How Can WordPress Plugins or Themes Damage Your SEO Game? Google Explains

When it comes to SEO of your website, you need to know the impact of WordPress plugins and themes on your site’s visibility and indexing.

In a recent video from Google Search Central’s “SEO Office Hours Aug 2024” the speaker (Mueller) mentioned that changes to plugins can change how your content is shown not only to users but to search engine crawlers as well.

This can lead to unexpected indexing issues that will hurt your site’s performance in search results.

Knowing the relationship between your content management system and the things you customize is key to good SEO health.

We’ll get into more details on this later. We’ll cover specific concerns and expert tips to keep your site search engine friendly.

1 How WordPress Plugins or Themes Can Ruin Your SEO

Knowing the impact of WordPress plugins and themes on SEO is important especially when users report indexing issues after updates.

As mentioned in the Google Search Channel discussion, the speaker asked:

“I’m having issues with indexing since updating our WordPress plugins.”

This opens up the conversation on how plugins and themes can affect a site’s visibility and performance in search results.

According to Google, here are the key points to consider on the interaction between WordPress plugins, themes and SEO:

• Presentation: Changes to plugins or themes can change how your site is shown to users and search engines. This change can cause content to be indexed differently.
• Settings and Searchability: As mentioned “Settings there can block or break search completely.” Some settings may inadvertently block search engine crawlers from accessing important parts of your site and thus prevent indexing.
• Expertise: If you’re unsure and seeing issues after making changes, Google recommends: “If you’re uncertain and seeing issues after making changes there, I’d recommend getting help from someone who has worked with the specific systems that you’re working on who can help to diagnose issues and guide you to appropriate settings.”

To stay SEO healthy you need to check how changes in your WordPress setup affect your site’s visibility in search results.

2 How to fix this?

2.1 Try Deactivating WordPress Plugin(s)

To fix indexing issues caused by recent changes to your WordPress plugins or themes you need to follow a process.

Here are the steps to diagnose and fix these issues to keep your site search engine friendly and SEO healthy.

• Review Recent Changes: Start by documenting any recent changes to your WordPress plugins or theme. This includes updates, installs or configuration changes. Even minor changes can affect how your content is shown and indexed.
• Deactivate Plugins: As mentioned earlier, one of the first step is to deactivate your plugins. Go to the ‘Plugins’ section of your WordPress dashboard and disable the plugins that were updated or installed recently.
• Clear Caches: If you’re using caching plugins, clear the cache to make sure your recent changes are reflected. Sometimes old cached versions of your site can confuse search engine crawlers.
• Restore Previous Version (Optional): If problems persist, try restoring your site to a previous version (before the updates) using your hosting platform’s backup tools. This step will help you determine if the updates are the cause of the indexing issues.

2.2 Check SEO Settings

Before you dive into your plugins, it’s essential to check your SEO settings. Proper configuration of SEO plugins like Rank Math can affect how search engines crawl and index your content. Follow these steps to check your SEO settings are set up correctly:

1. Go to Rank Math: Log in to your WordPress dashboard and go to ‘Rank Math’ from the left-hand menu. This will take you to the main plugin interface.
2. Review General Settings: In the Rank Math dashboard, click on the ‘General Settings’ tab. Here you will find the basic SEO settings including homepage settings, breadcrumb settings and more. Make sure these settings are in line with your SEO strategy.
3. Check Titles & Meta: Go to ‘Titles & Meta’ from the Rank Math dashboard. Check your titles and meta descriptions are set across your posts, pages and custom post types. Make sure no settings are blocking search engines from accessing important content.
4. Check Redirections: Under the ‘Redirections’ tab, check for any unnecessary redirects that can block search engine crawlers. Unresolved redirect chains or loops can confuse search engines and lead to poor indexing.
5. Check Schema: Click on the ‘Schema’ tab to check your structured data is set up correctly. Proper schema markup helps search engines understand the context of your content and increase the chances of being displayed in rich snippets.
6. Check Sitemap: Finally, go to ‘Sitemap Settings’ to check your XML sitemap is generated and submitted to search engines. Rank Math should generate this sitemap for you but make sure it’s correct and up to date by checking the included URLs.

By following these steps you can make sure your Rank Math settings are set up correctly and help your website’s overall SEO.

2.3 Check Your Google Search Console

After you’ve fixed the plugin and SEO settings issues, it’s time to use Google Search Console (GSC) to get a deeper insight of how your website is performing in terms of indexing and visibility.

GSC is a crucial tool in diagnosing indexing problems as it allows you to see how Google sees your site and provides feedback that can guide your troubleshooting.

By checking this platform regularly, you’ll be informed of any crawl errors or notifications that may occur after updates so your site remains accessible to both users and search engines.

1. Go to Google Search Console: Log in to your Google Search Console account at search.google.com/search-console. This will show you an overview of your website in Google search results.
2. Check Page indexing Report: In the left-hand menu click on ‘Indexing’ under the ‘Pages’ tab. Here you will find a report of all your pages indexed. Look for any errors or warnings which may indicate visibility issues.
3. Check Crawl Errors: In the Page indexing report look for the ‘Errors’ section. These may be pages that Google couldn’t index. Click on each error to see the details and find out the cause – this might be server errors, forbidden pages or missing pages (404 errors).
4. Check Indexing Status: Check the ‘Valid’ and ‘Excluded’ pages sections. The ‘Valid’ section shows which pages are indexed correctly and the ‘Excluded’ section shows pages that Google has chosen not to index. Investigate the excluded pages to see if they should be indexed based on your content strategy.
5. Check Enhancements: Go to the ‘Enhancements’ section to see how your site is performing in rich results. It will give you feedback on structured data and let you know if your schema settings are in line with GSC recommendations; fix if necessary.
6. Use URL Inspection Tool: For more details use the ‘URL Inspection’ tool. Enter any URL from your site to see how Google sees it. This tool will give you insights on the page’s status in the index and help you identify indexing issues or enhancements that can be made.
7. Set up Notifications: Make sure you have email notifications enabled in Search Console. This will keep you updated on any critical issues, changes or alerts on your website’s indexing status so you can respond quickly.
8. Request Indexing for New or Updated Pages: If you find content that’s not indexed after recent updates use the URL Inspection tool to request indexing for those specific pages. This will tell Google to crawl the content sooner.

Follow these steps and you’ll know what’s holding your website back and can make informed decisions and adjustments to boost your online presence.

2.4 Audit Your Website for Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals are important for user experience and search engine ranking.

Checkout our extensive guide, What is Google Core Web Vitals? Step-by-step Guide to Improve it

Core Web Vitals measure loading, interactivity and visual stability which are key to a good user experience.

You can use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights or Lighthouse to measure these. Follow the steps below to measure and improve your site’s Core Web Vitals:

• Go to Google PageSpeed Insights: Open PageSpeed Insights in your browser.
• Enter Your URL: Enter the URL of the page you want to audit in the field and click Analyze. The tool will process and give you a report.
• Check Performance Scores: Once processed take note of the performance scores. Google PageSpeed Insights scores are percentage with 90% and above being good.
• Check Core Web Vitals Metrics: Look for the three Core Web Vitals metrics—Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Interaction to Next Paint (INP), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). Each should meet the recommended thresholds for a good user experience:

1. LCP should be under 2.5 seconds.
2. INP should be under 200ms.
3. CLS should be under 0.1.

• Check Suggested Improvements: Scroll down to see recommendations for your website. This may include image optimisation, server response time reduction or removing render-blocking resources.
• Use Lighthouse for Deeper Analysis: Alternatively you can do a deeper analysis using Google Lighthouse. If you’re using Chrome, open the page you want to audit, right click and select Inspect, then navigate to the Lighthouse tab. Choose the report type you want to generate and click Generate report.
• Review Lighthouse Results: Review the detailed results from Lighthouse which includes performance, accessibility, best practices and SEO metrics. Look at the Performance section to see your Core Web Vitals.
• Implement Changes: Based on the results from PageSpeed Insights or Lighthouse, prioritise and implement the changes. This may be image optimisation, deferring JavaScript or improving server response time.

Follow these steps and you’ll know your website’s Core Web Vitals and can make optimisations to boost user experience and search engine ranking.

3 Done!

In summary, indexing and performance of your website through Google Search Console and PageSpeed Insights is key to being online.

Audit regularly and act fast on the results and you’ll get more organic traffic and user love. Make these habits a part of your ongoing digital journey and you’ll be set for long term.