SEO
WordPress SEO Audit: Platform-Layer Diagnosis from €199
Independent advisor · Fixed price · No plugin or theme affiliation · EU-registered, GDPR
A WordPress SEO audit is an independent review of your site's platform layer, plugins, theme, database and settings, showing what to fix and in what order.
We audit what standard SEO checklists skip: plugin conflicts, taxonomy duplication, theme bloat, database hygiene, permalink integrity and WPML hreflang. You receive a written report and a prioritised fix roadmap; implementation is separate and entirely up to you.
What we check
Plugin inventory & SEO-plugin configuration
We map every active plugin and flag conflicts: two SEO plugins writing competing meta, cache plugins stripping structured data, abandoned plugins with known CVEs. Then we verify Yoast or Rank Math is actually configured, not just installed: titles, meta templates, indexing rules, breadcrumb schema, sitemap output.
Taxonomy & archive indexation
WordPress creates tag, category, author, date and attachment archives by default. Most duplicate content that already exists on post pages, wasting crawl budget and diluting relevance signals. We audit every archive type and recommend a per-type policy: noindex, canonical, or keep-and-consolidate.
Theme & front-end performance
We measure Core Web Vitals (LCP, INP, CLS) on your key page templates and isolate the cause: the theme itself, a page builder such as Elementor, Divi, WPBakery or Avada injecting render-blocking assets, unoptimised images, or a combination. We isolate what the builder loads site-wide versus what a single template actually needs, so you learn whether the fix is builder settings, theme replacement, or image delivery before paying a developer.
Database & WordPress hygiene
Post revisions, orphaned post metadata and accumulated transients can add thousands of rows to your database, slowing queries and inflating page-generation time. We quantify the bloat, show its crawl and render impact, and produce a cleanup priority list. We do not touch your database; the list goes to your developer.
Permalinks, redirects & internal linking
A permalink-structure change or theme switch can orphan hundreds of URLs overnight. We audit your current permalink logic, map broken internal links, check redirect chains for loops or excessive hops, and document what a correct redirect map looks like so recovery is methodical rather than guesswork.
Security signals & multilingual setup
We scan for index-level signs of hacked content: pharma keywords, Japanese-text injection, and spam links visible to Google but hidden from you. We also check plugin-version exposure via WPScan patterns. For WPML or Polylang sites, we audit hreflang coverage, per-language indexation and canonical direction between language versions.
What the report looks like
Structure example, not a real client document
1 · Severity-ranked fix list
critical important low-priority every finding carries one of these labels, so your developer knows where to start
2 · Developer-ready specs
Per plugin and per template: what to change, where, and what the correct output looks like afterwards.
3 · Walkthrough call
We go through the findings together and agree priorities before anyone touches the site.
WordPress SEO Audit Pricing
The preliminary check is free. Tiers scale by site size, not by guesswork.
The Start audit costs €199 and covers WordPress sites up to roughly 150 pages. Expert (€399) adds database hygiene, security signals and the WPML or Polylang review. Professional (€750) covers large portals, with a 3-competitor analysis and a migration redirect plan.
Start
€199
WordPress business, blog & content sites up to ~150 pages
- Plugin & SEO-plugin (Yoast / Rank Math) config audit
- Taxonomy & archive indexation review
- Theme & front-end performance (Core Web Vitals)
- Permalinks & redirect integrity
- Free preliminary check
Most Popular
Expert
€399
Larger / multi-author / WooCommerce platform layer
- Everything in Start
- Database & WordPress hygiene
- Internal-linking audit
- Security signals & hacked-content index check
- WPML / Polylang multilingual review
Professional
€750
Large WordPress portals over ~150 pages
- Everything in Expert
- 3-competitor analysis (WordPress niche)
- Full plugin-stack rationalization roadmap
- Migration / replatform redirect plan
- 30-day implementation Q&A
If we don't find 10 actionable issues — full refund
Prefer not to fill in a form? Write us on Telegram or WhatsApp.
The report works without us
A one-time, fixed-price audit with a free preliminary check before any payment. The report is written so a competent WordPress developer can execute it without a handover call. About half of our audit clients implement with their own team; if you want us to handle implementation, we quote it separately, and only if you ask.
Free preliminary check
No long-term contracts
Transparent pricing on this page
Tool or audit?
Automated audit tool vs independent platform audit
Free tools and plugins are a fine first pass, and we say so. They score symptoms; an independent audit attributes cause across the plugin, theme, database and hosting layers. We have no affiliation with any SEO plugin or builder, so nothing in the report is a disguised upsell.
| Automated tool or plugin | Independent WordPress platform audit | |
|---|---|---|
| What it measures | Symptoms: scores and checklist flags | Causes: which plugin, theme or database layer created the issue |
| Cause attribution | None, a score does not say why | Every finding names the responsible layer and the fix owner |
| Plugin-conflict detection | Misses conflicting output such as duplicate canonicals or competing schema | Cross-checks the combined output of the whole plugin stack |
| Multilingual (WPML / Polylang) | Rarely checked at all | Hreflang, per-language indexation and canonical direction reviewed |
| Deliverable format | Automated score or PDF export | Written report, severity-ranked fix list, walkthrough call |
| Pricing model | Free or subscription, upsells common | Fixed price per audit, no plugin affiliation |
Category comparison. No specific third-party product is referenced.
Recognize yourself?
These are real situations WordPress site owners come to us with. If even one sounds familiar, the audit will show what to fix.
25-plus plugins and nobody knows what they do to SEO
Two SEO plugins active at once, a cache plugin overwriting schema output, an old abandoned plugin injecting markup Google picks up. Each plugin added a good reason at the time. The combined effect on your search visibility has never been measured.
Tags and category archives flooding Google with near-duplicates
Every tag page, author archive and date archive WordPress creates by default is a separate URL Google has to crawl. Most contain the same posts in a different order. The result is crawl budget eaten by pages that add nothing and indexation signals split across duplicates.
Slow site blamed on hosting, but the theme is the real problem
A multipurpose theme loading a full page-builder stack on every page, unoptimised images passed through four plugins, and a database slowed by years of revision accumulation. The host is fine. The WordPress layer is not, and a generic speed test will not tell you which part.
Yoast or Rank Math installed but never properly verified
Default Rank Math settings index attachment pages. Default Yoast settings leave author archives visible to Google. Sitemaps that include noindexed URLs confuse crawlers. Installing an SEO plugin is not the same as configuring it, and the gap between the two is where most WordPress SEO problems live.
Changed permalinks or switched themes and rankings disappeared
Changing from numeric IDs to post-name slugs, or switching themes that alter URL patterns, breaks every existing URL without a redirect map. Google treats each broken URL as a new, unranked page. The traffic loss is real and immediate. The fix requires knowing exactly which old URLs mapped to which new ones.
Hacked, or worried the site was hacked at some point
Outdated plugins are among the most common ways WordPress sites get compromised. Pharma-keyword injection and Japanese-text spam are designed to be invisible to site owners but fully readable by Google. By the time rankings drop on unrelated queries, the index may already contain hundreds of spam pages under your domain.
WPML or Polylang running but the Google side has never been checked
The plugin is active, the translated pages exist, and visitors see the right language. But hreflang tags point to wrong URLs, alternate-language versions are blocked in robots.txt, or canonical tags cross-signal between languages. Google may be ignoring most of your multilingual content entirely.
Paying for WordPress SEO services with nothing moving
The agency sends monthly reports, deliverables look reasonable, but rankings are flat. This is common for Polish SMBs in Warszawa and Kraków, where WordPress dominates and packages get sold without real platform work. An independent platform audit shows the actual state of your installation, in terms a developer or second agency can act on.
Process
How It Works
01
Free Consultation
We analyze your current situation — 24 hours, no cost.
02
Detailed Audit
Full report delivered in 5–10 business days with prioritized fixes.
03
Video Walkthrough
We explain every finding and answer your questions live.
04
Roadmap
Clear, prioritized action plan with timeline and expected results.
Who this audit is for, and who it is not for
This audit is for you if:
- You run a WordPress business site, blog or content portal and want a platform-level diagnosis
- You own a WooCommerce store and need the WordPress layer checked (catalog work is separate)
- Traffic dropped after a permalink change, theme switch or migration
- You are worried the site was hacked at some point and want to know what Google saw
- WPML or Polylang is running but nobody has verified the Google side
This audit is NOT for you if:
- Your site is not on WordPress: the SEO Site Audit covers any CMS
- You need product, category and faceted-navigation work: that is the E-commerce SEO audit
- You want implementation without a diagnosis first: we audit before we quote fixes
- You expect guaranteed rankings or traffic: no honest audit can promise that
Not on WordPress? See the SEO Site Audit. Need catalog-level work? See the E-commerce SEO audit.
Why CyberLab for WordPress SEO
Independent advisor, fixed fee
No revenue share, no lock-in, no affiliation with any SEO plugin, theme or builder. After the audit there are two honest paths: implement with your own developer using the report as-is, or ask us for a separately scoped implementation quote. No obligation either way.
EU-registered, GDPR by default
CyberLab.Team OÜ is registered in Tallinn, Estonia. We work under GDPR, sign a DPA on request, and take access read-only by email invite, never by password. You revoke access yourself the day the audit is done.
Four languages, multilingual audited in practice
Our own site runs in four languages, and we audit WPML and Polylang installations in English, Ukrainian, Polish and Russian. Hreflang and per-language indexation are checks we make daily, not lines on a checklist. We have worked with Google search since 2015 as a verified Google Partner.
Verified Google Partner profile · CyberLab.Team OÜ, registry code 14647320, Tallinn, Estonia.
What does this look like in practice?
A typical engagement: a company site rebuilt on a new theme a year earlier, plugins accumulated under several previous developers, and organic traffic sliding since a permalink change. We mapped the plugin stack and found two SEO plugins writing competing canonical tags, attachment pages sitting in the index, and redirect chains left over from the old URL structure. The report specified a per-archive indexation policy, a clean redirect map, and which plugins to consolidate, each item ranked by severity. The client's own developer implemented the list over the following weeks: duplicate archives dropped out of the index, crawling concentrated on real pages, and impressions began recovering.
Anonymized example of our process, not a promise of results.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a WordPress SEO audit and how is it different from a general SEO audit? +
A general SEO audit covers technical health, content, and backlinks across any CMS. A WordPress SEO audit goes one level deeper into the platform itself: plugin conflicts, taxonomy and archive duplication, theme-level performance bottlenecks, database hygiene, permalink logic, and multilingual configuration in WPML or Polylang. These issues are specific to how WordPress works and do not appear in CMS-agnostic audits. The output is a written report and a prioritised roadmap, not implementation.
My site is on WordPress. Should I order this or your general SEO Site Audit? +
If your main unknowns are plugin conflicts, slow theme performance, archive duplication, redirect problems after a permalink change, or a multilingual setup that may not be indexed correctly, this WordPress audit is the right starting point. If your primary concern is keyword rankings, backlink profile, or competitor gap analysis, our general SEO Site Audit covers those. Some sites need both; we can tell you after a free preliminary check.
I run a WooCommerce store. Is this the right page? +
Partly. This audit covers the WordPress platform layer that every WooCommerce site runs on: plugin conflicts, theme performance, archive indexation, database hygiene and WPML. It does not cover the catalog layer: product and category page optimisation, faceted navigation and filter URLs, Product schema markup, or supplier-feed duplication. That layer belongs to our separate E-commerce SEO audit. Many WooCommerce stores genuinely need both, and we can scope which to prioritise after a preliminary check.
Yoast vs Rank Math: which should I use, and do you audit both? +
We audit both. The choice between them matters less than whether the one you have is actually configured. Both ship with defaults that leave problems in place: Rank Math indexes attachment pages by default, Yoast leaves author archives visible, and neither does anything about your site's other plugins overwriting their output. Our audit documents the current state of whichever plugin you use and gives you a specific configuration checklist, not a recommendation to switch.
Do I really have a duplicate-content problem from tags, categories and archives? +
Most WordPress sites do. Every tag, category, author and date archive is a separate URL that Google crawls. On a typical blog or news site those archives collectively repeat most of the post content in different orderings. The immediate effects are split indexation signals and wasted crawl budget. The fix is a per-archive-type policy, noindex or canonical, applied consistently. Whether you have a problem on your specific site is something the audit measures rather than assumes.
My WordPress site is slow. Is it the host, the theme, or the plugins? +
Generic speed tools give you a score; they do not isolate the cause. This audit measures Core Web Vitals on your key page templates and attributes the bottleneck: render-blocking assets from a page builder, unoptimised image delivery, query slowdowns from database bloat, or a theme loading resources on every page that most pages do not use. Knowing which layer is responsible changes what you ask a developer to fix.
I use Elementor, Divi or another page builder. Does the audit cover that? +
Yes. Builder-injected render-blocking assets are a core part of our Core Web Vitals check. Elementor, Divi, WPBakery and Avada each load scripts and styles site-wide that most individual pages never use. We identify what the builder loads everywhere versus what each template actually needs, so the report gives you a concrete fix list: builder settings to change, assets to remove, or templates to rebuild, rather than a generic verdict that builders are slow.
My site runs on managed WordPress hosting like Kinsta or WP Engine. Is a platform audit still relevant? +
Yes. Managed hosting solves the server layer: fast infrastructure, server-side caching, core updates. Plugin conflicts, taxonomy duplication, theme and builder bloat, and permalink or redirect problems live in the WordPress layer itself, and they follow your site to any host. The audit explicitly separates host-side causes from platform-side causes, so you do not pay a developer to fix something your host already handles, or the other way around.
Can too many plugins actually hurt my Google rankings? +
Yes, in several ways. Duplicate output is the most common: two SEO plugins both writing a canonical tag, or a schema plugin and Rank Math both outputting structured data with different values. Cache plugins sometimes strip JSON-LD on cached pages. Abandoned plugins with unpatched vulnerabilities create an attack surface for spam injection. Volume alone is not the problem; conflicting output and unmonitored plugins are. The audit maps which plugins interact with your SEO output and flags the combinations that create measurable issues.
Why not just run a free WordPress SEO audit plugin or online tool? +
Tools are a reasonable first pass, and we say so. Their limits are structural: they score symptoms without attributing cause, they cannot detect conflicting output from your plugin stack, such as duplicate canonicals or competing schema, and they skip multilingual configuration and index-level hack signals entirely. We also have no affiliation with any SEO plugin, theme or builder, so nothing in our report is a disguised upsell.
I changed my permalink structure or switched themes and lost traffic. Can you find why? +
This is one of the most common things we see. A permalink change moves every URL on the site. Without a redirect map in place before the change, Google treats each old URL as a 404 and the new URL as a brand-new unranked page. The ranking equity built up on the old URLs does not transfer automatically. The audit traces which old URLs exist in Google Search Console as errors, documents what a correct redirect map looks like, and identifies any chains or loops in redirects that were put in place afterwards.
My WordPress site was hacked. Can an audit tell if Google saw the spam? +
Yes, with important caveats. We check for index-level symptoms: queries in Search Console returning spam pages under your domain, pharmaceutical or foreign-language keywords appearing in your crawl data, and plugin-version patterns flagged in WPScan data. We can tell you whether Google's index contains evidence of a past or ongoing injection. We cannot clean the site or remove the malware; that is remediation work separate from the audit. The audit gives you a documented picture of what Google saw, which is the starting point for any recovery.
I use WPML or Polylang. Do you audit multilingual WordPress SEO? +
Yes. The audit covers hreflang tag accuracy across all language versions, whether alternate-language URLs are accessible to Google (not blocked in robots.txt or behind a login), how canonical tags are set between language versions, and whether each language version is being indexed or ignored. WPML and Polylang both require careful configuration to produce correct hreflang; the plugin being active does not mean the output is correct.
Does the WordPress platform layer affect how my site appears in Google AI Overviews? +
Indirectly, yes. Clean rendering, correct schema output and sane indexation are prerequisites for any search surface, including AI Overviews. If your plugin stack emits broken structured data or noindexes the wrong templates, no surface can read your content properly. Optimizing specifically for AI surfaces is a separate discipline covered by our AI SEO service, and no one can guarantee AI citations, us included.
Do you guarantee higher rankings or more traffic after the audit? +
No. We do not make traffic or ranking promises because rankings depend on factors outside any audit: how quickly fixes are implemented, your competitive landscape, algorithm changes, and your content. What the audit gives you is an accurate diagnosis of the WordPress platform issues affecting your search visibility, and a prioritised roadmap for addressing them. What happens after you act on that roadmap depends on the implementation and the market.
What is NOT included in the WordPress SEO audit? +
The audit does not include content writing, link building, or any plugin or database changes. We do not touch your WordPress installation; we read it. It does not cover the WooCommerce catalog layer (product pages, faceted navigation, Product schema) unless you also order the E-commerce SEO audit. It does not include Google Ads, paid social, or email marketing. The deliverable is a written report and roadmap; implementation is quoted and scoped separately.
Do you need admin access to my WordPress site to run the audit? +
For most of the audit we need read-only access to Google Search Console and Google Analytics, requested via your email invite, never by password. For a subset of checks, a read-only look at the WordPress installation helps, either a staging copy or a temporary read-only user account added by email invite and revoked by you after the audit. If neither is possible, we document what we can verify externally and flag what required internal access to confirm. We are EU-registered (CyberLab.Team OÜ, Estonia) and operate under GDPR.
Do I have to hire you to implement the fixes afterwards? +
No. There is no obligation to continue with us. The report is written so that any competent WordPress developer can execute it without a handover call. About half of our audit clients implement with their existing developer or in-house team. If you want us to handle implementation, we quote separately based on the roadmap produced by the audit.
How do I know which tier my site needs: Start, Expert or Professional? +
Tiering is driven by page count and feature set, not by negotiation. Start fits business sites and blogs up to roughly 150 pages. Expert adds the database, security and WPML or Polylang checks that larger, multi-author and WooCommerce platform-layer sites need. Professional covers large portals, competitor analysis and migration planning. The free preliminary check tells you the exact tier before you pay anything.
How long does the audit take and what do I receive? +
Delivery is 5 to 10 business days depending on site size. You receive a written audit report, a prioritised fix list with severity levels (critical, important, low-priority) that your developer can work from directly, and a walkthrough call to go through findings and answer questions. The exact price depends on site size and scope; tiers start at €199. We give you a precise quote after a free preliminary check, typically within 24 hours of your request.
Not what you need?
Running a WooCommerce store? Product, category and faceted-navigation work lives in the E-commerce SEO audit. For a CMS-agnostic technical audit, see the SEO Site Audit. To show up in Google's AI Overviews, see AI SEO.
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