AI Optimizer for WordPress — Documentation

Overview

AI Optimizer for WordPress helps search engines and AI systems discover, refresh, and understand your site content faster by combining:

• IndexNow push for fast URL submission
• llms.txt manager for AI-friendly discovery hints
• Clean JSON feeds for structured content access
• Structured data sanity checks to reduce schema mistakes and conflicts

Who this is for

• SEO specialists, content sites, news blogs, WooCommerce shops
• Site owners who want faster indexing and cleaner “AI discovery” signals

Requirements

• WordPress 6.x recommended
• PHP 7.4+ recommended
• Permalinks enabled (Settings → Permalinks)
• Outbound HTTPS access from your server (firewall must allow requests)

Installation

1. Upload the plugin ZIP in WordPress: Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin
2. Activate the plugin
3. Go to: Settings → AI Optimizer
4. Run the setup wizard (recommended)

Quick Start (5 minutes)

1. Enable IndexNow
   • Turn on automatic submissions for posts, pages, and products
2. Publish llms.txt
   • Add your site summary, key sections, and important feeds
3. Enable JSON Feeds
   • Turn on at least “Posts” and “Pages”
4. Run Diagnostics
   • Fix any schema conflicts or invalid JSON-LD warnings

Plugin Areas

1) AI Discovery Panel

This is the main dashboard. It shows:

• Recent submission activity (IndexNow)
• Feed status and last update times
• Diagnostics summary
• Warnings, conflicts, and suggested fixes

Use it as your “single pane of truth” for discovery and indexing signals.

2) IndexNow

What it does

IndexNow sends URLs directly to supported search engines to speed up indexing of:

• New content
• Updated content
• Deleted content (optional)

Recommended settings

• Auto-submit on: Publish, Update, Trash, Restore
• Include post types: Posts, Pages, Products (WooCommerce)
• Exclude low-value URLs: tag archives, thin pages, internal search URLs

Submission triggers (common)

• When a post is published
• When a post is updated
• When a product price or stock changes (optional, WooCommerce)

Manual submission

Use manual submission when:

• You updated many pages at once
• You migrated content
• You fixed canonical or robots settings site-wide

Logs and monitoring

• Check “IndexNow Logs” for request status
• If you see repeated failures, verify firewall, DNS, SSL, and caching

Best practices

• Submit only meaningful URLs
• Avoid submitting paginated archives unless they are important
• Keep your canonical URLs consistent, avoid parameter duplicates

3) llms.txt Manager

What it is

llms.txt is a simple discovery file that can help AI systems find:

• Your key site sections
• Your feeds and sitemaps
• Your preferred contact and policy pages

Publish options

• Virtual file mode: served by WordPress, no file writing needed
• Physical file mode: written to your site root if permissions allow

Suggested llms.txt content

Include:

• Short site description
• Key content categories
• Important pages (About, Contact, Policies)
• Sitemaps
• AI feeds (your JSON feeds)

Common issues

• llms.txt returns 404:
  • Re-save permalinks (Settings → Permalinks → Save)
  • Clear caching layers (plugin cache, server cache, CDN cache)
  • Check security plugins that block unknown paths
• Redirects or wrong content:
  • Disable aggressive HTML caching for llms.txt
  • Ensure only one source serves the file (avoid duplicates)

4) JSON Feeds (AI-Friendly Feeds)

What it does

Creates clean JSON endpoints designed for machine consumption, for example:

• Posts feed
• Pages feed
• Products feed (WooCommerce)
• Categories and tags feeds (optional)
• Authors feed (optional)

Typical fields included

• Title, URL, last modified date
• Excerpt and plain content (optional)
• Headings outline (optional)
• Featured image URL (optional)
• Taxonomies (categories, tags)
• Basic schema summary (optional)

Controls

• Include or exclude post types and taxonomies
• Limit feed size, enable pagination
• Exclude drafts, private posts, and noindex content
• Optional: include only “indexable” content (recommended)

Performance tips

• Use pagination and limit items per page
• Enable caching for feed responses
• Do not include full content everywhere, use excerpts unless needed
• Avoid heavy fields like raw blocks unless you truly need them

Security and access

• Feeds should not expose private content
• Exclude sensitive post types (orders, tickets, private pages)
• If your site is membership-based, consider restricting feeds to public content only

5) Structured Data Sanity Checks

What it does

Scans your site output for common structured data problems:

• Invalid JSON-LD syntax
• Duplicate schema blocks (multiple plugins outputting similar schema)
• Missing recommended fields for common types (Article, Product, Organization)
• Mismatched URLs, wrong canonical references

What to do when you get a warning

• Identify the source (theme, SEO plugin, schema plugin, custom code)
• Keep one “primary schema provider” when possible
• Disable duplicate schema outputs in secondary plugins
• Recheck after changes using the diagnostics panel

Common conflict patterns

• SEO plugin plus theme schema
• WooCommerce schema plus an extra schema plugin
• Custom JSON-LD inserted twice (header and footer)

6) Visibility and Discovery Settings

Key controls you should review

• Respect canonical URLs (recommended on)
• Exclude noindex pages from submissions and feeds (recommended on)
• Archive handling: submit only if archives are curated and index-worthy
• Attachment pages: usually exclude

“Discovery Score” concept (if enabled)

A combined status indicator based on:

• IndexNow health
• llms.txt presence
• Feed availability
• Schema integrity signals

It is a guide, not a guarantee.

7) Roles, Access, and Multisite

Roles and permissions

Recommended:

• Only Administrators can change core settings
• Editors can view dashboards and diagnostics (optional)

Multisite

• Network-wide defaults can be applied
• Each site can override feed and submission scope if permitted

Troubleshooting

IndexNow submissions failing

Check:

• Server can reach external HTTPS endpoints
• SSL is valid and not blocked by firewall rules
• Your site returns correct canonical URLs

Try:

• Submit one URL manually and inspect the log entry
• Temporarily disable security plugins that block outgoing requests
• Clear caches, then retry

llms.txt is 404

Fix order:

1. Re-save permalinks
2. Purge plugin cache and server cache
3. Purge CDN cache (Cloudflare or similar)
4. Check security rules blocking the path
5. Ensure only one method serves llms.txt (virtual vs physical)

JSON feeds show 403 or blank

Check:

• Security plugin blocking endpoints
• CDN rules that block unknown JSON routes
• Caching plugin minify or HTML rewrite rules

Try:

• Add feed routes to allowlist in security tools
• Disable HTML caching for feed endpoints

Diagnostics shows duplicate schema

Fix:

• Choose one schema source to be authoritative
• Disable schema output in the other plugin/theme
• Clear caches and re-run diagnostics

FAQ

Does this guarantee higher rankings?

No. This improves discovery, indexing speed, and data cleanliness. Rankings still depend on content quality, authority, and intent match.

Is IndexNow supported everywhere?

IndexNow is supported by some engines and services. The plugin can still provide value through llms.txt, feeds, and structured data checks even when IndexNow coverage is limited.

Will feeds expose my full content?

Only if you enable full content output. Recommended setup uses excerpts or limited content fields for performance and privacy.

Can I use this with my SEO plugin?

Yes. The best setup is:

• SEO plugin handles meta tags and sitemaps
• AI Optimizer handles IndexNow, llms.txt, AI feeds, and schema sanity checks

Avoid overlapping schema outputs.

Developer Extensibility

Extension-friendly architecture

The plugin is designed to allow add-ons and modular features. Typical extension areas:

• Additional feed types
• Extra diagnostics rules
• Custom submission triggers
• Third-party integrations

Suggested hooks and filters (conceptual)

These names may exist depending on your version, check the developer section in the plugin UI:

• Filter feed item fields before output
• Filter which post types are allowed in feeds
• Action on successful IndexNow submission
• Action on failed IndexNow submission
• Filter diagnostics ruleset and severity thresholds
• Filter llms.txt sections before publish

Add-on strategy

Create separate add-ons for:

• WooCommerce advanced feed pack
• News site pack (freshness rules, Google News style checks)
• Multilingual pack (WPML, Polylang awareness)
• Advanced schema repair assistant