About this plugin
INI Scout is a focused, no-bloat SEO plugin for WordPress. It adds solid on-page
SEO with automatic structured data, and stays out of the way of multilingual
g. TranslatePress / WPML — hreflang) and the rest of your stack.
Dashboard & settings
- A modern admin UI: vertical-nav settings with cards, accordions and toggle
switches, plus an at-a-glance SEO dashboard.
On-page engine
- Document <title> and meta-description templating, per post type and per
taxonomy, with per-post and per-term overrides.
- Canonical URLs for every context, with per-post override.
- Robots directives via the core wp_robots filter (no duplicate tags):
per-post noindex, plus noindex toggles for search, date and author archives.
- max-image-preview:large, max-snippet:-1, max-video-preview:-1 by default.
- Google / Bing site-verification meta tags (output on every page).
Social
- Open Graph and Twitter Card tags, with featured-image fallback and a
site-wide default share image. Per-post share-image override.
org JSON-LD)
- WebSite (+ optional Sitelinks SearchAction) and
Organization / LocalBusiness with address, geo, telephone, opening hours,
price range and social profiles ( sameAs ).
- Article / NewsArticle for posts and news.
- Per-post-type schema mapping: assign any post type to a schema type
(Article, WebPage, Store, Event, SaleEvent, …) from the settings screen, or
leave it on auto for sensible defaults.
- BreadcrumbList on every non-home page.
Sitemap
- Custom XML sitemap at /sitemap.xml (index + per-type / per-taxonomy
sub-sitemaps) with image entries and lastmod; respects noindex and leaves out
password-protected content. Replaces the WordPress core sitemap. Excludable per
post type / taxonomy. With plain permalinks it is served at
iniseo_sitemap=index.
Redirects (optional)
- 301, 302, 307 and 308 redirects and 410 / 451 responses, matched by exact
address, start, end, contained text or regular expression, with options for
case and query strings. Rules run before WordPress loads the page and cost
nothing while there are none.
- Optional hit counts, automatic 301s when the address of published content
changes, a privacy-friendly 404 log, and CSV import / export (including CSV
exports of the Redirection plugin). Everything is off until you turn it on.
Import from other SEO plugins
- Switching from Yoast SEO, All in One SEO, Rank Math, SEOPress, SmartCrawl or
The SEO Framework? INI Scout → Import (or wp iniseo import ) brings over
titles, descriptions, robots settings, social fields, keyphrases, settings and
redirects. A preview shows what will happen first; only empty INI Scout
fields are filled, the old plugin’s data is never changed, and every import
can be undone.
Set up with an AI agent
- Let your own AI agent (Claude, ChatGPT, OpenCode, …) configure INI Scout
through WP-CLI ( wp iniseo … ) or the REST API with an Application Password,
following a guide built into the plugin. Every change is a dry run until
confirmed, your own values are kept unless you agree, risky changes need your
yes, and each agent session can be undone in one click. REST access is off
until you turn it on.
IndexNow (instant indexing)
- Auto-submits published / updated URLs to Bing, Yandex, Seznam and Naver the
moment content changes (a single ping is shared between them). Google does not
consume IndexNow — the sitemap + Search Console cover Google.
- Secret key generated automatically and served as a virtual verification file
(no stray file in the webroot); one-click regenerate and a manual test ping.
- Submits only what may be indexed (never noindexed or password-protected
content, nor anything while search engines are discouraged). Each change is
submitted once, at the end of the request that saved it (a bulk edit as one
batch), after the response has been sent where the server supports it
(PHP-FPM, LiteSpeed), so the editor save does not wait. Failed batches are
retried (5 min, 30 min, 2 h); WP-Cron is only a safety net, and visitors
never wait. Capped, non-autoloaded submission log.
Dashboard
- A modern, WordPress-native overview: setup checklist with progress, live
feature toggles, IndexNow status & recent submissions, and per-content-type
meta-description coverage bars.
txt
- Virtual robots.txt editor that always advertises the sitemap.
Breadcrumbs
- [iniseo_breadcrumbs] shortcode and iniseo_breadcrumbs() template tag,
sharing the same trail as the BreadcrumbList schema.
Notes
- Multilingual: hreflang and translated URLs remain TranslatePress’s job. Every
tag this plugin prints is in the rendered HTML, so it is translatable through
TranslatePress’s string editor.
- Caching: all front-end output is produced on wp_head and served from the
existing page cache for anonymous visitors.
External services
IndexNow is optional and disabled by default. When you enable it and publish or
update eligible content, or explicitly submit a URL, INI Scout sends the site
host, public page URLs, verification key and key-file URL to
org/IndexNow. Participating search engines share these
submissions. No account is required. Submission does not guarantee indexing.
org/terms
org/terms (Privacy section)
Crawl and content analysis fetch public pages from your own site to analyze the
rendered content. No external analytics or telemetry service is used.