CapraSEO

The Yoast SEO Checklist That Actually Moves Rankings (+ Site Migration Edition)

If you've installed Yoast SEO on your WordPress site and you're staring at a sea of red and orange traffic lights, this Yoast SEO checklist will walk you through every setting and on-page task that matters — in the order you should tackle them. We'll also cover what to do when you're migrating a site, because a botched migration can erase months of rankings in days.

Part 1: The Core Yoast SEO Checklist (Do These First)

1. Configure the Yoast Setup Wizard

Go to SEO → General → First-time configuration in your WordPress dashboard. This wizard handles the most critical defaults:

  • Set your site type (blog, online shop, news site, etc.)
  • Confirm whether your site represents a person or an organisation — this feeds structured data
  • Add your organisation name and logo (used in Google's Knowledge Panel)
  • Connect to your Google Search Console account if prompted

2. Set a Consistent Title Separator and Site Name

Under SEO → General → Site Basics, pick a title separator (a dash or pipe works fine) and confirm your site name is spelled exactly how you want it to appear in search results. Every page title appends this, so get it right once.

3. Control Which Content Types Get Indexed

Under SEO → Search Appearance, go through each content type and taxonomy:

  • Posts and Pages — keep these indexable
  • Tags — usually set to noindex unless your tags are genuinely content-rich
  • Author archives — noindex if you're a one-person site (avoids duplicate content)
  • Date archives — noindex; they add no value and fragment crawl budget

Thin or duplicate archive pages are a quiet ranking killer. If you want a deeper dive on this, see our guide on why duplicate content is an issue for SEO.

4. Verify Your XML Sitemap

Yoast auto-generates a sitemap at yourdomain.com/sitemap_index.xml. Check it:

  • Only indexable pages should appear — no noindex URLs
  • Submit the sitemap URL inside Google Search Console under Indexing → Sitemaps
  • Re-submit any time you make major structural changes

5. Enable Breadcrumbs

Under SEO → Search Appearance → Breadcrumbs, enable them. Then add the Yoast breadcrumb shortcode or block to your theme. Breadcrumbs give Google a clear picture of your site structure and often appear in SERPs, improving click-through rates.

6. On-Page Checklist for Every Post or Page

When you publish or update a piece of content, run through this before hitting Publish:

  • Focus keyphrase — enter the exact phrase you want the page to rank for
  • SEO title — put the keyphrase near the front, keep it under 60 characters
  • Meta description — write a compelling 140–155 character summary; Yoast's green bar confirms the length
  • Keyphrase in introduction — Yoast checks this; make sure it's in your first paragraph naturally
  • Subheadings — at least one H2 or H3 should reflect your topic (not a forced keyword repeat)
  • Image alt text — describe the image; include the keyphrase once where it genuinely fits
  • Internal links — link to at least one related page on your site
  • Outbound link — Yoast flags a lack of external links; link to a credible source where it helps the reader
  • Readability score — aim for green, but don't butcher natural writing to get there
  • Canonical URL — only change this if the page has a syndicated version elsewhere

7. Set Up Social Previews

In the Yoast meta box, open the Social tab. Set a specific Open Graph image (1200×630px) for important pages. Without this, Facebook and LinkedIn will grab a random image, which looks unprofessional and reduces shares.

8. Schema / Structured Data

Yoast adds basic schema automatically. For posts, set the Article type (Article, BlogPosting, or NewsArticle). For local businesses, service pages, or FAQs, consider adding additional schema blocks — Yoast Premium includes FAQ and How-To schema blocks, but you can also add these manually in a Custom HTML block using JSON-LD.

Part 2: The SEO Website Migration Checklist

A website migration SEO checklist is non-negotiable if you're changing your domain, CMS, URL structure, or moving from HTTP to HTTPS. Yoast handles some of this, but most of the work lives outside the plugin. Here's the full process.

Before You Migrate

  • Crawl your current site — use a crawler (Screaming Frog, Sitebulb, or similar) and export every indexable URL. This is your baseline.
  • Record your current rankings — screenshot or export your top-ranking keywords and positions so you have a before/after reference. A keyword rank tracker makes this automatic.
  • Audit your backlinks — export every inbound link pointing to your old URLs. These need to be preserved or redirected. Use a backlink checker to get a full picture of which links matter most.
  • Map old URLs to new URLs — build a spreadsheet: old URL → new URL. Every row needs a destination.
  • Check your referring domains — high-authority referring domains carry the most equity; prioritise getting redirects right for pages with strong backlink profiles. Our referring domains checker shows you exactly where that equity sits.

During the Migration

  • Implement 301 redirects — every old URL should 301 to its exact equivalent on the new site. Use your URL map. Avoid redirect chains (old → interim → new); go direct.
  • Update internal links — don't rely solely on redirects. Update internal links in your CMS to point directly to the new URLs so crawl budget isn't wasted.
  • Carry over Yoast meta data — if you're moving CMS, export Yoast's SEO titles, meta descriptions, and schema settings and import them to the new platform. Most migration tools have a Yoast data export option.
  • Set canonical tags correctly — during a staged migration where both old and new sites are briefly live, set canonicals on the old site pointing to the new URLs.
  • Move your sitemap — generate a new sitemap on the new domain as soon as the migration is live and submit it immediately to Google Search Console.

After the Migration

  • Submit a Change of Address in Google Search Console (if you changed domains) — go to Settings → Change of Address
  • Monitor crawl errors daily for at least 4 weeks — watch for 404s, redirect loops, and soft 404s in Search Console. Fix any that appear.
  • Check for 404 errors — our detailed guide on how to fix 404 errors in Google Search Console walks through this step by step.
  • Track rankings weekly — expect some fluctuation in the first 2–4 weeks. If specific pages tank and don't recover, check that their redirects are correct and their on-page Yoast settings migrated properly.
  • Validate structured data — use Google's Rich Results Test on a sample of migrated pages to confirm schema carried over correctly.
  • Re-run your technical SEO audit — crawl the new site end-to-end and compare against your pre-migration baseline. Look for pages that lost their meta titles, gained duplicate content, or have broken internal links.

Common Migration Mistakes That Kill Rankings

  • Using 302 (temporary) redirects instead of 301s — Google won't pass full link equity through a 302
  • Forgetting to redirect paginated URLs (/page/2/, /page/3/)
  • Blocking the new site with a robots.txt disallow left over from the staging environment
  • Not updating the sitemap in Search Console — Google keeps crawling the old one
  • Launching too many changes at once — if you change domain, URL structure, and design simultaneously, diagnosing a traffic drop becomes almost impossible

Quick Reference: Yoast SEO Checklist Summary

  • ✅ Run Yoast's first-time configuration wizard
  • ✅ Set title separator and site name
  • ✅ Noindex thin archives and tag pages
  • ✅ Submit XML sitemap to Search Console
  • ✅ Enable and configure breadcrumbs
  • ✅ Complete all on-page fields before publishing (title, meta, alt text, internal links)
  • ✅ Set Open Graph social images for key pages
  • ✅ Configure schema/article type per content type
  • ✅ Before any migration: crawl, record rankings, audit backlinks, map URLs
  • ✅ During migration: 301 redirects, update internal links, carry Yoast data
  • ✅ After migration: Change of Address, monitor 404s, track rankings, revalidate schema

Take the Guesswork Out of Ongoing SEO

Running this checklist manually is a one-time win, but keeping your site healthy month after month is a different challenge. CapraSEO's SEO audit and site health dashboard continuously monitors your technical health — crawl errors, missing meta data, redirect issues — and lets you ask plain-English questions about what needs fixing next. No spreadsheets, no toggling between tools.

Try it free at app.capraseo.com with your Google account — it connects to your real site data in minutes.