wordpress-seolisted

# WordPress SEO WordPress publishes fast and generates index bloat faster. Left at defaults it creates several URLs for every piece of content, most of which are thin, duplicative or empty, and the resulting index is mostly junk. Almost all WordPress SEO work is subtraction. ## Step 1: Permalinks Set `/%postname%/` and nothing else. Do this before publishing anything, because changing it later means redirecting every URL on the site. ``` Settings → Permalinks → Custom Structure → /%postname%/ ``` Dates in URLs make content look stale and make it painful to update. Category in the URL breaks when you recategorise. If the site already uses a dated structure and has meaningful traffic, changing it is a migration with real risk — weigh it honestly rather than doing it for tidiness. See `redirect-migration-plan`. ## Step 2: Kill the auto-generated bloat This is where the real gains are. Every WordPress install generates these by default and almost none of them should be indexed. | URL type | Default | Should be | Why | |---|---|---|---| | **Attachment pages** `/photo-name/` | Indexed | Redirect to the file or 404 | A page containing one image and nothing else. Pure bloat | | **Tag archives** | Indexed | `noindex` unless curated | Usually one post per tag | | **Category archives** | Indexed | Index only if given real content | Can be valuable hubs if written; junk if not | | **Author archives** | Indexed | `noindex` on single-author sites | Duplicates the blog index exactl