SEO for the AI search era
Guides on AEO, schema, WordPress SEO and agentic workflows — written by the team building Hydrogen SEO.
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Should You Noindex Author and Date Archives in WordPress?
Index, noindex or switch off: how to decide for author and date archives by the kind of site you run, what to check in Search Console first, and what switching off involves.
What to Put in Your RSS Feed Footer (and What It Can Do Against Scrapers)
A feed footer line makes automatic copies of your posts link back to the original. How to word it, before or after the post, full text or excerpt, and what else helps.
Hydrogen SEO 0.0.28: SEO on the Posts Screen and Attachment Page Redirects
An SEO column with score, focus keyword, title and description status and indexing on every post list, with filters, sorting, Quick Edit and Bulk Edit, plus a switch that redirects attachment pages.
How to Audit SEO Across Hundreds of Posts Without Opening Each One
Five passes through a WordPress archive from the Posts screen: indexing first, then unscored posts, focus keywords, titles and descriptions, and low scores, plus a monthly routine.
Where Should WordPress Attachment Pages Redirect? The File, the Post, or Nowhere
Keeping attachment pages, sending them to the file, or sending them to the post they came from: who each option suits, the fallbacks it needs, and how to roll it out safely.
Hydrogen SEO 0.0.27: Site Verification, IndexNow and a 404 Monitor
Three new free screens, Webmaster Tools, Instant Indexing and a 404 Monitor, plus fixes to the robots.txt and llms.txt editors, schema postal codes, sitemap refreshes and the editor sheet.
IndexNow on WordPress: What It Speeds Up, What It Can't, and How to Tell It's Working
IndexNow reaches Bing, Yandex, Naver, Seznam and Yep, not Google. How the key and submissions work, what a 200 does and does not mean, and the WordPress pitfalls that break it.
Your 404 Log Is a To-Do List: How to Read It and What to Fix First
Hit count, referrer and user agent sort a 404 log into the dozen URLs worth fixing and the noise worth deleting. A method, a worked example and a weekly routine.
"Your SEO Title Doesn't Contain a Number" — What That Warning Actually Means
The check is a string test for a digit, not a judgement about your title. Where the idea came from, when a number earns its place, and when leaving the warning orange is the right call.
301 vs 404: When Redirecting a Dead URL Makes Things Worse
A 301 claims a replacement exists. Redirect a dead URL to your homepage and Google reports it as a soft 404 anyway. How to choose per URL, and what 404s actually cost.
Hydrogen SEO vs Rank Math: Speed, Schema, AI and Price, Measured
Hydrogen SEO vs Rank Math on one WordPress install: +12.9 ms and +1 query against +36.1 ms and +16, what each prints, the agent gap, pricing and the import path.
Hydrogen SEO vs Yoast SEO: Which Is Lighter, and What Do You Give Up?
Hydrogen SEO adds +12.9 ms and no tables; Yoast adds +39.0 ms, six tables and 4.2 MB of editor assets but prints the richest schema and sitemap. The trade-offs, measured.
Who Builds Hydrogen SEO? Meet Sheesh Labs (and What's Coming Next)
Hydrogen SEO is built by Sheesh Labs, a small Bengaluru studio. Its three principles, why it published a benchmark it lost, the 0.0.14 to 0.0.20 fixes, and RankWave AI.
The SEO Plugin That Won Our Benchmark Is One Almost Nobody Installs
How we built the test rig, the six mistakes that would have made the numbers lie, why the winner beat plugins with 100x its install base, and the measured pros and cons of all seven.
Which WordPress SEO Plugin Is Actually the Best? We Tested All 7 and Measured Everything
We put Yoast, Rank Math, AIOSEO, SEOPress, The SEO Framework, Slim SEO and Hydrogen SEO on identical hardware and measured every millisecond, query and byte. The winner is not who you think.
Why ChatGPT Never Mentions Your Site (And What AEO Does About It)
You can rank on page one and still be invisible to every AI assistant. Answer engine optimization explained, and the on-site changes that actually get you cited.
AI Assistants Are Citing Your Competitors. Here's How to Get Cited Instead
A practical playbook for becoming a source ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI answers quote - and an honest look at what nobody controls.
What Happens When You Let an AI Agent Loose on Your SEO?
From checklists to delegation: how an SEO agent actually works, where the guardrails have to be, and what stays a human job.
Everyone's Adding llms.txt to WordPress. Does It Actually Do Anything?
What llms.txt is, what it is not, who honours it, and how to publish one that says exactly what you want AI systems to know.
Yoast vs Rank Math vs AIOSEO: Which WordPress SEO Plugin Should You Actually Use?
An honest head-to-head from people who build one of them. What each plugin is really for, where the free tiers stop, and which one fits your site.
The 2026 WordPress SEO Checklist: The Things Most Sites Still Get Wrong
Every on-page, technical and AI-search task that moves the needle, in the order to do them - with the ones people skip called out.
Most Schema Markup Is a Waste of Time. These Types Actually Work
Structured data is how machines read your site. Which types still earn rich results, which quietly stopped, and how to add them without code.
The Title Tag Mistakes Quietly Costing You Clicks
The highest-leverage line of text on any page, and the patterns that make Google keep your title instead of rewriting it.
Google Rewrites Most Meta Descriptions. Here's How to Write Ones It Keeps
Length, voice, the query-mirror technique, and how to fix a whole site's missing descriptions without writing them one by one.
The Free SEO Lever You Fully Control - and Almost Nobody Pulls
Links you own, on pages you own, with anchor text you choose. Why internal linking beats most link building, and a weekly routine that works.
301 or 302? Choosing Wrong Quietly Costs You Rankings
Which redirect to use and when, what 404s really cost you, and how to clean up a site full of dead ends and redirect chains.
Your XML Sitemap Is Probably Telling Google the Wrong Things
What belongs in your sitemap, what should never be there, and how to tell when Google has stopped reading it.
Your Media Library Is Full of Missing Alt Text. Here's What It Costs You
Alt text serves readers first and rankings second. How to write it well, and how to fix hundreds of images without doing it by hand.