SEO column, filters and Quick Edit on the WordPress Posts screen

From version 0.0.28, Hydrogen SEO adds SEO to the lists you already use in wp-admin: Posts → All Posts, Pages → All Pages and the list of every custom post type that has the SEO Settings sheet (posts and pages by default). Each row shows the post's SEO score, focus keyword, whether its title and description are its own, and whether it can be indexed. Above the list you can filter and sort by those, and Quick Edit and Bulk Edit let you change the main fields without opening the editor. All of it is free and needs no account.

The sheet is still where a single post gets its full treatment. The Posts screen is for the other job: seeing fifty or five hundred posts at once and finding the ones that need you.

The column, the filter and the SEO fields in Quick Edit and Bulk Edit appear for the same people who can use the SEO Settings sheet: users who can manage the site's settings, which means administrators on a standard WordPress site. Editors and authors see the Posts screen as before.

The SEO column

Every row gets an SEO column with four pieces of information, stacked:

What you see	What it means
A ring with a number	The post's SEO score, 0 to 100. Green is good (80 and up), amber needs work (60 to 79), red is poor (under 60)
– in place of the ring	The post has not been scored yet
The focus keyword	The phrase set in the post's SEO Settings sheet, or No focus keyword when there is none
Title and Description with a dot	A filled dot means the post has its own SEO title or meta description. A hollow dot means it uses the template from Titles & Meta
Indexed or No index	Whether search engines are allowed to index the post, taking both the post's own setting and its post type's default into account

A hollow dot is not a fault. Templates exist so that most posts do not need a hand-written title; the dot tells you which posts someone wrote one for, so you know where a template change will and will not reach.

To hide the column, open Screen Options at the top right of the screen and untick SEO. WordPress remembers the choice per user and per list, so hiding it on Pages leaves it on Posts.

Filter by SEO

A dropdown labelled All SEO sits beside WordPress's own date and category filters. Pick an option and click Filter:

SEO score: good (80+)
SEO score: needs work (60–79)
SEO score: poor (under 60)
Not scored yet
No focus keyword
No index

No index lists every post that search engines are asked not to index. That covers posts with their own noindex setting, and posts with no per-post setting whose post type is set to noindex on the Robots screen. It is the quickest way to catch a page that was noindexed while it was a draft and never switched back.

The filter combines with the rest of the screen, so Drafts plus No focus keyword gives you the unfinished posts that still need a keyword.

Sort by score

Click the SEO column header to sort the list by score, and click it again to reverse the order. Posts that have not been scored yet always go to the end, in either direction, so the posts with real numbers stay together at the top.

Sorting lowest first is a sensible way to start a clean-up: the posts at the top are the ones with the most room to improve. What the score measures, and when a low score is fine, is explained in on-page SEO analysis.

Quick Edit: title, description, keyword and indexing

Hover over a row and click Quick Edit. Next to WordPress's own fields is a Hydrogen SEO group:

SEO title
Description (the meta description)
Keyword (the focus keyword)
Indexing: Default (index) or Default (no index), Index, or No index

The fields open filled with the post's current values. Change what you need and click Update.

Character counts

The title and description show a live count as you type, such as 52 / 60:

The title is graded against 30 to 60 characters.
The description is graded against 120 to 160 characters.

The count changes colour when the text is under the range or over it. If the text contains a smart tag such as %title% or %site_name%, the count is still shown but marked before variables are filled in, because the length of the finished text depends on what the variables turn into on the page. Check those against the SERP preview in the sheet if the length matters.

Empty fields use the template

Leave the SEO title or description empty and the post uses the template for its post type, exactly as it does when the field is empty in the sheet. An empty field shows Empty: the template is used in place of a count. Clearing a field is therefore how you hand a post back to the template.

The Indexing choices

Default (index) or Default (no index) removes any per-post setting, so the post follows its post type's default from the Robots screen. The words in brackets tell you what that default currently is.
Index makes the post indexable even if its post type is set to noindex.
No index asks search engines not to index the post.

What is saved

Only the values you change are written. Opening Quick Edit to fix a typo in the post title leaves every SEO field exactly as it was, and a field you leave alone never overwrites a change someone made in the SEO Settings sheet after your list loaded. When you click Update, the post is rescored straight away, so the ring in its row shows the new score as soon as the row reloads.

Quick Edit covers the four fields people change most. Canonical URLs, social fields, schema and the other robots directives are in the SEO Settings sheet.

Bulk Edit: indexing for many posts

To change indexing for several posts at once:

Tick the posts in the list.
Choose Edit from Bulk actions and click Apply.
In the Bulk Edit panel, set Indexing to Index, No index or Default. Leave it on — No Change — to keep each post's current setting.
Click Update.

The choice is applied to every selected post. Default clears the per-post setting so each post follows its post type again, which is the clean way to undo a batch of individual overrides. Bulk Edit sets indexing only; titles, descriptions and keywords are written one post at a time in Quick Edit or the sheet.

Performance

The column adds no extra database queries per row, however long the list. Nothing is added to the front end of your site. The only script is about 2 KB, loaded on the Posts, Pages and custom post type list screens and nowhere else.

FAQ

Why does a post show – instead of a score?

It has not been scored yet. Posts are scored when they are saved and when their focus keyword changes, and existing posts are scored in the background after the plugin updates. A post that has not been through any of those shows –. Saving it in Quick Edit or the editor gives it a score.

A post says No index but I never set that. Why?

Its post type is set to noindex on Hydrogen SEO → Robots, and the post has no setting of its own. Either switch the post type back on that screen, or set the post to Index in Quick Edit if only this one should be indexed.

Does the column appear for my custom post types?

Yes, for every post type that has the SEO Settings sheet. Developers change which types get the sheet with the hydrogen_seo_metabox_post_types filter in the filters reference, and can narrow the list screens alone with hydrogen_seo_post_list_post_types, which receives the same array of post type names.

Does Quick Edit change anything I did not touch?

No. Only fields whose value changed are saved. The rescore after saving updates the score, which is calculated from the post's content and focus keyword.