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Configure SEO + AI Suite

Configure the SEO + AI Suite module

For the marketing overview of this module, see /modules/seo-ai. This page covers the practical setup — Quickstart, common workflows, settings reference, and the developer surface (REST + WP-CLI).

The SEO + AI Suite is the largest module in Asteris. Don’t try to configure everything on day one. The Quickstart below gets you a working classic-SEO baseline in 15 minutes; come back for the AI surface (llms.txt, IndexNow, AI bot policy) once the basics are stable.

Quickstart (15 minutes)

1. Activate the module

WP Admin → Asteris → Modules → toggle SEO + AI Suite to ON.

The SEO + AI submenu appears. A docked sidebar also appears in every editor (Gutenberg, classic, Elementor, Bricks, Beaver Builder, Divi) — that’s where you’ll do per-post overrides.

2. Declare site identity

Asteris → SEO + AI → General → Site Identity

Choose Organization or Person:

  • Organization for businesses, agencies, SaaS products, publications
  • Person for personal brands, freelancers, sole-trader consultancies, blogs that ARE the author

Then fill:

  • Name — exactly as you want it cited (e.g., “Acme Pty Ltd” not “acme”)
  • Logo URL — 1:1 aspect ratio recommended, at least 600×600 px
  • sameAs links — LinkedIn, Twitter/X, GitHub, YouTube, Wikipedia entry if any (one per line)

This data populates Organization or Person schema on every page. Save before moving on.

3. Set sitewide title + description templates

Asteris → SEO + AI → General → Templates

The defaults are sensible but verify they match your brand:

  • Single post: %post_title% – %site_title%
  • Page: %page_title% – %site_title%
  • Category archive: %category_name% – %site_title%
  • Author archive: Articles by %author_name% – %site_title%
  • Separator: – (en-dash) is the default; common alternatives: · (middot), | (pipe), — (em-dash)

💡 Pick a separator and stick with it sitewide. Inconsistent separators across templates look amateurish in SERPs.

4. Configure schema for your business type

Asteris → SEO + AI → Schema → Defaults

For most sites, the auto-detection is right:

  • Posts → Article
  • Pages → WebPage
  • Author pages → Person
  • Category pages → CollectionPage

If you’re a local business with a physical location, also set the homepage to LocalBusiness (or one of its subtypes: Restaurant, Plumber, Dentist, etc. — pick the most specific) and fill the address fields.

If you’re a publication, NewsArticle is the right subtype for posts.

Per-post overrides happen in the SEO sidebar in the editor.

5. Submit the sitemap to Google Search Console + Bing

Asteris generates a sitemap automatically at https://yoursite.com/asteris-sitemap.xml (a sitemap index pointing to per-content-type sub-sitemaps).

  1. Open Google Search Console. Verify your domain (DNS TXT record or HTML file).
  2. Sitemaps → paste asteris-sitemap.xml → Submit.
  3. Open Bing Webmaster Tools. Same flow. Bing indexes new sites faster than Google.
  4. (Optional, Google) → Settings → Crawl stats — verify Googlebot is hitting your sitemap.

⚠️ If you’re migrating from Yoast, you’ll have a sitemap_index.xml already submitted. Keep it submitted alongside Asteris’s for 30 days as a parallel index — won’t hurt rankings (Google deduplicates URLs), and gives you a fallback if anything goes wrong with Asteris’s sitemap. After 30 days, remove the Yoast sitemap from GSC.

6. Verify a real post

Open a real published post on your site. View source (Cmd-U / Ctrl-U). Search for:

  • <title> — should match your template
  • <meta name="description"> — should match either the per-post override or the template default
  • <script type="application/ld+json"> — should contain the Article schema with your Organization or Person sitewide identity

If anything looks wrong, fix it before moving on. Common causes:

  1. Another SEO plugin is still active — Asteris detects and stands down. Deactivate Yoast/RankMath/etc., or have Asteris take over (see workflow below).
  2. Theme has hard-coded <title> / <meta> tags — most modern themes use add_theme_support('title-tag') and defer to plugins, but older themes hard-code. Search your theme’s header.php and remove duplicates.

7. Set up redirects (if migrating URLs)

Asteris → SEO + AI → Redirects

If you’re changing URL slugs, consolidating categories, or moving from a different CMS, every URL change needs a 301:

SourceDestinationType
/old-blog-post-name/new-blog-post-name301
/old-category/post/blog/post301

Bulk import via CSV: Redirects → Import → CSV (format: source,destination,type).

Auto-redirect-on-slug-change: when you edit a post’s slug, Asteris pops a modal asking “Add a 301 from the old slug?” — say yes. Always.

8. Run the Yoast importer (if you have Yoast installed)

Asteris → SEO + AI → Tools → Import → Yoast SEO → Run Import.

30 seconds. Imports titles, meta descriptions, focus keywords, Open Graph + Twitter Card overrides, canonical URLs, noindex/nofollow flags, primary categories, schema markup type per post, redirects (Yoast Premium only), breadcrumb configuration.

Full migration walkthrough at /migrate/from-yoast. RankMath / AIOSEO / SEOPress importers are v1.1.

9. Enable llms.txt (optional, but high-leverage)

Asteris → SEO + AI → AI Surface → llms.txt → toggle ON.

Generates /llms.txt automatically from your content. Verify at https://yoursite.com/llms.txt — should return Markdown with your site name + curated links.

Also enable llms-full.txt (the content-rich companion). Both files refresh on cron + on every post save.

Full tutorial at /docs/tutorials/setup-llms-txt-for-ai-visibility.

10. Set AI bot policy

Asteris → SEO + AI → AI Surface → AI Bot Blocker

Three choices:

  • Allow all — citation + training. Maximum AI visibility; your content is absorbed into model weights.
  • Allow citation, block training (recommended) — visible in AI assistant answers; not absorbed into training data.
  • Block all — invisible to AI assistants.

For most sites, Allow citation, block training is the right call. Toggle the training-class crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended, CCBot, Bytespider) to Block while leaving citation-class crawlers (ChatGPT-User, OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot) on Allow.

That’s the baseline. Come back for IndexNow, AI content tools, and headline analyser when you’re ready — they’re not day-one prerequisites.

Common workflows

Migrate from Yoast (one-click)

Full walkthrough at /migrate/from-yoast. Short version:

  1. Install Asteris alongside Yoast (no conflict)
  2. Activate Asteris SEO + AI module
  3. Asteris → SEO + AI → Tools → Import → Yoast SEO → Run
  4. Spot-check 5-10 important URLs in private browser (View Source → verify <title> + meta + schema)
  5. Asteris → SEO + AI → General → “Take over from active SEO plugin (Yoast detected)” → toggle ON (causes Yoast to defer via WP hook priorities)
  6. Wait 30 days monitoring Search Console for rank changes (should be flat)
  7. Deactivate Yoast (keep installed-but-inactive for another 30 days as insurance)

Set up per-page schema (e.g., FAQ on a support page)

  1. Open the page in the editor (any builder — sidebar appears the same in each)
  2. In the Asteris SEO sidebar → Schema → change from WebPage to FAQPage
  3. Asteris parses Q&A pairs from your content (markdown-detected **Q:** ... **A:** ... blocks or HTML <dt>/<dd> pairs)
  4. Save the page

Verify at Google’s Rich Results Test by pasting the URL. The FAQ markup should pass.

⚠️ Google reduced FAQ rich-result eligibility in late 2023 — currently limited to government + health-authority sites. The schema is still parsed (and AI assistants extract from it), but the visual accordion in SERPs is unlikely for most sites.

Add Author E-E-A-T metadata

Asteris → SEO + AI → Schema → Author E-E-A-T

For each author on your site (Users → Profile):

  1. Open the user profile
  2. Scroll to Asteris → E-E-A-T metadata
  3. Fill: Credentials, Bio, Same-as links (LinkedIn, X, ORCID, Mastodon, etc.)
  4. Save

This populates Person schema on author pages and author properties on every article they publish. Critical for Y-M-Y-L content (health, finance, legal). Helps Google attribute expertise; helps AI assistants cite the right author when summarising.

Set up Yoast → Asteris “takeover” (parallel running)

If you want to keep Yoast installed during evaluation but use Asteris for output:

  1. Asteris → SEO + AI → General → “Take over from active SEO plugin (Yoast detected)” → ON
  2. Asteris registers at hook priority 1; Yoast still runs but emits at priority 10
  3. The browser sees Asteris’s tags; Yoast’s tags are filtered out before output
  4. Yoast’s data stays intact in the database — easy rollback by toggling off

Generate AI content briefs (BYOK)

Asteris → SEO + AI → AI Tools → Settings

  1. Pick provider: OpenAI / Anthropic / Google Gemini
  2. Paste API key (BYOK — you pay the provider directly; no markup from Asteris)
  3. Save

Then in any post editor:

  1. SEO sidebar → AI Tools → Generate brief
  2. Asteris sends current draft + your target keyword + competitor titles to the AI
  3. Returns a brief: H2 outline, key questions to answer, internal-link suggestions
  4. Use it as a starting point — never auto-publish

The same panel has Generate draft section, Suggest meta description, Refine title — each runs against your configured model.

Use the Headline Analyser

Asteris → SEO + AI → Tools → Headline Analyser

Paste a headline. Returns scores on:

  • Length (50-60 chars is the click-through-rate sweet spot)
  • Power words (free, proven, instant, secret, etc. — overuse degrades trust)
  • Emotional impact (sad / happy / fear / surprise / anger — strong-emotion headlines outperform but get diminishing returns)
  • Readability (Flesch-Kincaid score)

Useful for tuning blog post titles before publish. Not a ranking signal — a click-through-rate signal.

Submit to IndexNow

Asteris → SEO + AI → IndexNow → toggle ON.

Asteris generates an IndexNow key and exposes it at /<key>.txt (the discovery file Bing/Yandex check). When you publish or update a post, Asteris pings the IndexNow API immediately. Bing typically re-indexes within minutes; Google ignores IndexNow (uses its own crawl).

Verify on the IndexNow panel → Last submissions — should show successful posts.

Settings reference

General

  • Site Identity — Organization or Person + name + logo + sameAs links
  • Title templates per post type (with %post_title%, %site_title%, %separator%, %page_number%, %category_name%, %author_name% tokens)
  • Description templates per post type
  • Knowledge Graph entity — Organization / Person / Custom
  • Take over from active SEO plugin — toggle for parallel running with Yoast / RankMath / AIOSEO / SEOPress

Schema

  • Defaults per post type — Article / NewsArticle / BlogPosting / WebPage / Product / FAQPage / HowTo / Event / Recipe / Review / VideoObject / etc.
  • Author E-E-A-T metadata (per-user — Profile → Asteris → E-E-A-T)
  • Schema import URL — paste an existing JSON-LD URL to mirror settings
  • Breadcrumbs — BreadcrumbList schema + visual renderer

Sitemaps

  • Per-post-type inclusion — toggle which post types appear
  • Image sitemap extension — adds <image:image> entries for media in posts
  • Video sitemap extension — adds video metadata
  • News sitemap extension — for sites with Google News inclusion
  • URL exclusion patterns — regex match against URLs to exclude

Redirects

  • Add redirect — single source/destination/type entry
  • CSV import — bulk upload
  • Hit counters — see which redirects fire most
  • Chain detection — warns when A→B and B→C would create a chain

AI Surface

  • llms.txt — toggle + customise + refresh schedule
  • llms-full.txt — toggle + max size + page count cap
  • IndexNow — toggle + API key + manual submit
  • AI Bot Blocker — per-bot allow/deny (citation-class + training-class)
  • AI Traffic Tracker — surfaces visits from AI assistant referrers

AI Tools

  • Provider — OpenAI / Anthropic / Google Gemini
  • API key (encrypted at rest)
  • Default model per provider
  • Token-spend monitor (informational; pay direct to provider)
  • Per-feature enable — Brief / Draft / Title / Meta / Headline

Editor integrations

The SEO sidebar renders in:

  • Gutenberg — PluginSidebar (toggle from the publish-button kebab menu → “Asteris SEO”)
  • Classic editor — metabox below content area
  • Elementor — docked sidebar (toggle bottom-left)
  • Bricks Builder — docked sidebar
  • Beaver Builder — docked sidebar
  • Divi — docked sidebar

Same module, six render targets, identical fields.

REST API

# Per-post SEO data
GET    /wp-json/asteris/v1/seo/post/<id>
PUT    /wp-json/asteris/v1/seo/post/<id>


# Sitemaps
GET    /wp-json/asteris/v1/seo/sitemap
POST   /wp-json/asteris/v1/seo/sitemap/regenerate


# IndexNow
POST   /wp-json/asteris/v1/seo/indexnow/submit
GET    /wp-json/asteris/v1/seo/indexnow/last-submissions


# llms.txt
GET    /wp-json/asteris/v1/seo/llms-txt              # returns the curated text
POST   /wp-json/asteris/v1/seo/llms-txt/regenerate


# AI Bot Policy
GET    /wp-json/asteris/v1/seo/ai-bot-policy
PUT    /wp-json/asteris/v1/seo/ai-bot-policy


# Importers
POST   /wp-json/asteris/v1/seo/import/yoast          # one-click Yoast import
GET    /wp-json/asteris/v1/seo/import/yoast/status

All endpoints capability-checked (manage_options for writes; read for the public llms-txt endpoint).

WP-CLI

Terminal window
# Sitemap
wp asteris seo sitemap regenerate
wp asteris seo sitemap validate


# llms.txt
wp asteris seo llms-txt regenerate
wp asteris seo llms-txt validate


# IndexNow
wp asteris seo indexnow submit --url=<url>
wp asteris seo indexnow status


# Importers
wp asteris seo import --from=yoast
wp asteris seo import --from=rankmath          # v1.1
wp asteris seo import --from=aioseo            # v1.1
wp asteris seo import --from=seopress          # v1.1


# AI Tools
wp asteris seo ai brief --post-id=<id>
wp asteris seo ai meta-description --post-id=<id>


# Redirects
wp asteris seo redirects list
wp asteris seo redirects add --source=/old --destination=/new --type=301
wp asteris seo redirects import --file=redirects.csv

See also