that reason.

7. Write Excerpts for Posts That Feed Archive Pages

If your category pages are indexed, their text is mostly your excerpts.

The excerpt field sits in the post sidebar.

If you leave it empty, WordPress builds one from the first 55 words of the post, according to WordPress.org's documentation on post settings. Depending on the theme, excerpts appear on the blog page, category archives and search results.

That's fine for a personal blog. It's weak for a category page you want to rank.

Twenty auto-generated excerpts usually means twenty intros that all start with throat-clearing. The page ends up with little useful text of its own.

A handwritten excerpt fixes that. Write one or two sentences that say what the post answers and who it's for.

You can reuse that work, too.

A good excerpt is often a strong first draft of the meta description, which you can tighten using my guide to writing meta descriptions. Then check how it reads in the SERP snippet preview tool.

8. Add Internal Links From the Editor's Link Search

You don't need a plugin to link posts together. The editor already searches your content.

Highlight a phrase in the block editor, click the link button and start typing.

WordPress suggests matching posts and pages from your own site, so you can link without hunting for URLs.

The tool is easy. The habit is the hard part.

Build a short routine for every new post:

1. Link out to two or three older posts on related topics.
2. Open two or three older posts and link back to the new one.
3. Use anchor text that describes the destination, not "click here".

That second step is the one people skip.

New posts start with zero internal links pointing at them, which makes them harder for Google to find and weigh.

If you want a system rather than a habit, my internal linking strategy shows how to plan links around your key pages, and this guide to finding internal linking opportunities helps with existing content.

9. Merge Overlapping Posts Instead of Writing Another

WordPress makes publishing so easy that sites end up with five posts on the same question.

I see it constantly on older blogs: "how to choose X" from 2019, "X buying guide" from 2021 and "what to look for in X" from 2023.

They compete with each other, and none of them is the best answer.

Here's how I merge them:

1. Pick the URL with the most links and clicks as the keeper.
2. Move the best sections from the others into it, then update the date honestly.
3. Redirect the old URLs to the keeper with a 301.
4. Update internal links so they point straight at the keeper.

Remember tip 1.

WordPress's automatic slug redirect won't help here, because you're retiring posts, not renaming them.

To find overlaps in the first place, use my guide to avoiding keyword cannibalisation. For deciding what to keep, merge or delete, the content pruning guide walks through it.

10. Keep Comments From Turning Into Thin, Spammy Pages

Comments can add useful questions to a post. Left alone, they add spam.

Some of the old advice is out of date.

Since WordPress 5.3, core has added rel="nofollow ugc" to links in comments and to comment author URLs by default. You don't need a plugin to do that.

What core can't do is judge quality.

Spam comments still put junk text and outbound links on your pages, right under your content.

A few settings under Settings → Discussion help:

• Hold comments for moderation, at least for first-time commenters.
• Close comments on old posts automatically after a set number of days.
• Leave comment pagination off unless a post genuinely has hundreds of comments, since each comment page is another URL.

If comments add nothing on your site, turn them off for new posts.

Many business sites don't need them at all.

Pick Three WordPress SEO Tips to Start This Week

You don't need to work through all ten at once.

Start with the three that take minutes:

• Open your sitemap index and list every post type in it (tip 2).
• Check one media item for "View attachment page" (tip 3).
• Search one page's source for duplicate robots tags (tip 4).

Then plan the bigger jobs, like page redirects and post merges, when you have an afternoon.

Speed is the other half of WordPress SEO, and it has its own order of operations. My guide on how to speed up WordPress covers it step by step.

And if you'd rather hand the whole job over, this layer is exactly what my WordPress SEO service covers. I start with how your install behaves, then fix the plugin, theme and archive settings on top. You can see the full scope of a WordPress SEO review before deciding.