Lightweight SEO

Lightweight SEO plugin for WordPress - minimal footprint, maximum impact.

Website: lwplugins.com GitHub: github.com/lwplugins/lw-seo

Features

Meta Tags & Titles

• Custom Titles - Per-post/page title override with template variables
• Meta Descriptions - Auto-generated from the excerpt (through get_the_excerpt(), so membership/paywall plugins can mask it), filterable via lw_seo_meta_description
• Title Separator - Customizable separator character
• Canonical URLs - One self-referencing canonical per page (also on /page/2/ of archives), filterable via lw_seo_canonical_url
• Robots Control - noindex/nofollow per post

Social Media

• Open Graph - Facebook, LinkedIn sharing optimization
• Twitter Cards - Summary and large image cards
• Default Social Image - Fallback when post has no featured image
• Custom OG Images - Per-post social images

XML Sitemap

• Auto-generated - Posts, pages, categories, tags and WooCommerce products
• Custom Post Types - Every public CPT (ACF, CPT UI, …) is included automatically, with a per-type toggle
• Custom Taxonomies - Opt-in, per taxonomy
• Image sitemap - Featured, in-content and WooCommerce gallery images are listed (content inside shortcodes and non-media blocks is skipped); toggle under Sitemap → XML Sitemap → Include images
• Browser-readable view - XSL stylesheet so the sitemap is easy to read in a browser; can be turned off
• Clean - noindex types/taxonomies, noindex and password-protected posts, and the WooCommerce cart/checkout/my account pages are left out
• Developer filters - lw_seo_sitemap_post_types, lw_seo_sitemap_exclude_post, lw_seo_sitemap_excluded_ids, lw_seo_sitemap_urls, lw_seo_sitemap_images, lw_seo_sitemap_content_images
• Available at yoursite.com/sitemap.xml (per-type files: sitemap-{type}.xml)

HTML Sitemap

• Shortcode - [lw_html_sitemap]
• Block - lw-seo/html-sitemap
• Cached, and follows the XML sitemap's noindex and exclusion rules; configured under Sitemap → HTML sitemap (post types, taxonomies, items per section, order)
• Developer filters - lw_seo_html_sitemap_sections, lw_seo_html_sitemap_output

IndexNow

• Off by default - turn it on under Sitemap → IndexNow
• Notifies participating search engines when public, indexable content is published, updated or deleted
• External service - when enabled, the page URLs, your host name, a verification key generated on your site and the key file URL are sent to api.indexnow.org; no personal data. The key file is served by your site
• Manual URL submit and a log of recent submissions in the same screen; wp lw-seo indexnow

Schema.org / JSON-LD

• WebSite Schema - Site-wide structured data
• Article Schema - Blog posts with author info
• Organization/Person - Knowledge graph support
• Breadcrumb Schema - Navigation markup

Breadcrumbs

• Shortcode - [lw_breadcrumbs]
• PHP Function - \LightweightPlugins\SEO\lw_seo_breadcrumbs()
• Microdata - Built-in structured data

FAQ Block

• Gutenberg block - lw-seo/faq with FAQPage schema

AI & LLM

• llms.txt - Spec-compliant (llmstxt.org) file listing every page and custom post type in its own section, with SEO descriptions, custom summary/intro, an Optional links section and a per-section limit; cached and built as an anonymous visitor
• llms-full.txt - Optional full-content Markdown dump (1 MiB cap)
• Markdown endpoint - Every post, page, product and term as Markdown at /md or /markdown (or ?format=md, or Accept: text/markdown), with YAML frontmatter, Vary: Accept on negotiated responses and discovery links (rel="alternate" / rel="describedby")
• Content Signals - Three-state search / ai-input / ai-train signals (Cloudflare Content Signals Policy) sent as a Content-Signal header, meta tag and robots.txt line; per-post and per-term overrides
• AI Crawler Control - 22 verified crawlers grouped by purpose, blockable one by one or per purpose (training / AI search / user-triggered): OpenAI (GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User), Anthropic (ClaudeBot, Claude-SearchBot, Claude-User), Google-Extended, Applebot-Extended, Perplexity, Meta, Amazon, Mistral AI, Common Crawl, AI2, ByteDance
• robots.txt - Adds the sitemap, AI crawler rules and Content-Signal line through WordPress's robots_txt filter (compatible with other plugins); preview and physical-file warning in the admin

WooCommerce Integration

• Auto-Detection - Automatically enables when WooCommerce is active
• Product OpenGraph - Price, currency, availability, brand, condition
• Shop Title - Title template for the shop page (product archive)
• Product Schema - Full Schema.org Product markup with offers, filterable via lw_seo_woo_product_schema and lw_seo_woo_offer
• Default Brand - Shop-wide brand used when a product has none
• ProductGroup - Optional ProductGroup markup for variable products (lw_seo_woo_varies_by_map)
• Shipping & Returns - Shipping details and merchant return policy added to product offers
• Hidden & Out-of-Stock Products - Hidden products get noindex and leave the sitemap; out-of-stock products can be left out of the sitemap
• Reviews Schema - Product reviews and aggregate ratings
• Product Sitemap - Include products and product categories
• Custom Settings - Dedicated WooCommerce SEO settings tab

Local SEO

• LocalBusiness Schema - 100+ business types supported
• Business Address - Street, city, state, zip, country
• Contact Info - Phone, email with schema markup
• Opening Hours - Per-day hours with OpeningHoursSpecification
• Geo Coordinates - Latitude/longitude for location
• Shortcodes - [lw_address], [lw_phone], [lw_email], [lw_hours], [lw_map]

Redirects & 404

• Redirect Manager - 301, 302, 307, 410 and 451 redirects, with CSV import/export
• URL tester - Check which rule a URL would match, in the Redirects screen or with wp lw-seo redirect test <url>
• 404 log - Off by default; records missing URLs with hit counts, with a "Create redirect" action in the 404 tab, a daily cleanup and a row cap (wp lw-seo not-found list|clear|prune)
• 404 to homepage - Optional redirect of 404s to the homepage, as a last resort after your redirect rules and WordPress's own redirects (renamed slugs, guessed URLs)

Migration

• Import from Yoast SEO, Rank Math, SEOPress and All in One SEO - Options and title templates, post and term SEO data, primary categories and redirects, with a dry-run preview; never overwrites LW SEO data (admin Import tab or wp lw-seo migrate, see docs/migration.md)

Images

• Alt and title templates - Off by default; fill missing or empty image alt/title text at display time from %%image_title%%, %%image_caption%%, %%image_filename%% and the usual variables (Content → Images). The media library is not modified.

Cleanup

• Remove shortlinks
• Remove RSD links
• Remove WLW manifest

Admin Interface

• Unified LW Plugins menu
• Modern tabbed settings interface
• WordPress media library integration
• Translations: Hungarian (hu_HU) included

Developer & Automation

• WP-CLI - wp lw-seo option|sitemap|llms|robots|crawlers|redirect|not-found|indexnow|migrate … — every setting can be read and set (validated) from the command line, see docs/cli.md
• REST API - Read-only lw-seo/v1 endpoints for headless setups, see docs/rest-api.md
• LW Site Manager abilities - lw-seo/get-meta, set-meta, get-content-signals, get-markdown, get-options, set-options (per-object permission checks), see docs/site-manager-abilities.md
• Hooks - including lw_seo_post_noindex, lw_seo_woo_offer, lw_seo_woo_varies_by_map, lw_seo_html_sitemap_sections and lw_seo_html_sitemap_output; see docs/developers.md

Installation

Via Composer (recommended)

composer require lwplugins/lw-seo

Manual Installation

1. Download the latest release
2. Upload to /wp-content/plugins/lw-seo/
3. Activate in WordPress admin
4. Go to LW Plugins → SEO

Template Variables

Use these in title templates:

Variable	Description
%%sitename%%	Site name
%%sitedesc%%	Site tagline
%%title%%	Post/page title
%%sep%%	Separator character
%%excerpt%%	Post excerpt
%%author%%	Author name
%%date%%	Publish date
%%modified%%	Last modified date
%%category%%	Primary category
%%tag%%	Tags
%%term_title%%	Taxonomy term name
%%term_description%%	Taxonomy term description
%%currentdate%%	Current date
%%currentmonth%%	Current month
%%currentyear%%	Current year
%%page%% / %%pagenumber%%	Page number
%%searchphrase%%	Search query
%%image_title%% / %%image_caption%% / %%image_filename%%	Image title, caption and file name (image alt/title templates only)

Full reference: docs/template-variables.md

Requirements

• PHP 8.0+
• WordPress 6.6+

Conflict Detection

LW SEO skips its head meta output (and shows a notice on its settings page) when detecting:

• Yoast SEO
• Rank Math
• All in One SEO
• SEOPress

Development

# Install dependencies
composer install

# Run code sniffer
composer phpcs

# Fix coding standards
composer phpcbf

# Static analysis (PHPStan level 5)
composer analyse

# Run tests
composer test

Full documentation: docs/ · Changelog: CHANGELOG.md

Special Thanks

Special thanks to PixelDesigns for the countless hours of testing and the advice that shaped LW SEO.

License

GPL-2.0-or-later

Sponsor

Supported by Sinann