WordPress SEO audit and checklist: what 107 WordPress sites get wrong

The short answer

The study cannot say whether WordPress is good or bad for rankings. It shows which technical SEO problems are common on WordPress sites, and where they differ from sites built with six other platforms.[1]

What is common on WordPress sites

The five most common warning-level problems on the 107 WordPress sites that count. A site has a problem when at least one of its pages does.[1]

• Heading hierarchy skips levels. A page jumps a heading level, for example from an H2 to an H4. On 92.5% of WordPress sites that count (99 of 107; 95% interval 85.9 to 96.2).[1]
• Links with no anchor text. A link has no text that a person or a screen reader can read. On 87.9% of WordPress sites that count (94 of 107; 95% interval 80.3 to 92.8).[1]
• Missing meta description. A page has no meta description. On 87.9% of WordPress sites that count (94 of 107; 95% interval 80.3 to 92.8).[1]
• The same social card on every page. Several pages carry the same social title or description, so a shared link shows the same card whichever page was shared. On 83.2% of WordPress sites that count (89 of 107; 95% interval 75 to 89.1).[1]
• Unsafe cross-origin links (target=_blank without noopener). A link opens another site in a new tab without rel="noopener". On 82.2% of WordPress sites that count (88 of 107; 95% interval 73.9 to 88.3).[1]

What is common on WooCommerce sites

The study counts WooCommerce sites as a platform of their own, apart from WordPress sites. The five most common warning-level problems on the 109 WooCommerce sites that count:[1]

• Heading hierarchy skips levels. A page jumps a heading level, for example from an H2 to an H4. On 98.2% of WooCommerce sites that count (107 of 109; 95% interval 93.6 to 99.5).[1]
• Links with no anchor text. A link has no text that a person or a screen reader can read. On 93.6% of WooCommerce sites that count (102 of 109; 95% interval 87.3 to 96.9).[1]
• Missing meta description. A page has no meta description. On 92.7% of WooCommerce sites that count (101 of 109; 95% interval 86.2 to 96.2).[1]
• Unsafe cross-origin links (target=_blank without noopener). A link opens another site in a new tab without rel="noopener". On 88.1% of WooCommerce sites that count (96 of 109; 95% interval 80.7 to 92.9).[1]
• Links to broken pages. A link points at an address that answers with an error (a 4xx or 5xx status). On 86.2% of WooCommerce sites that count (94 of 109; 95% interval 78.5 to 91.5).[1]

Where WordPress sites differ from other builders

The six problems with the widest gap between the seven platforms. WordPress sites had neither the highest nor the lowest share of the seven for any of them.[1]

All seven builders side by side: what 743 sites built with seven website builders get wrong.

A WordPress SEO checklist, from the study

The five problems above, as five things to check on your own site. Some may be platform defaults and some owner choices; the study cannot tell them apart.

• Headings in order. Read each page’s headings from the top: an H2 follows the H1, an H3 follows an H2, and no level is skipped.
• Text on every link. Give every link text a person can read, or an aria-label when the link is an icon.
• A meta description on every page. Add one to each page that has none.
• A social card for each page. Give each page its own social title and description, written from that page’s title and description.
• rel="noopener" on links that open a new tab. Add it to each link to another site that opens in a new tab.

Which WordPress sites these are

128 WordPress sites were crawled and 107 count. 127 WooCommerce sites were crawled and 109 count. Sites were drawn at random, with a fixed seed, from the Tranco list of popular domains, between rank 1,000 and rank 1,000,000, and the platform was detected from each homepage’s markup. No site is named.[1]

What this does not show

The study’s own limits, word for word:

• Search outcomes. Nothing here says whether these problems cost traffic or rankings.
• Cause. A figure describes sites built on a platform. It mixes platform defaults with owner choices and with the kind of site each platform attracts.
• Sites we could not crawl fully. If sites that refuse or block crawlers differ from the rest, the figures lean toward sites that are easy to crawl. The number left out is published with each version.
• Every page of large sites. Crawls stop at 1,000 pages; the number of sites that hit the cap is published with each version.
• Pages after JavaScript. Figures read the HTML as served. Speed (LCP, CLS) and accessibility need a browser and are not measured.
• Individual sites. No site is named, and the downloads hold totals only, one row per platform and problem.

Run an SEO audit of your own WordPress site

A share of 107 sites does not say what is on yours. Our free SEO audit is a real crawl of up to 25 of your pages, with no account, and lists the issues to fix first. What an SEO audit checks explains what it looks at.