The page is written, the photos are in, and the Publish button is right there. Most of the small SEO mistakes on business websites happen in the next thirty seconds: a page goes live with an address like /new-page-2/, a heading that is really just bold text, a photo called IMG_4471.jpg with no description, and no link to it from anywhere else on the site. None of these is hard to fix later, but all of them are easier to get right now.
This is an SEO checklist before publishing a WordPress page or post: what to look at, in the order you will meet it in the editor, with a sentence on why each item matters. It assumes you already know the basics of how search works for a WordPress site. If not, read our beginner’s overview of WordPress SEO first and come back. Publishing pages is one routine among many; our guide on how to manage a WordPress website covers the others.
Before you open the Publish panel
Three questions are worth a moment before any settings.
- Who is this page for, and what did they search for? If you can write that down in one sentence, the rest of the checklist becomes easy. If you cannot, the page probably needs a clearer purpose.
- Does another page on your site already cover this? Two pages answering the same question compete with each other. Improve the existing one instead, or make sure the new one has a clearly different focus.
- Does the first paragraph say what the page is about? Visitors decide quickly whether they are in the right place. Put the main point near the top, in plain words.
The SEO checklist before publishing, item by item
1. The page title
The title you type at the top of the editor is usually shown as the main heading on the page. Make it describe the page in words a customer would use, such as “Boiler Servicing in Leeds” rather than “Services 2”. Plain beats clever here.
2. The slug
The slug is the last part of the address. WordPress creates it from the title, which can make it long or awkward. In the editor’s settings sidebar, open the page or post settings and look for the URL or permalink field to edit it. Keep it short, lower case, with hyphens between words, for example /boiler-servicing/. Set it now, because changing it after the page is live means adding a redirect from the old address.
3. Headings in order
Use the Heading block for section headings, not bold paragraph text. The page title is the top-level heading, so start your sections at H2, and use H3 for sub-points inside a section. If an H2 looks too large in your theme, adjust its font size in the block settings rather than dropping to a lower level just for looks. A quick way to check the structure is the Document Overview panel in the editor, whose outline shows your headings as an indented list.
4. SEO title and meta description
Your SEO plugin’s panel lets you set the title and short description that may appear in search results. Write a title that fits in the space search results usually show and a description that tells a searcher what they will find. Google sometimes rewrites these, but a good one is still your best chance. Our post on writing an SEO title and meta description in WordPress covers where the fields are and how to write them.
Many SEO plugins also show a score or a list of suggestions. Use them as reminders, not as targets. Chasing a green light by repeating a phrase makes the page worse to read.
5. Images: file name, size and alt text
Rename image files before uploading them, so a photo is called boiler-service-engineer.jpg rather than a camera number. Resize large photos before upload so pages load quickly. Then add alt text in the Image block’s settings: a short description of what the image shows, written for someone who cannot see it. Decorative images can have empty alt text. Our guide to adding alt text in WordPress explains how to write it well.
6. Links in and out
Every page should link to at least one other relevant page on your site, such as a related service or the contact page, and at least one existing page should link to the new one. Click every link in the preview to check it works. For anchors and choosing what to link, see our post on linking between your own pages in WordPress.
7. Categories and tags (posts only)
Choose one main category. Add tags only if you already use them consistently. Leaving a post in “Uncategorized” looks careless to visitors and gives the archive no meaning.
8. Featured image
Many themes show the featured image at the top of the post and in blog lists, and SEO plugins often use it as the picture when the page is shared on social media. Pick one that is clear when shown small.
9. Indexing is allowed
Check the SEO plugin’s advanced or robots settings for the page: it should be set to index unless you deliberately want it hidden. Pages copied from a thank-you page or a template sometimes inherit a noindex setting by accident. Our noindex settings walk-through shows where that switch lives, so you can confirm it is off for pages you want found.
It is also worth a glance at Settings → Reading on a newly launched site. If “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” is still ticked from development, no page on the site is being invited into search.
10. Preview on a phone
Use the editor’s Preview menu to check the mobile view, then open the preview on your own phone if you can. Look for text that is too small, buttons that are hard to tap, tables that run off the screen and images that crop badly. Our post on previewing a WordPress page before publishing covers the options, including sharing a draft with someone else.
Straight after publishing
- Open the live page while logged out, in a private window, to see what visitors see. Caching plugins sometimes show logged-in users a different version.
- Add it to the menu if it is a main page, such as a new service.
- Add a link to it from one or two older pages on related topics.
- Check it is in your sitemap. Most SEO plugins add new pages automatically. Open your sitemap address and look for it.
- Optionally, ask Google to crawl it. In Search Console, paste the address into the URL Inspection tool and request indexing. This is a request, not an instruction, and Google decides when and whether to index the page.
A short on-page SEO checklist to keep beside you
- Clear title in customer words
- Short slug, set before publishing
- H2 and H3 headings in order, not bold text
- SEO title and meta description written by hand
- Renamed, resized images with alt text
- Links to and from related pages, all tested
- One sensible category
- Featured image chosen
- Page set to index
- Checked on a phone
Once it is a habit, the whole list takes a few minutes. It will not push a page up the results by itself. What it does is stop a good page being held back by a slip you could have caught.
Frequently asked questions
Should I use this checklist when updating an old page as well?
Mostly, yes, with one exception: do not change the slug of a page that is already live unless you also add a redirect. Updating the title, headings, images, alt text, links and meta description of an older page is safe and often worth doing.
Does the time of day I publish make any difference?
Not for search. There is no publishing hour that search engines reward. Timing matters only for people: if you plan to share the page in a newsletter or on social media, publish it first and check it live before sending, so nobody clicks through to a page that is not ready.
How long should a page be before I publish it?
Long enough to answer the visitor’s question properly and no longer. A service page might be a few hundred words with clear details, prices if you show them, and a way to get in touch. A how-to post may need more. Padding a page to reach a word count usually makes it worse.
Should I publish a page that is only half finished and improve it later?
It is usually better to wait until the main content is complete. A thin page with placeholder text can be crawled and judged as it is. If you need it live for a link or an advert, at least finish the opening section and the contact details, and avoid sample text.
Some owners would rather write the page and leave the checking to someone else. Our WordPress support can look over new pages before they go live, or go back through published ones against this list, alongside other work on your site.
Next in this series: Robots.txt in WordPress: What It Does and How to Edit It
