Hydrogen SEO 0.0.28: SEO on the Posts Screen and Attachment Page Redirects

Hydrogen SEO 0.0.28 brings SEO out of the editor and onto the screens where you manage content in bulk. Posts, Pages and custom post type lists now show each post's SEO score, focus keyword, title and description status and indexing in a new column, with a filter, sorting by score, SEO fields in Quick Edit and an indexing choice in Bulk Edit. The release also adds Redirect Attachment Pages, a switch that sends the page WordPress builds for every upload to the post it belongs to. Both are free and need no account.

Update from Plugins → Installed Plugins as usual. Nothing changes on your site's front end until you switch the attachment redirect on.

The SEO column

Open Posts → All Posts after updating and every row has an SEO column:

• The SEO score as a ring from 0 to 100: green for good (80 and up), amber for needs work (60 to 79), red for poor (under 60). Posts without a score yet show –.
• The focus keyword, or No focus keyword.
• Title and Description, each with a dot. A filled dot says someone wrote that field for this post; a hollow one says the Titles & Meta template supplies it.
• Indexed or No index.

You get the column wherever the editor has Hydrogen SEO's SEO Settings sheet: posts and pages out of the box, plus any custom post types you enabled. If you would rather not see it, untick SEO in Screen Options.

Until now, finding out which posts had a hand-written description meant opening them one by one. The dots answer that for a whole page of results at a glance, and they make it obvious which posts a change to a template will reach.

Filter and sort

An SEO dropdown, All SEO by default, sits next to the date and category filters:

• the three score bands: good (80+), needs work (60–79) and poor (under 60)
• posts that are Not scored yet
• posts with No focus keyword
• posts set to No index

No index counts a post as noindexed when it has its own noindex setting, and also when it has no setting of its own and its post type is set to noindex. In other words, it lists exactly the posts search engines are being told to leave out, whichever setting is responsible.

Click the SEO column header to sort by score. Posts not scored yet always sort last, whichever direction you choose, so they never push the scored posts off the first page.

Quick Edit and Bulk Edit

Quick Edit gains a Hydrogen SEO group with four fields: SEO title, Description, Keyword and Indexing. Indexing offers Default (index) or Default (no index), depending on the post type's setting, plus Index and No index.

The title and description count characters as you type. Titles are graded against 30 to 60 characters and descriptions against 120 to 160. Text that contains a smart tag such as %title% is still counted, but marked before variables are filled in, since the finished length depends on what the tags print. Clearing a field returns that post to its template.

Only the values you change are saved, so opening Quick Edit to fix a post's date does not rewrite its SEO fields. Saving rescores the post immediately, so the updated row already carries the new number.

Bulk Edit gains Indexing: — No Change —, Index, No index or Default. Whatever you choose applies to all the ticked posts. Default deletes their individual overrides, leaving the post type's setting in charge.

The feature adds no database queries per row in the list and nothing to your site's front end. Its script is about 2 KB, and it loads on the Posts screens only.

The full reference is in SEO on the Posts screen. For a way to use it on a large archive, see how to audit SEO across many posts at once.

Redirect Attachment Pages

Every file uploaded to WordPress gets an attachment page: the theme's layout around one image or download link. WordPress 6.4 switched these off for new installs and sends their visitors to the file. Sites created before 6.4 still have them, often one per image going back years.

Hydrogen SEO → General → Permalinks → Redirect Attachment Pages is off by default. Switch it on and an attachment page redirects with a 301:

• to the post the file was uploaded to, when that post is published, public and not password-protected;
• otherwise to the file itself.

Images and file links inside your posts are not affected; they point at the files, which keep their addresses. Redirects you create in the Redirection Manager are checked first, so a specific rule for one attachment address wins over the automatic target. On sites where WordPress already sends attachment pages to the file, the setting sends them to their post instead, when there is a public one.

Setup and the exact rules are in attachment page redirects. Whether redirecting to the post or the file suits your site is discussed in where should attachment pages redirect?

After updating

1. Look at the No index filter once. On Posts and Pages, choose No index and click Filter. Every post listed is being kept out of search results. If any of them should be found, set Indexing to Index or Default in Quick Edit.
2. If your site is older than WordPress 6.4, follow the View attachment page link of an image in the Media Library. If a page opens, decide whether to switch on Redirect Attachment Pages.

Neither step is required. The column, filter and Quick Edit fields are there whenever you open the Posts screen, and the redirect stays off until you choose it.