1. Title Tag Check
- How it checks: Looks for missing or empty title tags in the HTML
<title>element, or checks SEO plugin meta data - Priority: High
- Why important: The title tag is one of the most important on-page SEO factors. It appears in search results and helps search engines understand what the page is about. Missing or poorly optimized titles significantly hurt rankings.
2. Meta Description Check
- How it checks: Looks for missing or empty meta description tags (
<meta name="description">) in the HTML or SEO plugin data - Priority: High
- Why important: Meta descriptions appear in search results and influence click-through rates. While not a direct ranking factor, they impact user engagement which indirectly affects SEO performance.
3. Indexing Status Check
- How it checks: Verifies if the page is set to be indexed (checks for noindex meta tags or SEO plugin settings)
- Priority: High
- Why important: If a page is set to noindex, search engines won't index it, making all other SEO efforts pointless. This is critical for ensuring your content is discoverable.
4. H1 Heading Structure Check
- How it checks: Searches for H1 tags in the HTML content, validates there's exactly one H1, and extracts the heading text
- Priority: High
- Why important: H1 tags are the primary heading that tells search engines the main topic of the page. Multiple H1s or missing H1s confuse search engines and hurt content structure.
5. Broken Images Check
- How it checks: Validates image URLs by checking if files exist on the server (for local images) or returns errors
- Priority: High
- Why important: Broken images create poor user experience, increase bounce rates, and can signal quality issues to search engines. They also waste crawl budget.
6. Broken Internal Links Check
- How it checks: Tests internal links by making HTTP requests to verify they return valid responses (200 status codes)
- Priority: High
- Why important: Broken internal links prevent proper site crawling, waste crawl budget, create poor user experience, and can hurt your site's overall SEO performance.
7. Broken External Links Check
- How it checks: Tests external links by making HTTP requests to verify they return valid responses and aren't redirected
- Priority: High
- Why important: Broken external links create poor user experience and can signal low content quality. Redirected external links should be updated to point directly to final destinations.
8. Focus Keyword Check
- How it checks: Verifies if a focus keyword has been set in the SEO plugin meta data
- Priority: Medium
- Why important: Focus keywords help you target specific search terms and ensure your content is optimized for those terms. While not required, they guide optimization efforts.
9. Focus Keyword in Title Check
- How it checks: Checks if the focus keyword appears in the title tag
- Priority: Medium
- Why important: Including the focus keyword in the title helps search engines understand the page's primary topic and can improve rankings for that keyword.
10. Focus Keyword in Meta Description Check
- How it checks: Checks if the focus keyword appears in the meta description
- Priority: Medium
- Why important: Including the focus keyword in the meta description can improve click-through rates and reinforces the page's topic to search engines.
11. Content Length Check
- How it checks: Counts words in the content (strips HTML tags) and validates minimum length (300 words recommended)
- Priority: Medium
- Why important: Longer, comprehensive content tends to rank better. Very short content (under 300 words) may be seen as thin content by search engines.
12. H2 Heading Structure Check
- How it checks: Counts H2 tags in the HTML content to verify content structure
- Priority: Medium
- Why important: H2 headings help structure content hierarchically, making it easier for search engines to understand content organization and for users to scan.
13. Image Alt Text Check
- How it checks: Scans all
<img>tags to verify they have alt attributes with non-empty values - Priority: Medium
- Why important: Alt text improves accessibility, helps search engines understand image content, and can appear in image search results. Missing alt text is an accessibility issue.
14. Internal Links Check
- How it checks: Counts links that point to the same domain or relative URLs
- Priority: Medium
- Why important: Internal linking helps distribute page authority throughout your site, improves crawlability, and helps users discover related content.
15. External Links Check
- How it checks: Counts links that point to external domains
- Priority: Medium
- Why important: External links to authoritative sources can improve E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) and provide value to users.
16. Keyword Density Check
- How it checks: Calculates the percentage of times the focus keyword appears in the content (aims for 0.5-3% density)
- Priority: Medium
- Why important: Keyword density that's too low may not signal relevance, while too high can be seen as keyword stuffing. Optimal density helps with rankings without appearing spammy.
17. Duplicate Title Check
- How it checks: Compares the page's title against all other published posts/pages in the database to find duplicates
- Priority: Medium
- Why important: Duplicate titles can confuse search engines about which page is most relevant for a query. Each page should have a unique, descriptive title.
18. Duplicate Meta Description Check
- How it checks: Compares the page's meta description against all other published posts/pages in the database to find duplicates
- Priority: Medium
- Why important: Duplicate meta descriptions reduce the uniqueness of search result snippets and can hurt click-through rates.
19. Structured Data Check
- How it checks: Searches for JSON-LD, microdata, or RDFa structured data in the HTML
- Priority: Medium
- Why important: Structured data helps search engines understand content better and can enable rich snippets in search results, improving visibility and click-through rates.
20. Canonical URL Check
- How it checks: Looks for
<link rel="canonical">tags in the HTML - Priority: Medium
- Why important: Canonical URLs prevent duplicate content issues by telling search engines which version of a page is the preferred one to index.
21. Robots Meta Tag Check
- How it checks: Searches for
<meta name="robots">tags in the HTML - Priority: Medium
- Why important: Robots meta tags control how search engines crawl and index pages. They're important for preventing indexing of duplicate or low-value pages.
22. Contact Information Check (Pages Only)
- How it checks: Searches for email addresses, phone numbers, or physical addresses in the content using pattern matching
- Priority: Medium
- Why important: Contact information on pages (especially contact/about pages) improves trustworthiness and E-E-A-T signals, which are important ranking factors.
23. Open Graph Tags Check
- How it checks: Verifies presence of og:title, og:description, og:image, og:url, and og:type meta tags
- Priority: Low
- Why important: Open Graph tags control how content appears when shared on social media. While not a direct SEO factor, social shares can indirectly impact SEO through increased visibility and backlinks.
24. Twitter Card Tags Check
- How it checks: Verifies presence of twitter:card, twitter:title, twitter:description, and twitter:image meta tags
- Priority: Low
- Why important: Twitter Cards improve how content appears when shared on Twitter, potentially increasing social engagement which can indirectly benefit SEO.
25. Readability Check
- How it checks: Analyzes average sentence length and syllable count to assess readability
- Priority: Low
- Why important: Readable content keeps users engaged longer, reducing bounce rates. While not a direct ranking factor, user engagement metrics can influence SEO.
26. Duplicate Content Check
- How it checks: Creates a content hash and checks if content is very short (under 50 words), which might indicate duplicate content
- Priority: Low
- Why important: Very short or duplicate content may be seen as low-quality by search engines. This is a basic check; full duplicate detection would require more sophisticated analysis.
27. External Links Validation Check
- How it checks: Counts external links and flags suspicious URL shorteners (bit.ly, tinyurl, etc.)
- Priority: Low
- Why important: Direct links are preferred over URL shorteners for SEO. Shortened URLs can hide destination domains and may be seen as less trustworthy.
28. Page Speed Indicators Check
- How it checks: Looks for images without width/height attributes, excessive inline CSS blocks, and many external CSS/JS files
- Priority: Low
- Why important: Page speed is a ranking factor. Missing image dimensions cause layout shifts (CLS), and excessive inline CSS or external resources can slow page load times.
29. Rel Author Check
- How it checks: Searches for
<a rel="author">links in the HTML - Priority: Low
- Why important: Author attribution links help establish E-E-A-T signals by connecting content to authors, which is increasingly important for SEO, especially for YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) content.
30. Meta Viewport Tag Check
- How it checks: Searches for
<meta name="viewport">tags in the HTML - Priority: Low
- Why important: Viewport tags are essential for mobile-friendliness, which is a ranking factor. Mobile-first indexing means mobile usability directly impacts SEO.
31. Favicon Check
- How it checks: Searches for favicon link tags or checks common favicon file locations
- Priority: Low
- Why important: Favicons improve branding and user recognition in browser tabs and bookmarks. While not a direct SEO factor, they contribute to overall user experience.
32. Language Declaration Check
- How it checks: Searches for
langattribute on the<html>tag - Priority: Low
- Why important: Language declarations help search engines understand the target language and can improve international SEO and localization efforts.
33. Accessibility Basics Check
- How it checks: Verifies images have alt text and form inputs have labels or aria-label attributes
- Priority: Low
- Why important: Accessibility improves user experience for all users, including those using screen readers. While not a direct ranking factor, it contributes to overall site quality signals.
34. Content Readability Check
- How it checks: Analyzes sentence length, paragraph length, and word count in the main content area
- Priority: Low
- Why important: Well-structured, readable content keeps users engaged, reduces bounce rates, and signals quality to search engines through user behavior metrics.
1. SSL/HTTPS Check
- How it checks: Verifies if the site URL starts with
https:// - Priority: High
- Why important: HTTPS is a ranking factor and essential for security. Google prioritizes secure sites, and browsers warn users about insecure connections, which can hurt traffic and rankings.
2. Mobile Viewport Meta Tag Check (Sitewide)
- How it checks: Searches for
<meta name="viewport">tag in the homepage HTML - Priority: High
- Why important: Mobile-first indexing means Google primarily uses the mobile version of your site for ranking. Missing viewport tags break mobile layouts and hurt mobile SEO.
3. Robots.txt Check
- How it checks: Attempts to fetch
/robots.txtand verifies it's accessible (HTTP 200) and has content - Priority: Medium
- Why important: robots.txt controls how search engines crawl your site. Missing or misconfigured robots.txt can prevent proper crawling or accidentally block important pages.
4. XML Sitemap Check
- How it checks: Tests common sitemap locations (/sitemap.xml, /sitemap_index.xml, /wp-sitemap.xml) and checks for SEO plugin-generated sitemaps
- Priority: Medium
- Why important: Sitemaps help search engines discover and index all your content efficiently. They're especially important for large sites or sites with complex navigation.
5. Language Declaration Check (Sitewide)
- How it checks: Searches for
langattribute on the<html>tag in the homepage - Priority: Medium
- Why important: Language declarations help search engines understand the site's primary language, which is important for international SEO and proper indexing in language-specific search results.
6. Favicon Check (Sitewide)
- How it checks: Searches for favicon link tags in homepage HTML or checks common favicon file locations
- Priority: Low
- Why important: Favicons improve branding and user recognition. While not a direct SEO factor, they contribute to overall site professionalism and user experience.