011. Confirm the public site can be discovered
Open the homepage and a service page while signed out. Confirm that visitors see the intended content instead of a maintenance screen or sign-in page. Review Settings → Reading and its search engine visibility setting. A staging site and a public production site have different needs; record which environment you are changing.
- Check a representative page in Search Console URL Inspection when you have verified access.
- Inspect the page’s actual robots directive and canonical URL, not only the editor settings.
- Keep development and preview environments separate from the public website.
022. Review the output of your SEO tools
A theme, SEO plugin and another optimization plugin can all affect the same page. On a published page, check that its title, description and preferred URL are coherent. If two components produce conflicting output, identify the responsible component before changing anything. Avoid installing another plugin simply because a setting is difficult to find.
033. Give services a clear place in the navigation
Imagine a customer looking for one specific service. They should be able to reach a descriptive page from the menu or a relevant hub. Review old posts, tag archives and media pages for usefulness. Do not automatically delete archives or change every slug: existing links and search traffic may depend on them.
044. Make template changes safely
An image or layout problem repeated across every page is often best addressed in the template. Test changes on a safe copy, then review an ordinary page and an unusual page such as a long article or product. Preserve existing URLs where possible. If a URL must change, map it to a genuinely equivalent destination and test the redirect.
055. Verify the customer journey after publishing
A cache can make the public page differ from the editor preview. Check the public version, menu and contact route after release. Keep a dated note of the change and the pages checked. This gives the next person a useful starting point if a later theme or plugin update alters the result.
- Review the page on a phone and with keyboard navigation.
- Check the intended sitemap includes the pages you want discovered.
- Confirm that a page that does not exist returns a real not-found response.
- Record broken contact actions as a priority, even if an SEO score looks healthy.