WordPress SEO checks in Shadow

The search-facing basics for search engine optimization (SEO): titles and meta descriptions, canonical URLs, sitemaps, robots and noindex settings, schema, Open Graph and Twitter cards, permalinks and archives.

There are 28 checks in this family. Shadow reports what it finds, and nothing is changed until you approve a fix.

In this family

What each check looks at

Attachment Pages

Checks whether WordPress is generating publicly accessible attachment pages for media files, which create low-value indexed URLs that can dilute SEO authority.

Author Archives

Checks whether author archive pages are intentionally enabled or disabled, as single-author sites rarely need them and they can create duplicate content.

Why it matters. Verifies that author archives are intentionally enabled or disabled and are not creating thin-content pages that harm SEO.

Canonical URLs

Checks whether an SEO plugin is active to manage canonical URL tags and prevent duplicate content from harming search engine rankings.

Category Strategy

Checks whether the category taxonomy is organized and free of empty or near-empty categories that fragment crawl budget and dilute site structure.

Custom 404 Strategy Present

Checks whether the active theme includes a custom 404 template to deliver a helpful, branded experience for visitors hitting missing pages.

Document Title Format

Checks whether the active theme declares title-tag support, which allows WordPress and SEO plugins to fully manage the page <title> element.

Homepage Has a Single H1

Checks that the homepage contains exactly one H1 heading. Missing or multiple H1 tags confuse search engines about the primary topic of the page.

Homepage Meta

Checks whether the homepage has a unique meta title and description configured in an SEO plugin rather than relying on the WordPress site title defaults.

Image Link Default

Checks whether WordPress is configured to link inserted images to attachment pages by default, which creates thin URLs that can harm SEO.

Meta Descriptions Managed

Checks whether an SEO plugin is active to manage meta description tags, which directly influence click-through rates from search result pages.

Meta Titles Managed

Checks whether an SEO plugin is active to manage meta title tags for posts and pages, rather than relying on the theme's default title output.

Noindex Policy

Checks whether an SEO plugin is configured to control which pages receive a noindex directive, preventing search engines from indexing low-value content.

Why it matters. Checks whether an SEO plugin is configured to apply noindex directives to low-value pages such as date archives, author archives, and search results.

Open Graph Defaults Set

Checks whether Open Graph meta tags are being output so links shared on social media display with proper titles, descriptions, and preview images.

Organization Schema

Checks whether Organization or Person structured data schema is being output to help search engines understand and display the site's identity.

Permalink Structure Meaningful

Checks whether the WordPress permalink structure is set to a human-readable format rather than the default numeric query string that harms SEO.

Redirect Management

Checks whether a dedicated redirect management plugin is active to handle 301 redirects properly and prevent link rot when URLs change.

Robots Policy

Checks whether a physical robots.txt file is present and that it does not accidentally block all crawlers with a blanket Disallow directive.

RSS Feed Summary

Checks whether the RSS feed is configured to output excerpts rather than full post content, reducing content scraping and preserving reader engagement on the site.

Schema Basics

Checks whether a schema markup plugin is active to output structured data that helps search engines understand and display the site's content in rich results.

Search Engine Visibility

Checks whether the WordPress "discourage search engines" setting is active, which would prevent the entire site from being crawled and indexed.

Search Page Indexing

Checks whether WordPress internal search result pages are excluded from search engine indexing to prevent duplicate or low-value pages from being crawled.

SEO Plugin Configuration

Checks whether an SEO plugin is installed on the site, as managing meta tags, schema, and canonical URLs requires dedicated SEO tooling.

Site Icon

Checks whether a site icon (favicon) has been configured in WordPress, which appears in browser tabs, bookmarks, and search engine results.

Checks whether social media profile URLs are connected to the site via an SEO plugin to enable Knowledge Graph enrichment and social sharing metadata.

Tag Archives

Checks whether post tag archives are bloated with single-use tags that generate thin archive pages and fragment crawl budget.

Twitter Card

Checks whether Twitter Card meta tags are being output so links shared on Twitter and social media display with a proper image and summary.

Uncategorized Usage

Checks whether any published posts are still using the WordPress default Uncategorized category, which signals poor content organization to visitors and search engines.

XML Sitemap Enabled

Checks whether an XML sitemap is active and accessible to help search engines discover and efficiently index all published content on the site.

The other check families

Shadow is free and runs on your own server, with no account. The source is on GitHub, and these descriptions come from it.