Optimise WordPress.
Rank at full speed.

Genuinely good, when configured properly — a large share of high-ranking sites run on it. The platform gives you full control over markup, URLs, schema and performance. Its weakness is permissive defaults and how easy it is to accumulate plugins, which is a maintenance problem rather than a platform limitation.

Yoast, Rank Math and SEOPress are all adequate, and the choice matters far less than people assume. They set titles, metas, sitemaps and basic schema — useful plumbing, not strategy. We usually configure whichever is already installed rather than migrating, since migration risk outweighs any feature difference.

The count matters less than the cost. Five heavy page-builder and slider plugins can be far worse than twenty lightweight utilities. We measure what each plugin actually adds in queries, scripts and stylesheets, then consolidate on that evidence. A typical mature site can drop half its plugins with no functional loss.

It can, which is exactly why we work on a staging clone with regression checks before anything touches production. We map every plugin’s functionality first, replace what is genuinely needed with lighter alternatives or code, and release in controlled batches so any issue is isolated and reversible.

Sometimes, though we treat it as a last resort because migration is disruptive. Many page-builder themes can be optimised substantially without replacement. We measure the theme’s actual payload and how much is removable; if the ceiling cannot be lifted without replacement, we say so with the numbers behind it.

It depends on whether they provide genuine value to a searcher. Well-curated category pages with real descriptions often deserve indexing and can rank. Auto-generated tag archives with two posts almost never do. We audit each taxonomy type and decide deliberately rather than applying a blanket rule.

The audit takes one to two weeks. Remediation typically runs four to eight weeks depending on plugin complexity and how much theme work is needed. Field Core Web Vitals data updates on a rolling 28-day window, so passing status becomes visible roughly a month after fixes ship — that lag is normal and expected.

They can, which is why we deliver a maintenance protocol rather than just fixes. Plugin updates can reintroduce assets, theme updates can overwrite customisations, and new plugins can be installed by well-meaning colleagues. We document what changed, use child themes and monitor performance so regressions surface quickly.