WordPress SEO
WordPress SEO that fixes the theme, the plugins and the templates — not a retainer that reports on them monthly. Project-priced fixes first; ongoing work only where it earns its keep.
WordPress has two SEO realities. The platform itself is fine — clean URLs, solid schema plugins, sane pagination. What breaks it is the stack on top: page-builder themes that ship megabytes of DOM, plugin sprawl writing duplicate canonicals, and hosting that fails Core Web Vitals before your content renders. A retainer cannot fix that; a developer can.
This work happens at the build layer: strip the theme weight, resolve the plugin conflicts, emit correct schema and sitemaps, fix the indexation wounds — then hand you the option of a lean monthly engagement for the content-adjacent technical work, month to month. 2026 market data puts WordPress SEO retainers at $500–$3,000 per month; honest technical programs sit at the lower half of that, and the quote shows exactly which parts are recurring and which are one-time.
The honest limits: no ranking guarantees — Google's own guidance says anyone promising #1 is selling you something. And if your site fails Core Web Vitals because of the theme itself, twelve months of SEO fees cost more than the rebuild that actually solves it. If that is the finding, the audit says so — even though the rebuild is the smaller invoice.
What the engagement covers
- Theme and plugin weight audit — what ships on every page load and what can stop
- Core Web Vitals fixes at the template layer: render-blocking chains, image budgets, font strategy
- Schema and sitemap correctness — one canonical source, no plugin duels
- Indexation hygiene: canonicals, pagination, archives, tag-page policy, noindex decisions in writing
- Migration-safe change process — every fix verified against rankings-relevant URLs before shipping
- Optional lean monthly: content-adjacent technical work, month-to-month, cancel anytime
Honest limits
What this is deliberately not.
Not this: Ranking guarantees or "page one in 90 days" — not sold, not implied
Not this: Content farms and programmatic page spam — technical foundations only, or the work is wasted
Not this: 12-month lock-in retainers — the 2026 market is full of them; the work here is month-to-month or project
Not this: Buying links — never part of the scope, actively reported as a risk when found
Questions · WordPress SEO
Asked before building.
Ahrefs' 439-provider survey found $501–$1,000/month the most common retainer bracket; published 2026 analyses put the honest WordPress range at $500–$3,000/month. Projects here price $1,000–$5,000 fixed — theme and plugin fixes, schema, indexation — with monthly work optional at $500–$3,000, quoted to the half that is actually recurring.
Often no. If the technical foundation is fixed and your content process runs, a retainer is reporting overhead. The honest sequence: fix the foundation as a project, then decide. Roughly half of clients stop at the project; both answers are correct and the choice is yours, not the contract's.
The one that matches the site — usually whatever is already installed, configured correctly, instead of adding a second plugin to fight the first. The work is making one canonical source of truth for titles, schema and sitemaps; the plugin brand matters far less than plugin count.
No — the work removes weight the design does not use: unused CSS, duplicate jQuery, emoji scripts on marketing sites, plugin assets loading sitewide for one page. The visual output is identical; the payload is not. Every change ships through staging with a visual diff.
Related: all SEO services · rate benchmarks · the vetting guide.
Also in this section
Technical SEO Audit · Shopify SEO · Ecommerce SEO · Local SEO · Core Web Vitals Optimization · Schema Markup Implementation · SEO-Safe Website Migration · SEO Penalty Recovery
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