Technical SEO has a reputation for being complicated, but most of what actually matters for a small-to-medium WordPress site fits on one page. Here’s the checklist we run through before we let a client site call itself “SEO-ready.”
1. Confirm the Site Is Actually Indexable
Go to Settings → Reading in WordPress and make sure “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” is unchecked. This single checkbox, left on by accident after a redesign or migration, is the single most common reason a site mysteriously stops showing up in search.
2. Submit and Monitor an XML Sitemap
Most SEO plugins (Rank Math, Yoast) generate one automatically at /sitemap_index.xml. Submit it in Google Search Console under Sitemaps, and check back periodically for indexing errors — this is where you’ll first notice if pages are being excluded.
3. Fix Broken Links and Redirect Chains
Broken internal links waste crawl budget and hurt user experience. Run a free crawl tool periodically (Screaming Frog’s free tier handles up to 500 URLs) and fix or redirect anything returning a 404. Avoid stacking redirects — a URL that redirects to a redirect to a redirect slows things down and can confuse search engines about which page is canonical.
4. Check Core Web Vitals
Google’s PageSpeed Insights (free, just paste your URL) gives you a real-world performance score and flags specific problems. On WordPress, the most common fixes are: compressing images before upload, using a caching plugin, and trimming unused plugins that load scripts on every page whether they’re needed or not.
5. Make Sure Mobile Actually Works
Most Myanmar traffic is mobile. Load your key pages on an actual phone, not just a resized browser window, and check that buttons are tappable, text is readable without zooming, and nothing overlaps.
6. Verify HTTPS Everywhere
Check that every page loads over HTTPS with no browser warning, and that there’s no “mixed content” — old images or scripts still being loaded over plain HTTP, which can trigger security warnings even on an otherwise-secure site.
7. Confirm Canonical Tags Are Correct
View the page source (or use an SEO plugin’s preview) and check the canonical tag points to the correct, final URL — not a parameter-heavy tracking URL, not a staging URL left over from development.
None of these fixes are glamorous, but together they remove the technical friction that otherwise undermines even great content. Run through this list once a quarter and you’ll catch most issues before they cost you rankings.
