Think Your Agency’s WordPress Builds Are SEO-Ready? Don’t be too hasty… 

Let me preface this week’s SEO Weekly by saying I see A LOT of websites that other agencies make. The purpose of this post isn’t to criticise ANYONE but to help deliver more developed websites to your clients, so they are more delighted with your work and come back to you time and time again… 🙏

OK – with that out of the way, the biggest irony here is that web development and SEO should go hand-in-hand, but from the range of sites I see, they are often fighting each other… Let’s try and address the most common issues below.

Oh, and the WORST part? A lot of these are baked into an agency’s stack / starter theme / development process, so they’re simply replicated into every new project… 🙄

Here are the most common WordPress SEO mistakes I regularly come across:

1️⃣ Theme Development Issues

• Using outdated page builders that inject bloated HTML and CSS (sorry WPBakery 😥).
• Creating custom post types without proper permalink structures.
• Hardcoding meta tags instead of using wp_head().
• Not declaring theme support for essential features (title-tag, post-thumbnails, etc).
• Storing conflicting CSS in multiple places in the install (i.e. some in the theme, some in the customiser, some in the page builder).

2️⃣ Performance-Killers

• Loading every script and style on every page.
• Not using wp_enqueue_script/style properly.
• Including jQuery for tiny functionality that doesn’t need it.
• Using plugins for small elements of layout functionality.
• Loading multiple page builder CSS files globally.
• Loading Google Fonts without proper optimization.
• Using plugins that add their scripts to every page.

3️⃣ Content Structure Oversights

• Not using a proper WordPress template hierarchy or child theme.
• Creating duplicate content issues through incorrect archive pages.
• Poor implementation of custom taxonomies.
• Not setting up proper redirects when changing permalinks (or sending a site live).
• Leaving all posts categorized as “Uncategorized”.

4️⃣ Plugin Problems

• Installing SEO plugins but not configuring them properly.
• Using multiple plugins that serve the same function.
• Not cleaning up tables and data from deactivated plugins.
• Installing heavy-duty plugins for simple functionality.
• Not reviewing the impact of plugins on page speed.
• Leaving unused plugins in the WordPress install.

5️⃣ WordPress Technical SEO Oversights

• Not updating the default “Just another WordPress site” tagline.
• Leaving default category names (e.g., “Uncategorized”).
• Poor management of author archives (for single and multi-author sites).
• Not setting up XML sitemaps.
• Forgetting to adjust search engine visibility settings after development.
• Not implementing proper Schema markup.
• Not configuring the robots.txt properly.
• Not configuring caching properly (or setting it up so it breaks the site).

6️⃣ WordPress-Specific Content Issues

• Using incorrect heading hierarchy in themes.
• Not implementing featured images properly.
• Not utilizing WordPress menu systems properly.
• Forgetting to add alt text options in custom image fields.

That’s one hell of a list, right?

The best WordPress developers I know treat SEO requirements as core functionality – it’s not an afterthought, it’s part of the initial build process.

This list is the EXACT reason I created the WordPress SEO Fundamentals Course! 

Do you think I’ve missed anything, or are you willing to put your hand up and let me know if you’ve been guilty of any of these? 👀