Site-First SEO
Site-First SEO is a practical on-site SEO toolkit for WordPress sites that need clear diagnostics, clean metadata, local/entity schema, crawl controls, redirect recovery, lightweight visit tracking, and protection from suspicious automated traffic.
The plugin is built around your own WordPress content and server-side signals. It does not require Google API keys, external SEO subscriptions, or off-site crawlers to be useful. Each module focuses on an action a site owner, consultant, or agency can take inside WordPress.
Current module scope
- Dashboard: shows visits, SEO quick wins, content health signals, recent 404s, recent bot activity, and traffic quality snapshots.
- Titles and Meta: edit SEO titles, meta descriptions, noindex, canonical URLs, and page-level schema mode from one table.
- SERP Preview: preview title and meta description length while editing snippets.
- Content Health: scores important pages using title, description, headings, images, internal links, indexation, and structured data signals.
- Headings and Images: audits heading structure, treats the WordPress page or post title as the expected H1, flags extra content H1s, and reports missing image alt text.
- Links Overview: maps internal link counts and helps identify orphaned or under-supported pages.
- Indexation Monitor: reviews noindex, canonical, sitemap inclusion, and other page-level indexability signals.
- Content Decay: surfaces older or lower-supported content that may need refreshing.
- Internal Link Manager: suggests internal link opportunities, supports anchor selection, inserts approved links, and lets you hide pages from future suggestions.
- Local SEO Schema: manages organization and LocalBusiness details, NAP, service areas, opening hours, Google Business Profile URL, principal/founder entity, services, software/tools, entity pages, Article schema, FAQ schema, and breadcrumbs.
- Native schema controls: adds schema selection to the WordPress posts list and the Titles and Meta screen.
- Redirects and 404s: logs missing URLs, creates redirects, suggests likely targets, and supports IP blocking from repeated 404 activity.
- Visits Tracker: records lightweight local visits and detects common AI crawlers such as GPTBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot, and other search or AI bots.
- Bot Block: monitors exploit probes and suspicious automation with behavioral scoring, verified crawler handling, request logs, retention controls, filters, CSV exports, and a rule simulator.
- XML Sitemaps: generates clean post type and taxonomy sitemaps.
- Robots.txt: manages robots.txt directives from WordPress.
- UTM Builder: creates consistent campaign URLs.
- Exports: exports useful SEO, link, image, redirect, and bot data for reporting.
- Module Controls: enables or disables major modules from a central settings screen.
Local and entity SEO
The Local SEO Schema module now supports a layered entity workflow:
- Define the business with a stable Organization or LocalBusiness ID.
- Connect a principal or founder to the organization with Person schema.
- Map core services to Service entities and optional service page URLs.
- List software, tools, places, and other known-about entities.
- Track human-readable entity pages such as About, services, industries, and location pages.
This keeps the schema aligned with the pages real visitors can read, which is the foundation for stronger local SEO and entity understanding.
Why use Site-First SEO?
- Works inside WordPress without external API keys.
- Focuses on on-site fixes you can make immediately.
- Combines traditional SEO, local SEO, and AI-search readiness signals.
- Keeps modules optional so each site can stay lean.
- Provides reporting-friendly diagnostics without turning every workflow into an upsell.
Credits
Developed by Michael Winchester. For documentation and updates, visit https://michaelwinchester.com