AI-Ranklystix SEO — Complete User Guide
For plugin version 1.1.24+. Written for non-technical users — every option explained, with our recommendation.1. What this plugin does
AI-Ranklystix SEO is a complete WordPress SEO plugin and the companion for the AI-Ranklystix platform:- Standalone — it can fully replace Yoast / Rank Math / AIOSEO: titles, meta descriptions, canonicals, Open Graph, XML sitemap, schema (JSON-LD), breadcrumbs, redirects, robots.txt.
- Connected to AI-Ranklystix — it also becomes the "hands" of the platform: AI-generated SEO in one click, audit fixes applied straight to your site, automatic SEO on publish, instant indexing pings and live audit scores on your dashboard.
2. Five-minute recommended setup
- Install & activate the plugin (from your AI-Ranklystix dashboard → Connections → WordPress → Download plugin).
- AI-Ranklystix → AI-Ranklystix tab → Connect to AI-Ranklystix (one click — no copy-pasting).
- General tab: leave Mode on Auto. Fill Home title and Home description (or click ⚡ Generate with AI). Save.
- Sitemap tab: make sure the banner is green ("live and maintains itself"). If not, tick Enable + Save.
- Organization tab: business name, logo URL, social profile links. Save.
- Automation tab: tick Auto-SEO on publish so new content never ships without meta. Save.
- If you serve a local area: Local SEO & Geo tab — fill it in (5 minutes, big local-search payoff).
3. General tab
| Option | What it is | Our recommendation | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mode | How the plugin coexists with other SEO plugins. Auto = standalone if no other SEO plugin is active; Standalone = AI-Ranklystix owns all SEO output; Companion = your existing plugin (Yoast etc.) stays in charge and we only fill its fields. | Leave on Auto. | |
| Title template | The pattern for every page's Google title. %title% = page name, %sitename% = site name, %sep% = separator. Example result: About us – ATOZ INFOWAY. | Keep the default %title% %sep% %sitename%. If left empty, the default is used automatically. | |
| Separator | The small character between page name and site name (– \ | -). | Any — purely cosmetic. |
| Home title | The Google title for your front page specifically. | Fill this in (~50–60 characters, main keyword + brand) or click ⚡ Generate with AI. Your home page is your most important search result. | |
| Home description | The grey summary under your home page in Google. | Fill this in (~150–160 characters: what you do, where, why click) or use ⚡ Generate with AI, then edit to taste. | |
| Breadcrumbs | The Home › Section › Page trail + its schema. Add to your theme with the [airp_breadcrumbs] shortcode. | ON (default). Helps users and can add breadcrumb links to your Google listing. | |
| Import existing SEO data | One-click import of titles/descriptions you already wrote in Yoast, Rank Math, AIOSEO or SEOPress. | Run once when switching from another SEO plugin, so nothing is lost. |
4. Social tab
Controls the preview card (image, title, summary) shown when your pages are shared on Facebook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, X/Twitter, Slack, etc.
| Option | What it is | Our recommendation |
|---|---|---|
| Open Graph | Share-preview tags used by Facebook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp and most apps. | ON (default). Without it, shares show a bare link. |
| Twitter Cards | The X/Twitter equivalent — large image card instead of a plain link. | ON (default). |
| Twitter @handle | Your brand's X username, so cards credit your account. | Fill in if you have one; otherwise leave blank. |
| Twitter card style | Large image card vs compact small-thumbnail card. | Large image (default) — far more attention in feeds. |
| Auto-generate share images | For any page without an image of its own, the plugin generates a branded 1200×630 title card — your brand colours, the page title in large type, your business name — automatically, cached, no design work. | ON. Every shared link gets a professional preview. Pick your brand colours; changing them regenerates the cards. |
| Default share image | A fixed fallback image (1200×630 PNG/JPG, not SVG) used when a page has no image and auto-generation is off. | Optional — with auto-generation ON you usually don't need it. |
| Locale | The og:locale value (e.g. en_CA). | Leave empty — your WordPress language setting is used. |
| Article dates | Outputs published/updated timestamps (article:published_time / modified_time) — freshness signals. | ON (default). |
Per-page social image/title/description overrides live in the SEO box on each page (see §16).
5. Tracking tab
Add your analytics & marketing tags once — the plugin injects them on every page, no theme editing. Logged-in editors/admins are excluded by default so your own visits don't pollute the data.
| Option | What it is | Our recommendation |
|---|---|---|
| Google Analytics 4 | Your GA4 Measurement ID (G-XXXXXXXXXX). Paste the ID, paste the whole gtag snippet (we extract the ID), or click ⚡ Auto-detect to pull it from your connected Google account. | Set it up — you can't improve what you don't measure. |
| Google Tag Manager | GTM container (GTM-XXXXXXX). We output both the head and noscript tags. | Only if you use GTM. Don't run GA4 both directly and via GTM (double counting). |
| Meta Pixel | Facebook/Instagram Pixel ID. Paste the ID, the whole Pixel code block, or ⚡ Auto-detect from your connected Meta account. | Set up if you run (or plan) Meta ads — the Pixel needs history to work well. |
| Custom \<head\> / body code | Any other snippet (LinkedIn Insight, TikTok Pixel, Hotjar…), injected verbatim site-wide. | Use sparingly; every tag slows the page a little. |
| Track logged-in staff | Also fire tags for editors/admins. | OFF (default). Turn on only for debugging with Tag Assistant. |
⚠ Double-tracking warning: if Google Site Kit is also loading Analytics, the tab warns you — run GA4 from one source only.
6. Automation tab
Hands-off SEO. Requires the AI-Ranklystix connection.
| Option | What it is | Our recommendation |
|---|---|---|
| Auto-SEO on publish | When you publish/update a page that has no meta description or SEO title, one is generated automatically a few seconds later (in the background) using your AI-Ranklystix Brand Kit — your voice, your target region. Only fills empty fields; never overwrites what you wrote. | ON. This is what stops "missing meta description" from re-appearing every time you add content. |
| What to auto-fill | Choose meta description and/or SEO title. | Both ON (default). |
Pair with Weekly auto-fix in the AI-Ranklystix platform (AI-Ranklystix → AutoFix page) for whole-site weekly cleanup.
7. Organization tab
Tells Google who you are — feeds the knowledge panel (the info box that can appear beside search results) and brand recognition.
| Option | What it is | Our recommendation |
|---|---|---|
| Organization name | Official business name, exact spelling/capitalization. | Fill in (e.g. ATOZ INFOWAY INC). Falls back to your site title if empty. |
| Logo URL | Direct link to your logo image. Tip: Media Library → open logo → copy file URL. | Fill in — Google can show it next to your brand. |
| Social profile URLs | One full link per line to your official profiles (Facebook, LinkedIn, X, Instagram, YouTube…). Output as schema.org sameAs. | Add all official profiles — it formally links them to your brand. |
| ⚡ Quick-fill | Use the same username everywhere? Type it once, tick the networks (Facebook, X, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, TikTok), click Add to profiles — the URLs are built for you. | Edit the list afterwards if any profile differs (e.g. personal vs company LinkedIn), then Save. |
8. Local SEO & Geo Targeting tab
Business details (Local SEO)
For businesses with a physical location or service area. Powers LocalBusiness schema — your ticket into local search and the Google Maps "map pack". Purely online business with no location? Leave it off.
| Option | What it is | Our recommendation |
|---|---|---|
| Local business | Master switch for LocalBusiness schema. | ON if you have an address or serve a specific area. |
| Business type | Official Google/schema.org category (16 choices). | Pick the closest match. IT company / agency / consultancy → Professional service. |
| Phone | Your business phone. Type it any way — it's formatted automatically (e.g. +1 825-735-2713) so Google reads it correctly. | Use the same number as your Google Business Profile. |
| Street / City / Region / Postal | Your address. | Match your Google Business Profile exactly. |
| Country | Pick your country from the list (e.g. Canada (CA)). Also drives phone formatting. | Required for correct schema + phone format. |
| Coordinates | In Google Maps, right-click your location → click the coordinates to copy → paste the whole thing (e.g. 51.0392473, -114.0939595). We split lat/long for you. | Optional but helps map accuracy. |
| Opening hours | Tick the days you're open, pick times. Use "⤵ Apply Monday's times to all ticked days" to fill the week in one click. Output is Google-valid automatically. | Fill in — hours show in local results. |
| Price range | $, $$, $$$ — a rough cost indicator. | Optional. |
Geo Targeting (same tab, below the address)
Tell search engines which country your business serves — so you rank where your customers are, and your pages naturally fade from other countries' results. For a Calgary daycare, that means showing up for Canadian parents, not searchers in another country.
Honest expectation: Google offers no "hide my site abroad" switch (it retired that control in 2022). Country-targeting signals are the official mechanism, and combined with your local address, phone and content they are very effective. The optional visitor restriction additionally stops people outside your countries from viewing the site at all. When do changes take effect? On your website: immediately — the page cache is purged when you save. In Google/Bing results: on their next crawl, typically a few days and up to a few weeks to fully affect rankings. The plugin reminds you of this after every save.| Option | What it is | Our recommendation |
|---|---|---|
| Country targeting | Master switch for the targeting signals below. | ON for any single-country business. |
| Target country | Pick from the country list (e.g. India (IN)). | Keep the first option — it reuses your business country automatically. |
| Also target (optional) | Serve more than one country? Add the extras here — each gets its own hreflang line and areaServed entry (e.g. a Canadian business also serving US customers adds United States). | Only add countries you genuinely serve. |
| hreflang tags | Tells Google the language + country each page targets (e.g. en-CA). Skipped automatically if a multilingual plugin (WPML/Polylang…) manages hreflang. | ON. |
| Geo meta tags | geo.region / geo.placename / coordinates meta tags built from your business address above; read by Bing and local-search tools. | ON. |
| Restrict visitors | Block or redirect human visitors by country, in either direction. | OFF unless you have a real reason (licensing, regulations, heavy foreign spam traffic). Signals alone are enough for ranking. |
| Mode | Allow only these countries (the list is who gets IN — everyone else restricted) or Block these countries (the list is who is kept OUT — everyone else sees the site). The hint under the list explains your current choice in plain words. | Allow only for serving one market; Block for keeping out specific problem countries. |
| Country list | Pick countries and click + Add — each appears as a removable chip. | In Allow only mode, Canadian businesses often add the United States too, so cross-border customers aren't locked out. |
| Action | Notice page (clean "not available in your region" page) or Redirect to a URL (e.g. a global landing page). | Notice page. |
| IP-lookup fallback | When your host/CDN doesn't send a country header, look the visitor's IP up via a geo service (cached 7 days per visitor). | Only tick if the status line says "none detected". Cloudflare's free plan is the better fix. |
- Search engines, social-preview and AI bots are always allowed — Google crawls from US servers, so a naive country block would remove you from Google entirely. The plugin never blocks them.
- Unknown country = allowed. If the geo service is down or no header exists, visitors get the site. Restriction can only ever narrow traffic, never take the site offline.
robots.txt, sitemaps and feeds always stay reachable.
9. Verification tab
Each search engine wants proof you own the site before showing you its data. Paste the code; the plugin adds the meta tag — no file editing.
| Engine | Purpose | Easiest path |
|---|---|---|
| Google Search Console | Your Google search performance (queries, clicks, indexing). | No code needed: connect Google Search Console inside AI-Ranklystix (Connections) — OAuth verifies you automatically. Manual: GSC → add property → HTML tag → paste the whole meta tag or just the content value (either works). Or use Google's "HTML file" method without uploading anything: paste just the file name (google…html) into the second box — the plugin serves the file for you (no FTP). |
| Bing Webmaster | Bing + Microsoft Copilot performance. | One click "Import from Google Search Console" at Bing Webmaster Tools — no code. |
| Claims your website so pins credit you. | Only if you market on Pinterest. | |
| Baidu | China's main search engine. | Only if you target Chinese customers. Most sites leave blank. |
10. Indexing tab
Your "getting found on Google" tab — two jobs: tell engines instantly when pages change, and keep low-value pages out of the index. Defaults are already SEO-correct.
| Option | What it is | Our recommendation |
|---|---|---|
| IndexNow | The moment you publish/update, Bing, Yandex, Seznam & Naver are pinged — they re-crawl in minutes instead of days. (Google doesn't use IndexNow; keep your sitemap submitted for Google.) | ON (default). The key file below it is served automatically — nothing to upload. Submit all URLs now re-pings everything after big changes. |
| Author archives | /author/name/ listing pages — near-duplicates of your blog on most sites. | OFF = noindex (default). Only enable if multiple named authors are part of your brand. |
| Date archives | /2026/06/ month/year listing pages — rarely match real searches. | OFF = noindex (default). |
| Search & 404 pages | Internal search results and "not found" pages. | Always noindex — locked for your protection. |
11. Sitemap tab
Your sitemap is auto-generated and self-updating — when enabled there is nothing to run manually. The status banner tells you exactly what's being served:
- ✅ Green — sitemap live at
/airp-sitemap.xml, rebuilds itself on every publish. Done. - ⚠ Static file notice — you once wrote a physical file; your server serves that (it goes stale and overrides the automatic one). Click "↻ Switch to the self-updating sitemap" to fix in one click.
- ⚠ No sitemap — tick Enable + Save.
| Option | What it is | Our recommendation |
|---|---|---|
| Enable XML sitemap | The master switch. | ON. |
| Content in sitemap | Which content types are included. Page-builder internals are excluded automatically. | Keep real content ticked (Pages, Posts, Services, Case Studies…). Untick thin/auto-generated types — flooding the sitemap with low-value URLs wastes crawl budget and drags your whole site's quality signal down. |
| Physical sitemap file | Writes a static file served before WordPress — tamper-proof, but goes stale and overrides the automatic sitemap until deleted. | Only for special cases (e.g. malware kept altering your dynamic sitemap). Otherwise avoid. |
| Auto-submit to Google Search Console | AI-Ranklystix submits the sitemap to Google for you. One submission is enough — Google re-reads it forever. | ON. |
12. robots.txt tab
| Option | What it is | Our recommendation |
|---|---|---|
| robots.txt | The file that guides search engine crawlers. Leave the box empty for sensible defaults; your sitemap is appended automatically. | Leave empty unless you know you need custom rules. If a physical robots.txt exists at your site root, it overrides this — the tab detects it and offers to write your settings into it. |
| ads.txt | Advertising-network verification (e.g. AdSense). | Leave empty unless you run display ads. |
13. AI / AEO tab
Makes your site readable to AI answer engines (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini) so they cite you accurately — the "robots.txt for AI".
| Option | What it is | Our recommendation |
|---|---|---|
| Agent Readiness (llms.txt) | Serves /llms.txt describing your site and key pages to AI assistants. | ON. AI search is where more buyers research every month. |
| Include in llms.txt | Which content types are listed. | Pages + your key types (Services, Case Studies). |
| Custom llms.txt | Full manual override (Markdown). | Leave empty — the auto-generated version is good. |
14. Redirects tab
| Option | What it is | Our recommendation |
|---|---|---|
| Redirect rules | One per line: /old-path => /new-path => 301. Codes 301 (permanent), 302/307 (temporary), 308. /path => 410 marks a URL Gone (removed). A trailing /items/. | Add a 301 whenever you change a URL or remove a page that has a replacement. |
| Recent 404s | Live log of "page not found" hits (with counts) + Clear 404 log button. | Check occasionally; add redirects for real pages people still request. |
🛡 Hacked / spam URL cleanup: if your site was injected with spam pages (e.g. hundreds of/items/N12345URLs), add one rule:/items/* => 410. That answers "permanently gone" — the fastest legitimate de-indexing signal. Never redirect spam URLs to your homepage (it passes the spam association to your site). Then request removal of the prefix in Google Search Console → Removals, and Clear the 404 log.
15. AI-Ranklystix tab — connecting to the platform
| Option | What it is |
|---|---|
| One-click connect | Opens AI-Ranklystix → you approve → Site ID + token are filled automatically. Set the API base first, then click Connect. |
| API base / Site ID / API token | Manual connection fields (normally filled by Connect). |
| Save & test connection | Pings the platform with your saved settings — use this if AI Generate buttons return errors. |
| Status | Connection state + your latest audit score. |
16. The SEO box in the editor
Every post and page gets an AI-Ranklystix SEO box with:
- Live Google-style snippet preview with character counters (green = ideal, amber = adjust, red = fix).
- SEO title (~50–60 chars) and meta description (~150–160 chars) — each with a ✨ AI Generate button (on-brand via your Brand Kit).
- Focus keyword — the term this page should rank for.
- Robots (index/noindex) and canonical URL — leave default unless you know why.
- Social overrides — a custom share image (recommended 1200×630), social title and description.
17. Bulk SEO Editor (AI-Ranklystix → Bulk Editor)
Edit SEO for many pages and category/tag pages at once:
- Filter by content type or taxonomy; "Missing" shows only pages without a meta description.
- ✨ per-row AI generation, or bulk AI-fill every empty title/description in one click.
- OG image column with media picker.
- Permalinks (web addresses): each page row shows its permalink slug. Edit it directly, click the row's ✨ to generate a clean one from the page title, or use ✨ Clean up permalinks to do the whole page of rows at once. Changed slugs are highlighted — review, then Save all changes. Safe by design: the old address keeps working — visitors and Google are automatically 301-redirected to the new one (a redirect rule is added under Redirects for you). Our recommendation: short, descriptive slugs that match the title; fix mismatched ones (e.g. a post titled "Our Story" living at
/draft-page-2/). - CSV export → edit in a spreadsheet → import for big sites.
- Lists real content only (builder templates hidden); drafts are labeled "not live".
18. Image Alt Text (AI-Ranklystix → Image Alt Text)
Bulk-add alt text to images (accessibility + image SEO). AI suggests alt text from the image's filename, caption and the page it's used on. Use ✨ per image, or AI-fill empty alts to do them all at once.
Rename files for SEO (new). The File name column is editable. A descriptive filename likenature-based-classroom-calgary.jpg is better for SEO than IMG_2031.jpg. Change it and Save all — the plugin safely renames the file and every generated size, then updates every page, Elementor layout and custom field that uses it, so nothing breaks. The extension (.jpg, .png…) can't be changed. Tip: rename first, then generate alt text.
19. Plugin updates
The plugin updates itself from your AI-Ranklystix platform — WordPress shows "Update available" like any plugin from wordpress.org. It also checks on its own: twice a day in the background, and within ~3 hours whenever an admin is using wp-admin — so new releases appear without you doing anything. Opening Dashboard → Updates always performs a fresh check, so a new release shows up there immediately.
If an update ever refuses to appear, you can always update manually: AI-Ranklystix dashboard → Connections → WordPress → Download plugin (.zip), then WordPress → Plugins → Add New → Upload → "Replace current with uploaded". Settings and data are kept.
20. Troubleshooting
| Symptom | Cause & fix |
|---|---|
| A fix/change doesn't show on the live page | Page caching. The plugin purges caches automatically on every applied fix and every settings save; if you edited content manually, purge your cache (LiteSpeed / WP Rocket) or wait for it to expire. |
| AI buttons say "not connected" / return errors | AI-Ranklystix tab → Save & test connection. Check API base URL, token, Site ID. |
| AI says token quota exhausted | Your AI-Ranklystix AI-token wallet is empty — top up in AI-Ranklystix → Billing. |
| "Why two Home pages in lists?" | One was a page-builder template or a draft. Since 1.1.5 builder internals are hidden and drafts labeled. |
| Google shows old/spam URLs | See the Redirects tab spam recipe (§14) + GSC Removals. "Crawled – currently not indexed" in GSC means not in search results — it's a report, not a problem. |
| Sitemap warning about a static file | Click "↻ Switch to the self-updating sitemap" (Sitemap tab). |
| Analytics counts doubled | GA4 is loaded twice (e.g. Site Kit + this plugin). Run it from one source. |
| Settings seem to reset (historic) | Fixed in 1.1.1 — each tab saves independently. Update the plugin if you're on an older version. |
AI-Ranklystix SEO by AtoZ INFOWAY INC · This guide matches plugin 1.1.24. The latest version is always at rankpilot.aiappstore.in/help-guide.