Questions
WordPress SEO Questions, Answered
Short, definite answers to the SEO questions WordPress site owners ask, each checked against what WordPress core actually does.
URLs and permalinks 13
- Are WordPress URLs case sensitive?WordPress finds a post whatever the capitalization of its slug and does not redirect to lowercase. The canonical tag covers it; uploads are stricter.
- Can WordPress slugs use accents and non-English characters?Yes. WordPress strips accents from Latin letters and percent-encodes other scripts, and Google reads both. When to keep native script or transliterate.
- Do dates in WordPress post URLs hurt SEO?Dates in post URLs are not a ranking problem, but they age your content and tie the address to the publish date. What core does, and when switching is worth it.
- Do WordPress ?p=123 shortlinks cause duplicate content?No. With pretty permalinks WordPress 301-redirects ?p=123 to the post's real URL, so it is never indexed separately. What the shortlink tag is for.
- Does a static front page create a duplicate URL at its page slug?No. When a page is set as the front page, WordPress redirects its own slug (such as /home/) to the site root and uses the root in links, canonical and sitemap.
- Does changing a post title change its URL in WordPress?No. After a post is published, WordPress keeps its slug; editing the title changes the H1 and title tag only. See when the slug is set and how to change it.
- How long can a WordPress slug be?A WordPress slug can be up to 200 characters; core truncates anything longer. Google sets no ranking limit, so aim for three to five words instead.
- Should I put the year in a WordPress post slug?No. Put the year in the title, where it can be updated each January, and keep the slug year-free so the URL, its links and its rankings carry over.
- Should I remove stop words from WordPress slugs?WordPress keeps every word of the title in the slug, including a, the and of. Trim them on new posts if the slug still reads clearly; leave live URLs alone.
- Should WordPress post URLs start with /blog/?A /blog/ prefix is optional and has no ranking effect. In WordPress it also moves category, tag and author URLs under /blog/, so decide before launch.
- What does re-saving permalinks do, and when do you need it?Saving the Permalinks screen rebuilds WordPress's rewrite rules and, on Apache, rewrites .htaccess. It fixes sitewide 404s without changing any URL.
- Why do my WordPress URLs contain index.php?URLs like /index.php/post-name/ mean WordPress could not confirm URL rewriting on your server. Enable it, re-save permalinks, and core redirects the rest.
- Why does WordPress add -2 to the end of my URL?WordPress adds -2 when the slug you want is already taken by another post, page, media file or a reserved word. How to find what holds it and get the clean URL.
Indexing and crawling 13
- Are custom post types included in the WordPress sitemap?Yes, if the post type is registered as public and viewable. WordPress adds it to the core sitemap automatically; private types and media are left out.
- Can Google index password-protected or private WordPress posts?A password-protected post has a public URL and title that Google can index, but not its content. Private posts return 404 to visitors and stay out entirely.
- Do WordPress post revisions affect SEO?No. Revisions are private database rows with no public URL, so search engines never see them. When limiting them is worth it, and what it will not fix.
- Does fixing a typo change a post's last-modified date?Yes. Any update, even one character or a Quick Edit, resets a WordPress post's modified time, which feeds the sitemap lastmod and dateModified in schema.
- Does scheduling or backdating a WordPress post affect SEO?No. A scheduled post ranks the same as one published by hand. The risks are missed schedules on quiet or cached sites, and backdated posts that nobody sees.
- Does switching a published post to draft hurt SEO?Yes for that page: a post set to Draft or moved to Trash returns 404, and Google drops it after recrawling. It keeps its slug, so restoring it soon is safe.
- Does WordPress add schema markup without a plugin?No. WordPress core outputs no JSON-LD or schema.org markup, only a few microformat classes such as hentry. What that means for rich results and what to add.
- Does WordPress need rel="next" and rel="prev" on paginated pages?No. WordPress core does not print rel=next/prev link tags, and Google said in 2019 it no longer uses them. What paginated archives do need instead.
- Does WordPress prefetch pages, and does it affect SEO?Since 6.8 WordPress adds speculation rules that prefetch a link when a visitor starts to click. It speeds up navigation and changes nothing about crawling.
- Does WordPress tell Google when I publish a post?No. WordPress pings one update service, Ping-O-Matic, and lists new posts in its sitemap. Google finds them by crawling. Here is how to speed that up.
- How many URLs can a WordPress sitemap hold?WordPress core puts up to 2,000 URLs in each sitemap file and splits the rest into numbered pages. The protocol allows 50,000 per file.
- Should I delete the Hello World post and Sample Page in WordPress?Yes. Delete the default post, page and comment before launch. Left published, they are thin pages Google can index, and a sign the site was never finished.
- What robots meta tag does WordPress add by default?On a public site WordPress prints max-image-preview:large on every page and adds noindex only to search results, embeds, reply links and the login screen.
Categories, tags and site structure 10
- Can a tag and a category have the same name in WordPress?Yes. WordPress allows a tag and a category with the same name and slug, at different URLs. You end up with two archives competing for one topic, so keep one.
- Do empty categories and tags hurt SEO in WordPress?A few do no harm, but each empty category is a live page that returns 200 with nothing on it. Delete unused ones, or noindex them until they have posts.
- Do menu and footer links count as internal links?Yes. Google crawls and follows menu, sidebar and footer links like any other. They prove a page is reachable, but links inside content say more about it.
- Do parent and child pages help SEO in WordPress?A parent page adds its slug to the child's URL and nothing more. It helps only when the pages also link to each other. Moving a page changes its address.
- Do sticky posts affect SEO in WordPress?Barely. A sticky post is pinned to the top of the first blog page only. Its URL, date and indexing are unchanged; it gains one prominent internal link.
- Do subcategories help SEO in WordPress?Only when each has enough posts to be a useful page. Child categories give no ranking boost by themselves, and they nest URLs that move when you reorganise.
- Does changing a category or tag slug break links?Yes. WordPress does not redirect old category or tag slugs, so the old archive URL returns 404 the moment you save. Add a 301 first, and check post URLs.
- How many categories should a WordPress post have?One is best, two at most. Extra categories add nothing for search and, with categories in your URLs, WordPress quietly picks one by lowest ID to use.
- How many posts should the WordPress blog page show?WordPress shows 10 posts per page by default. For SEO, 10 to 20 excerpts is a sound range: enough to keep old posts within a few clicks without slow pages.
- What happens to posts and URLs when you delete a WordPress category?Posts are kept. Those only in the deleted category move to the default one, child categories move up a level, and the archive URL returns 404.
Content and links 8
- Do shortcodes hurt SEO in WordPress?No. Shortcodes are replaced with HTML on the server before the page is sent, so Google sees the finished content. The risk is tags left by a removed plugin.
- Do synced patterns (reusable blocks) cause duplicate content?No. A synced pattern is stored once and printed inside each page that uses it, with no URL of its own. Repeated blocks are fine; mostly-pattern pages are thin.
- Does opening links in a new tab affect SEO?No. target="_blank" is not a ranking factor and does not change how a link is crawled. It affects usability, and WordPress no longer adds noopener itself.
- Does splitting a post with the Page Break block hurt SEO?Usually, yes: each part becomes its own URL with a fraction of the content. WordPress handles the canonicals correctly, but one complete page ranks better.
- Does the Read More block affect SEO in WordPress?Not on the post itself: the More block only sets where the teaser ends on listing pages. It can cut duplicate text on archives, and its #more- link is harmless.
- Does WordPress add nofollow to comment links?Yes. WordPress adds rel="nofollow ugc" to links in comment text and "ugc external nofollow" to the commenter's name link. Links you write in posts get nothing.
- Is the WordPress excerpt used as the meta description?Not by WordPress itself, which prints no meta description at all. SEO plugins often use the excerpt as a fallback, so it can still end up in search results.
- Should internal links in WordPress be absolute or relative?Use absolute URLs, which is what WordPress inserts by default. Google handles both, but absolute links survive feeds and scrapers; plan for domain changes.
Images and media 6
- Do year and month folders in WordPress image URLs hurt SEO?No. The /2026/05/ in an upload path is a storage folder, not a freshness signal. Leave the setting alone: moving existing images to new URLs is the real risk.
- Do WordPress's generated image sizes cause duplicate content?No. The -300x200 style copies are alternate sizes of one image, offered to browsers through srcset. Duplicate content is about pages, and these have none.
- Does changing alt text in the Media Library update existing posts?No. WordPress copies the alt text into a post when the image is inserted. Later Media Library edits reach featured images, not images already in content.
- Does WordPress compress images when you upload them?Partly. WordPress keeps your original file, but the resized copies it generates are saved at JPEG quality 82, and images over 2560 pixels get a -scaled copy.
- Does WordPress strip EXIF and IPTC data from images?Not from your original upload. Whether resized copies keep EXIF and IPTC depends on the server's image library: Imagick keeps them, GD discards everything.
- Alt text, title, caption, description: which image fields matter for SEO?Alt text matters most, captions help when visible, and the file name counts. The Media Library title and description rarely reach the page at all.