Service · WordPress SEO
WordPress SEO Built in the Theme Code, Not Just Plugin Settings
We're a UK SEO agency running long-term retainers for WordPress sites. Plugin audits, theme-level schema, Core Web Vitals work, and the WordPress-specific technical work most agencies leave to a Yoast settings page. Free audit before you commit.
What we do
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Theme-level schema
Article, BreadcrumbList, FAQPage, Service, Organization, LocalBusiness, Product schema, implemented in the theme code, deduplicated against Yoast/Rank Math output, and validated against Google's Rich Results test. The kind of schema that actually qualifies for SERP features.
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Plugin audit + pruning
Most WordPress sites carry 30+ plugins, often with overlapping responsibilities and silent performance drag. We audit which are paying their way, prune the dead weight, and resolve the SEO conflicts between Yoast/Rank Math/All-in-One/AIO that quietly hurt indexation.
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Core Web Vitals work
WordPress speed is rarely fixable in a plugin. We work at theme and hosting level, Critical CSS, image optimisation pipeline, caching strategy, server response times, to land LCP under 2.5s on mobile, which is where the conversion lift sits.
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WooCommerce SEO
Product schema, faceted nav, /shop/ canonical handling, category page architecture, and the WooCommerce-specific patterns generalist SEO agencies don't know. Particularly important when ranking against Shopify and Amazon listings on the same search terms.
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Content & on-page
Four or more new pieces a month, briefed against actual Search Console data. Existing posts and pages refreshed monthly based on what's slipped. Category and tag structure rebuilt where it's hurting more than helping (most multi-year WordPress sites have this problem).
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Reporting tied to revenue
Monthly report against attributed organic revenue, not ranking screenshots. Quarterly strategic review with a real human. We treat Search Console as a control panel, not a quarterly slide.
How a WordPress SEO retainer with us actually runs
Most agencies running "WordPress SEO" configure Yoast, install a sitemap plugin, ship four AI-generated posts a month, and call it done. Here's the rhythm of a retainer that actually moves rankings.
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Free WordPress audit (week 0)
Plugin audit, theme code review, schema validation (across Yoast/Rank Math/theme markup conflicts), Core Web Vitals measurement, Search Console issue sweep, and a category/tag taxonomy review. We tell you what's hurting rankings, what's wasting hosting resources, and whether your site has the traffic to justify a retainer.
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Foundations (weeks 1–4)
Plugin stack pruned. Schema deduplicated and corrected at the theme level. Core Web Vitals work, Critical CSS, image pipeline, cache strategy. Indexation issues cleared in Search Console. Most accounts find significant recoverable traffic in this phase alone, particularly older WordPress sites with accumulated plugin debt.
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Content + on-page rhythm (month 2 onwards)
4+ new pieces of long-form, briefed content per month, plus monthly rewrites of underperforming pages based on Search Console data. Category and tag pages optimised where they're worth optimising; restructured where they're hurting. Internal-link architecture rebuilt across the existing post base.
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Review, refine, scale (quarterly)
Monthly reports tied to organic revenue. Quarterly strategy reviews looking at what's earning, what's not, and where we deploy effort next. A real human, not a templated PDF.
Why WordPress SEO is a different brief
Most UK SEO agencies running WordPress retainers stop at the Yoast configuration screen. The brief reads the same as a Shopify retainer or a custom-built site retainer, the deliverables look identical, and the team has never opened a functions.php file. That's where the retainers underperform, not because the team is bad, but because the platform-specific work goes undone.
WordPress is a platform that rewards depth. Most sites accumulate technical debt over the years: 30+ plugins, half of them overlapping in responsibility, several emitting their own schema markup, two or three slowing time-to-first-byte to the point where Core Web Vitals start failing. Yoast and Rank Math both emit Article and BreadcrumbList schema; if you've ever installed both, your pages probably emit duplicates that confuse Google's validators. Theme markup adds another layer of schema that often conflicts with the plugin output. Untangling this on a real site is a week of careful work, and it's the kind of work that generalist agencies skip because they can't see it from a Lighthouse report.
The other thing nobody talks about: WordPress's editor workflow drives URL structure, and most multi-year sites have category and tag pages that hurt more than they help. Categories with one post in them. Tags used inconsistently. Custom taxonomies created and abandoned. All of it indexable, all of it competing with the real money pages. A proper WordPress SEO retainer audits the taxonomy in month one and decides, case by case, what to noindex, what to consolidate, and what's actually pulling its weight. Generalist agencies don't do this because it requires real platform knowledge to do safely.
The general SEO retainer covers all of this on WordPress sites too, same team, same fee, same all-inclusive scope. The reason we publish a separate WordPress SEO page is to be specific about the platform expertise that ships with it. If you're on WordPress and the agency you're talking to can't tell you the difference between Article schema emitted by Yoast vs by your theme, they're going to spend month one learning the platform on your dime. We won't.
What clients say
Recent case studies
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Case study | SEO compounding into AI Mode visibility
How 18 months of law-firm SEO compounded into being the top-cited legal source in Google's AI Mode
298 answers Google AI Mode citations
The same content library built during 18 months of an SEO retainer is now the single most-cited source in Google's AI Mode answers for the client's target legal queries. It…
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Case study | SEO + Answer Engine Optimisation
How we launched a public services information site and grew organic clicks from zero to over 34,000 a month in three months
34,612 (Month 3) Monthly organic clicks
A new public-services information site launched from a bare domain. Three months in, the site was pulling 34,612 organic clicks a month and had been picked up by Google's AI…
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Case study · Google Ads for ecommerce
How we compounded a deals ecommerce brand's Google Ads revenue 68x in seven years while holding blended ROAS above 13x
£3.7m (Year 7) Annual Google Ads revenue
Seven years of a Google Ads programme for a deals-and-discounts ecommerce brand. Annual attributed revenue grew from £55k in Year 1 to £3.7m in Year 7 (68x). Blended seven-year ROAS…
Frequently asked questions
Is WordPress SEO different from regular SEO?
The fundamentals are the same, keyword research, on-page optimisation, technical health, content strategy, link building. The platform-specific work is what's different. On WordPress that means plugin audits, theme-level schema (and resolving conflicts between Yoast/Rank Math/theme output), Core Web Vitals work at the theme and hosting level, and category/tag taxonomy decisions. A generalist agency that doesn't know the platform spends month one configuring Yoast and ships nothing else of value. We don't.
How much does WordPress SEO cost?
Our WordPress SEO retainer is All-inclusive. That covers plugin audits, theme-level schema, Core Web Vitals work, 4+ new pieces of content a month, ongoing rewrites of underperforming pages, Search Console management, taxonomy decisions, and monthly reporting. No setup fee, no percentage of revenue, no contract lock-in. Most UK WordPress SEO providers either sit at £300–£500/month (which doesn't buy real work) or £3,000+/month (which mostly buys slide decks).
Do you only work on WordPress, or other platforms too?
Both. Our general SEO retainer covers WordPress, WooCommerce, Shopify, BigCommerce, and custom-built sites, same team, same fee. We've published a separate WordPress SEO page because the platform-specific expertise is a real part of the brief on WordPress sites, and we want to be specific about it rather than burying it in a generalist pitch.
How long until I see results from WordPress SEO?
Technical wins land within the first 30 days, plugin audits, schema corrections, Core Web Vitals work, indexation cleanup. Content gains compound from month three onwards as new pieces age and Search Console builds enough click-through data for Google to reassess relevance. By month six most WordPress retainers are showing meaningful traffic and ranking lifts. SEO is genuinely slower than paid, anyone promising top-3 rankings in week two is selling something else.
Do you do backlink building?
No, and we'd rather be honest about that than sell you something we don't believe in. Cheap link-building packages get penalised in core updates; genuine link-building costs more than the entire retainer on its own. What we do instead is earn links through publishable content, fixable technical issues, and the digital PR opportunities your business naturally generates. If you specifically want a paid-link operation, you'll be happier with a specialist outreach agency.
Will you audit and prune my plugin stack?
Yes, it's one of the first things we do, and one of the highest-ROI pieces of work in month one. Most multi-year WordPress sites carry 30+ plugins, with three or four causing 80% of the performance problems. We identify which are paying their way, work out which can be consolidated or replaced, and ship a leaner stack. Core Web Vitals improve the same week, the wp-admin loads faster, and the SEO conflicts between competing plugins get resolved at the same time.
Do you work with Yoast, Rank Math, or something else?
We work with whatever's already installed. The schema is what matters, not the plugin emitting it. If you're on Yoast, we configure it properly and supplement it with theme-level schema where Yoast doesn't go deep enough. If you're on Rank Math, same approach. We rarely switch a site between SEO plugins, the migration risk usually outweighs the upside, but we will if the existing setup is broken in ways that can't be patched.
Do you work with WooCommerce stores?
Yes. WooCommerce SEO is one of the angles this retainer covers most deliberately, Product schema, faceted nav handling, /shop/ canonical patterns, category page architecture, and the WooCommerce-specific patterns that differ from generic WordPress. WooCommerce stores compete against Shopify and Amazon listings on the same search terms, so the technical work has to be tight.
Is the work done in-house or outsourced?
All in-house. The senior team that writes the briefs is the same team that opens theme files and ships the work. No offshore content factories, no white-label developers brought in to fix the things we can't. If you've been burned by an agency where the proposal team and the delivery team were different people, you'll notice the difference.
Is there a contract lock-in?
No. 30-day notice and we go separate ways. Everything we've built, schema, technical fixes, content, internal-link structure, plugin stack changes, stays on your site. No clawbacks, no "agency-owned" assets, no migration fees. We don't believe in retention through contracts; if the work isn't worth what you're paying, you should leave.