Installing WordPress is not the hard part; most hosts do it in a few clicks. The problem is that the defaults right after installation are not tuned for running a business. They are tuned so that anyone can start, which is a different goal.
The seven below take about ten minutes in order. The ones that cost the most to change later come first.
1. Search visibility — the important one
Under Settings › Reading there is a checkbox asking search engines not to index the site. It exists for development, and launching with it still enabled is remarkably common. In that state you can publish as much as you like and appear nowhere, and you typically discover it months later while wondering why there is no traffic.
Put this on the first line of your launch checklist. During development, though, do keep it on — unfinished pages that get indexed have to be cleaned up afterwards.
2. Permalink structure
The default under Settings › Permalinks is ?p=123 — an address neither humans nor search engines can read. Switch it to the post name format.
URLs are expensive to change later. Every address that has been shared or indexed breaks, so any change has to come with 301 redirects from the old addresses. That is why this belongs before you write anything.
One more thing: if you write in a non-Latin script, letting the title generate the slug produces very long encoded addresses that get truncated in some environments and 404. Get into the habit of setting a short Latin slug per post.
3–5. Account, site identity, timezone
Do not leave the administrator username as admin; it is the first guess of every automated login attempt. If you already created one, make a new administrator, transfer authorship and delete the old account. Setting a display name that differs from the login also stops the username leaking on post pages.
The site title and tagline go straight into search results. You still find sites in search carrying “Just another WordPress site”, and the first impression costs more than the fix would have.
The timezone is the reference for scheduled posts and log timestamps. Get it wrong and scheduled posts publish at the wrong hour.
6–7. Comments and starter content
Comments are unnecessary on most business sites. Interaction converges on your enquiry form, and neglected comments leave you with spam and moderation overhead. Under Settings › Discussion, turn them off for new posts, then bulk-edit existing ones.
Finally, clear out the sample post, example page and bundled plugins created at install. Left alone they get indexed, and “Sample Page” really does show up in search results.
The reasoning behind these settings goes deeper in the SEO archive, and if you would like an existing site’s configuration reviewed, a diagnostic is part of the optimization program.
Next part
With settings done, it is time to build screens. The next part is choosing a theme — and the criteria are not visual. Maintenance history and speed come first.