SEO basics for a new WordPress site

SEO advice online skews toward advanced tactics for sites that already have the basics covered. Here's what actually matters first, for a brand-new WordPress site.

Make sure search engines can find you at all

WordPress has a setting — Settings → Reading → "Discourage search engines from indexing this site" — that's meant to be checked during development and unchecked at launch. It's the single most common reason a finished site never shows up in search results. Check it's off before you do anything else.

Submit a sitemap

An SEO plugin generates an XML sitemap automatically — submit that URL to Google Search Console (and Bing Webmaster Tools) so search engines know your full page list rather than relying on discovering pages by chance.

Write real, distinct page titles and descriptions

Every page needs a title and meta description written for that specific page — not a generic template repeated everywhere. This is entirely within your control from day one and has an outsized effect on click-through rate from search results.

Use one H1 per page, and a logical heading structure below it

Most WordPress themes already handle this correctly for the page title, but double-check custom page builder layouts, where it's easy to accidentally style several headings as H1 or skip straight from H1 to H4. Search engines (and screen readers) use heading structure to understand the page.

Get the basics of page speed right

Site speed is a confirmed ranking factor, and it's also directly tied to whether visitors stay. See our speed guide for the specific, non-technical changes worth making first.

Add alt text to images

Beyond accessibility, descriptive alt text is one of the only pieces of SEO-relevant information an image carries. "IMG_4021.jpg" tells search engines nothing; "black leather office chair, front view" does.

What to skip early on

Backlink building, advanced schema markup, and keyword-density tactics are all real, but they matter far less than the fundamentals above on a brand-new site with no existing traffic. Get indexed, get the titles and speed right, and revisit advanced tactics once you have real search traffic to analyze.