Why WordPress Site Owners need this
You launched the site, wrote the posts, installed an SEO plugin, and Google still shows nothing. Often the cause is small and sitting in plain sight: the Search Engine Visibility box under Settings > Reading was left ticked after launch, a theme template prints a second H1, or two plugins both output a meta description. Tag, date and author archives pile up as thin near-duplicates, and a heavy theme with too many plugins slows every page down. Checking each of these by hand across a post takes an afternoon. The On-Page SEO Audit fetches one live URL from the SeoMods server and grades up to 36 checks, from the title tag and meta description to noindex, HTTPS, viewport, ALT text and response headers. You get an overall score out of 100 and a prioritized list of issues. It reads one page's HTML, so treat it as a checkup after publishing or redesigning, not as proof of how Google sees your site or where it will rank.
WordPress Site Owners specific guidance
What to check first on a WordPress page
Start with the URL of a post you published this week, for example https://example.com/blog/wordpress-permalink-structure/. Before running anything, open Settings > Reading in the dashboard and confirm that Discourage search engines from indexing this site is unticked. Then run the audit and look first at the Critical items in Issues to Fix, such as Page is indexable, Title tag present, Meta description present and Mobile viewport present. Exactly one H1 is a warning with Medium priority, so check it next. If Page is indexable fails, open the post in your SEO plugin's advanced panel and check whether noindex was set on that single post. A clean result here does not prove the page is indexed, because the tool never asks Google.
How to read the score and the warnings
The Overall Score weights checks by points, while the Health Score simply counts passed checks against all checks, so the two can differ. Warnings such as a 45-character meta description or missing ALT text are Medium or Low, not emergencies. Read the value shown beside each row, then fix it where WordPress stores it: titles and descriptions in the Yoast or Rank Math fields, ALT text in the Media Library, the H1 in the post title or theme template. Keep in mind that the speed figure is only how long the HTML took to download from our server. It is not a Core Web Vitals result, so use a page speed test for slowness caused by themes and images.
What to fix, and in what order
Fix indexability first, then the title and meta description, then the H1 count, then ALT text and broken links. Only after that, spend time on headers and compression, which usually live in your host or caching plugin. Change one thing, clear your cache plugin, and re-run the same URL so you can see which edit moved the score. Because the tool audits a single page, tag archives, author pages and internal search results need their own runs or a site-wide crawl. Also remember that JavaScript-injected tags are not seen, so a page builder that adds tags late may look worse than it is.
Example scenarios
1. Post published with the visibility box ticked
- Situation
- Illustrative example: A site owner moves a blog from a staging copy to the live domain. The Discourage search engines option was ticked during development and never switched off, so every page carries a noindex tag.
- Input
https://example.com/blog/yoast-vs-rank-math/- Reading the result
- Expect Page is indexable as a Critical failure. It is worth only 10 of 188 points, so an otherwise tidy page can still score around 95 out of 100; do not let a high number hide this row. Untick the box under Settings > Reading, save, clear the cache, and run the same URL again. The fix is confirmed once the row passes, but indexing itself still depends on Google.
2. Two plugins fighting over the head section
- Situation
- Illustrative example: A store owner keeps an old SEO plugin active after switching to a new one, and the theme also prints its own title. The page now has two title tags and a meta description of 45 characters from the older plugin.
- Input
https://example.com/category/wordpress-seo/- Reading the result
- Look for Single title tag as a warning and Meta description length (70–160) flagged with the 45-character value. Deactivate the extra plugin, then set the description in the remaining one at around 120 to 155 characters. Re-run to confirm one title and a passing description.
3. Old post with missing ALT text and dead links
- Situation
- Illustrative example: A 2021 tutorial has 14 images uploaded without ALT text and 3 outbound links to tools that have since closed. Nobody has opened it since the redesign.
- Input
https://example.com/2021/06/speed-up-wordpress-site/- Reading the result
- Expect All images have ALT text as a warning and No broken links as a Critical item, such as 3 broken of 25 sampled. Add ALT text in the Media Library, replace or remove the dead links, and run again. If the post has more than 25 links, the sample can miss others.
Common mistakes
- Treating one page as the whole site. The audit reads a single URL, so a passing post says nothing about your tag archives, author pages or search results. Run those URLs separately or use a site crawler.
- Chasing 100 instead of Critical items. Security headers and Open Graph rows add points but rarely matter as much as a stray noindex. Clear the Critical list before polishing warnings.
- Reading the speed figure as page speed. The load time shown is the HTML download from the SeoMods server, with no images, CSS or JavaScript. A fast figure does not mean a heavy theme is fine.
- Editing without clearing the cache. Caching plugins can serve the old HTML, so a fix may not appear on the next run. Purge the cache first, then re-test the same URL.
- Assuming a pass means Google indexed it. A passing indexability row only means no noindex was found in the meta robots tag. It does not check robots.txt rules, X-Robots-Tag headers or Google's index.
Frequently asked questions
Why is my WordPress site not indexed by Google?
A common cause is the Discourage search engines from indexing this site box under Settings > Reading, or a noindex set on a single post in your SEO plugin. The audit flags Page is indexable when it finds noindex in the meta robots tag. It cannot see Google's index, robots.txt rules or X-Robots-Tag headers, so confirm indexing in Search Console as well.
Does it matter whether I use Yoast or Rank Math?
For this audit, no. It reads the finished HTML, so it checks what the page outputs, not which plugin produced it. Use it to confirm the title, meta description, canonical and Open Graph tags actually appear, and to catch a duplicate title tag if two plugins are active (the Single title tag row); duplicate canonical or Open Graph tags are not counted. Pick the plugin whose interface you will keep using.
How long should my WordPress meta description be?
The audit passes a description between 70 and 160 characters, and warns when it is missing or outside that range. That is a SeoMods threshold, not a Google rule, since Google may rewrite snippets anyway. Write a clear summary of the page in your plugin's meta description field, then re-run to see the character count.
Should tag pages be noindex in WordPress?
Many owners noindex thin tag, date and author archives and internal search results, because they add little beyond the posts. This tool audits one URL, so run it on a tag archive to see whether it is indexable. To judge whether an archive is thin, compare its content with the posts it lists.
How can I speed up my WordPress site using this?
Only partly. The audit reports HTML download time, compression, caching headers, page weight and the number of scripts and stylesheets, which hint at theme or plugin bloat. It does not measure full page load or Core Web Vitals. Use those hints to decide what to test next, and test changes on staging.
Reference: The Ahrefs guide to WordPress SEO tips calls the search engine visibility setting an SEO death sentence and advises owners to check it first.