---
title: "WordPress SEO"
description: "WordPress SEO from ShoutRank. Themes, the block editor, archives, and plugins, so the index matches the pages you meant to publish."
canonical: https://shoutrank.com/wordpress-seo
markdown: https://shoutrank.com/wordpress-seo.md
---

# WordPress SEO

WordPress SEO from ShoutRank. Themes, the block editor, archives, and plugins, so the index matches the pages you meant to publish.
WordPress SEO is the control of posts, pages, archives, and plugins so the index contains the documents you stand behind.

WordPress will happily index tags, authors, attachments, and date archives beside the ten pages that matter. Plugins then add their own sitemaps. The editor looks simple. The crawl does not.

Shops on WordPress are [WooCommerce SEO](https://shoutrank.com/woocommerce-seo). A move off WordPress is a [migration](https://shoutrank.com/seo-migration), not a theme tweak.

ShoutRank does not guarantee a ranking or a citation.

## The problem

### Archives compete with the posts.

A tag page and three articles target one query. The tag page is a list of titles.

### The SEO plugin and the theme both print tags.

Two canonicals, two titles, and a sitemap that lists URLs the plugin is also noindexing.

### Media attachment pages are live.

Every image is a thin URL. Internal links in old posts still point at them.

## How ShoutRank approaches it

We inventory public routes the theme and plugins create, then turn off the ones that are not pages. The SEO plugin is configured once, in agreement with the theme, not stacked with a second plugin.

Content briefs follow [on-page SEO](https://shoutrank.com/on-page-seo). WordPress is the constraint, not a different kind of writing.

## What the work includes

### Archive rules

Which taxonomies are indexed, and which exist only for the CMS.

### Plugin map

What prints titles, canonicals, and sitemaps.

### Template checks

The HTML of a post, a page, and an archive after the theme renders.

### Editor notes

How writers should set a title without fighting the plugin.

## Process

### Discovery

List the page types the audience should find.

### Audit

Crawl and compare that list to indexed archives and attachments.

### Strategy

Choose one plugin as the source of titles and canonicals.

### Implementation

Change settings and templates with the people who maintain the theme.

### Monitoring

Watch coverage after the sitemap updates.

### Optimization

Merge posts that still target one query.

### Reporting

Rules, templates checked, and archives removed from the index.

## Why ShoutRank

### One source of tags

Theme and plugin should not both be in charge.

### Writers get a rule

The editor notes are short enough to follow on the next post.

### We read the HTML

A green score inside a plugin is not the document Google fetched.

## How success is measured

Indexed page types against the rules.

Duplicate titles and canonicals removed.

Attachment and thin archive URLs leaving the index.

A named client result is published when that client clears the figure. Until then the report is the measurement.

## Questions

### Which SEO plugin do you require?

Whichever one is already maintained. We do not rip out a working plugin to install a preferred brand.

### Should we noindex the whole blog?

Only if the posts are not the URLs assigned to queries. A blog that owns demand stays indexable. Its tags might not.

### Do you clean up malware or hacked pages?

That is incident response with your host. We will say if the index is full of spam URLs. We are not a malware remover.

## Related

- [WooCommerce SEO](https://shoutrank.com/woocommerce-seo): Commerce on top of WordPress.
- [Technical SEO](https://shoutrank.com/technical-seo): The standards behind the settings.
- [On-page SEO](https://shoutrank.com/on-page-seo): What the posts should say once the routes are clean.