Hong Kong · WordPress
What should a WordPress site get right for SEO?
Most WordPress SEO problems are settings, not plugins. Work through the list before buying another tool.
- Works with or without an SEO plugin
- 16 checks
- Built for small sites
- Updated
Score a WordPress site
Tick what is already done. The gaps are listed in the order that usually costs the most traffic.
The score is the share of weighted checks that pass. It reflects settings you can change in WordPress or in the hosting panel, not the quality of the writing.
Fill in the form and run it. The result appears here.
Start with the settings, not the plugin
A WordPress site can have a popular SEO plugin installed and still be invisible, because the problem sits one layer below it: a staging site left public, a permalink structure that puts dates in every URL, or a category archive that duplicates every post.
The list below follows the order a site usually breaks. Technical access first, then the pages themselves, then the extras that are easy to add too early.
The multilingual question
A Hong Kong business usually needs English and Traditional Chinese. In WordPress that means one of the multilingual plugins, such as Polylang or WPML, and it means deciding the URL shape before publishing: /en/ and /zh-hant/, or separate domains.
The plugin has to output hreflang tags that point both ways and a canonical that names each page as itself. Check that, rather than assuming the plugin handles it.
What this checklist cannot see
It runs on your answers, not on your site. It cannot confirm that a plugin setting is live, that the server returns the right status codes, or that a page is indexed. Use the Hong Kong SEO check for a live read of one URL.
Questions before you use it
Do I need an SEO plugin?
A plugin saves time on titles, sitemaps and canonicals, but it does not fix a blocked site or a bad permalink structure. One plugin is enough; two often fight over the same tags.
Which permalink structure is best?
Post name only, such as /seo-services/. Dates and post IDs add length without helping the reader. If you change it on a live site, redirect the old URLs.
Should category pages be indexed?
Index them when they are the page a customer should land on, such as a service category. Noindex them when they only list posts that already have their own pages.
How do I add Traditional Chinese without breaking SEO?
Use one multilingual plugin, give each language its own URL, and check that hreflang points both ways. Do not put two languages on one page.
Is a page builder bad for SEO?
Not by itself. The problems come from heavy scripts, duplicated headings and content that only appears after JavaScript runs. Test the page as a crawler would.