SEOPress 9.8 is now available. We encourage you to update your site as soon as possible to take advantage of the latest features, improvements, and fixes.
🎉 New – React-based settings UI
We started the React migration in 9.7 with the settings page. In 9.8, the same modern stack reaches the screens you actually use every day: Site Audit, Redirections, Broken Links and Schemas now run on WordPress DataViews, the same component the block editor uses.
Concretely:
- Native WordPress look and feel everywhere.
- Sortable, filterable lists with column controls and saved layouts.
- Display preferences are stored per user, so your team mates keep their own setup.
- The settings page is faster on first load (one less REST call).
🎉 New – Site Audit, more powerful than ever (PRO)
The Site Audit has been rewritten from scratch. It is no longer just a list of issues, it is a workflow.
- Actionable overview with recommendations powered by your Google Search Console data.
- Scan history and trend chart, so you can see whether things are actually getting better.
- Live progress, with start and cancel controls.
- Re-scan a single post from an issue row, instead of running a full crawl.
- One-click AI alt texts on image issues.
- Bulk ignore, restore and CSV export from the details view.
- Filter by issue name, with a popover description that explains what each issue means.
Under the hood, we added composite database indexes so big sites stay snappy.
🎉 New – Command palette
Press Cmd+K on Mac or Ctrl+K on Windows from any WordPress admin screen, type what you are looking for, hit Enter.
- About 240 indexed entries across the free and PRO plugin.
- Quick actions for things like “Run a site audit” or “Add a redirection”.
- Live preview values, so you can see the current state of a setting before opening it.
- Recent commands history.
- In-page navigation when the target lives on the current page (no full reload).
If you spend any real time in SEOPress, this becomes muscle memory in a day.
🎉 New – Bye bye classic metaboxes
The SEO metabox has been fully rebuilt on the WordPress Design System.
- Modern interface that finally matches WordPress.
- Faster: lazy-loaded tabs, code-splitting, and a much lighter JS bundle (we dropped styled-components, lodash and date-fns).
- Pre-hydrated previews: title and description appear instantly, no waiting for a request.
- Cleaner Google preview, refreshed social cards, and a redesigned Content Analysis.
- New “Automatic” sub-tab for Schemas, which attaches the right structured data to your content with zero setup.
This is the first iteration, more technical than visual, although many UI and UX elements have been fixed. The second iteration will offer even more seamless integration within the block editor, while still allowing you to edit your SEO from any page builder.
🎉 New – Redirections, reimagined (PRO)
Redirections got the React and DataViews treatment, with new tools on top.
- URL tester: paste any URL and see exactly which rule will fire.
- Inline regex tester to validate complex patterns before saving.
- Categories sidebar to organize large redirection sets.
- Slug change notices now auto-dismiss when you create the redirect, with a deep link straight to the React editor.
- New global default for the Query Parameters mode. Set it once.
- Real validation on both client and server, with loop detection.
🎉 New – Schema editor, fully rebuilt (PRO)
The Schemas screen is one of the biggest jumps in 9.8.
- New React DataViews list.
- Brand new schema editor with SPA routing, so switching screens is instant.
- Persistent right sidebar with a live JSON-LD preview and a count of matching posts, both updated in real time as you edit your rules.
- Schema Guide and contextual help inside the type selector, so you stop guessing which schema fits.
- Real-data preview, validation, opening hours editor, templates, import and export.
- Searchable combobox for custom fields, including hidden ones, lazy-loaded.
- Full backward compatibility with your existing schema rules.
🎉 New – Broken Links, smarter (PRO)
Broken Links is now a React DataViews screen with a CRON-based batch scan, so big sites no longer time out and the scan runs quietly in the background.
🎉 New – Agent Readiness (PRO)
More and more of your traffic now comes from AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity or Google AI Overviews. They visit your site on behalf of a real person who asked them a question. Agent Readiness is a new toggle on the SEOPress dashboard that makes your site easier for them to read, and lets you set the rules.
Turn it on and SEOPress takes care of five things for you.
It tells AI crawlers where your sitemap and your llms.txt file are, so they don’t have to look for them.
It sets your default rules for AI: your content can be shown in search results and used in AI answers, but it cannot be used to train an AI model.
It can serve a plain text version of any page on demand. AI agents that prefer text over HTML get just the title, the content and the links, without menus, popups or theme styling. Your normal visitors still see the regular site.
It adds a few small files that act like a business card for AI agents, describing what your site is and what it can do (search the site, return a page as text, browse the API).
It gives you a ready-made block for your robots.txt, with two lists: the bots that train AI models (blocked by default), and the bots that cite your site in AI answers (allowed by default). Copy, paste, edit if you want, and you are done.
You don’t have to configure anything. Turn the toggle on and it works. Developers who want to go further can adjust every default through filters.
On a related note:
llms.txtis now multilingual, with WPML, Polylang and TranslatePress support.- The placeholders reference is now a proper table you can actually read.
🎉 New – New AI models (PRO)
Two fresh additions to the AI provider list:
- Gemini 3 Flash, fast and cheap.
- Gemini 3.1 Pro, for the highest quality.
Available across every AI feature: alt text, meta descriptions, content suggestions.
🎉 Other enhancements
We’ve added social profile fields to WordPress user profiles, allowing this information to be included in structured data for your site.
- add automatic schemas tab to universal SEO metabox (finally!);
- add a new option to select the default query parameter when creating a new redirect (SEO, PRO, Redirections tab);
- UX / UI enhancements from Titles and metas / XML Sitemaps / Instant Indexing / PRO settings;
- extend Organization Knowledge Graph with address and legal fields;
- remove some older / deprecated / useless options;
- add Cache-Control header to improve XML sitemaps performance;
- security reinforcement;
- an issue with Google Search Console API key;
- fix an issue with the noindex meta robots and comment paginated pages;
- PHP fatal errors/warnings/notices;
- AI model detection;
- fix a very old issue related to our dashboard widgets;
- let users unsubscribe from SEO alerts in one click;
- fix an issue with Network settings page (WP Multisite);
- and so much more!
Developers will be happy to know that our REST API has received new endpoints.
Plus new hooks:
seopress_agent_ready_enabledseopress_remove_feature_agent_readyseopress_agent_ready_sitemap_urlseopress_agent_ready_llms_urlseopress_agent_ready_link_headersseopress_agent_ready_content_signalseopress_agent_ready_markdown_post_typesseopress_agent_ready_html_to_markdownseopress_agent_ready_markdown_bodyseopress_agent_ready_mcp_cardseopress_agent_ready_api_catalogseopress_agent_ready_agent_skillsseopress_agent_ready_well_known_cors_originseopress_agent_ready_ai_bots_robots_block
Don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter to follow our latest product updates and receive the latest Google News:
You like SEOPress? Please do us a favor: leave a 5-star review on the official WordPress plugins directory to help us. More than 1,200 reviews! Thank you all!
Leave a 5-star review
Changelog
This update contains the following changes (full changelog here):
* NEW Bumped the minimum WordPress version to 6.5; 6.8 or higher is strongly recommended for full feature support * NEW Command palette (Cmd/Ctrl+K) to search and jump to any setting, with quick actions and recent commands history 🎉 * NEW Brand new React-based SEO metabox built on the WordPress Design System * NEW Agent Readiness toggle to prepare your site for AI agents * NEW Visual token editor for Dynamic Tag fields * NEW CPT icons and robots badges (noindex/nofollow) in Titles & Metas panel headers * NEW Autocomplete for posts/pages in HTML sitemap ID fields * NEW Extend Organization Knowledge Graph with address and legal fields * NEW Automatic sub-tab in the React universal metabox for Schemas * NEW [PRO] Brand new Site Audit screen (React + DataViews) with actionable overview, GSC-backed recommendations, and scan history with trends * NEW [PRO] Live scan progress with start/cancel and re-scan a single post from an issue row * NEW [PRO] One-click AI-generated alt texts for image issues in Site Audit * NEW [PRO] Bulk ignore, restore and CSV export from the issue details view * NEW [PRO] Redirections list and editor migrated to React + DataViews * NEW [PRO] URL tester modal and inline regex tester for redirections * NEW [PRO] Manage redirection categories from a dedicated React sidebar * NEW [PRO] Global default for Query Parameters mode in redirections * NEW [PRO] Brand new React schema editor with live JSON-LD preview, matching posts counter, validation, opening hours, templates and import/export * NEW [PRO] Schema Guide panel and contextual help in schema type selector * NEW [PRO] Broken Links migrated to React + DataViews with CRON-based batch scan * NEW [PRO] Agent Readiness feature * NEW [PRO] Live breadcrumbs preview in settings (multi-scenario, sticky) * NEW [PRO] Multilingual support for llms.txt dynamic placeholders, with TranslatePress compatibility * NEW [PRO] Add Gemini 3 Flash and Gemini 3.1 Pro AI models * NEW [PRO] Add unsubscribe link to email notifications * NEW [PRO] Site type wizard with deprecation notices and single-screen filter pills * NEW [PRO] Emit author sameAs in automatic Article schema * INFO Major performance improvements in the SEO metabox (lazy-loaded tabs, lighter dependencies) * INFO Faster XML sitemaps with improved caching * INFO Removed several legacy options to simplify the UI: Google PageSpeed column, Google Custom Search thumbnail, Fediverse Creator tag, SEO metabox position, Facebook Admin ID * INFO [PRO] Faster Site Audit thanks to composite database indexes * INFO [PRO] Removed Dublin Core, breadcrumbs separator and Storefront toggles (now always on) * FIX Dashboard falls back to the first available tab when the stored one is gone * FIX Per-CPT sitemap URLs are now properly gated on the include flag * FIX React settings bundle now loads correctly on network admin pages * FIX Honor custom capabilities filter on REST requests * FIX Restore Beacon help widget on the front-end * FIX Apply noindex to comment pagination pages * FIX User role list in the Security tab * FIX Show human-friendly messages for Bing and Google Instant Indexing responses * FIX Use WordPress site date/time format in the indexing log1 * FIX [PRO] Share Google Search Console JSON key between Free and PRO * FIX [PRO] Only render GA4/Matomo content when their tab is visible * FIX [PRO] Honor "None" on Article post author field * FIX [PRO] Register pro-mu-settings REST route for network admin * FIX [PRO] Local Business schema outputs HH::00 when minutes are empty * FIX [PRO] Honor custom capability system in PRO settings access * FIX [PRO] Use 0 for Free Shipping shippingRate instead of min_amount * FIX [PRO] Correct Gemini 3 Flash model ID * FIX [PRO] Prevent fatal error in logs during PRO update * FIX [PRO] Test connection no longer shown multiple times * FIX [PRO] AI model detection * FIX [PRO] Restore Audit page tabs broken by the Broken Links migration * SECURITY Rate-limit destructive command endpoints * SECURITY Hardened REST API permission callbacks
