WordPress handles a lot of SEO basics for you already, but a default install still leaves gaps — generic meta descriptions, ugly permalinks, and a robots.txt file that may not exist at all until you add one. Here's a free, plugin-agnostic checklist to close them.
Set your permalink structure before you publish much
Go to Settings → Permalinks and pick "Post name" so your URLs use readable slugs instead of query strings. For any post title that's long or awkward, run it through a free slug generator first and paste the clean result into the URL field before you hit publish — changing it after the fact means broken links and redirects.
Write real title tags and meta descriptions
Whatever SEO plugin you use (Yoast, Rank Math, or none at all), the fields that matter are the SEO title and meta description for each page. A free meta tag generator gives you a properly sized title, description, and Open Graph tags in one pass — paste them straight into your plugin's fields or your theme's header if you're not using a plugin.
Don't over-optimize your content
Many WordPress SEO plugins score you on keyword usage, which tempts writers to repeat the target phrase unnaturally. Check your draft with a free keyword density checker before publishing — if one phrase makes up more than 2–3% of your text, it's usually a sign to rewrite rather than push further.
Add a robots.txt file if you don't already have one
WordPress generates a virtual robots.txt by default, but if you've customized your setup or moved hosts, it's worth generating a proper one with a free robots.txt generator and uploading it to your site's root, with a link to your sitemap.xml included.
The bottom line
None of this replaces a proper SEO plugin for a WordPress site doing real content marketing — but these four free steps cover the fundamentals that a lot of default installs miss, and they take under fifteen minutes.
Try it yourself
Put this into practice with our SEO Tools.