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Simplicity SEO Audit

Simplicity SEO Audit

By Eftichia Mavridaki
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Description

Simplicity SEO Audit scans your WordPress site and gives you a clear SEO health score with specific, actionable recommendations. No technical expertise required — install, scan, and see exactly what needs fixing.

What it does

  • Scans up to 200 pages (posts, pages, products, and taxonomy terms) in a proportional sample
  • Runs 17 SEO checks across content quality and technical health
  • Fetches the actual rendered HTML of each page (like Google sees it), not just the database content
  • Gives you a weighted score from 0 to 100 with a letter grade (A to F)
  • Shows specific issues with the exact URLs that need attention
  • Exports a clean HTML report you can print or share with clients
  • Works with WooCommerce, Yoast SEO, Rank Math, SEOPress, and all major page builders

17 SEO Checks

Content Checks (10):

  1. Title Tag (weight: 8) — Checks every page has a title between 30-60 characters. Flags empty, too short, and too long titles.
  2. Meta Description (weight: 7) — Checks for meta descriptions between 70-160 characters. Flags missing, too short, and too long descriptions.
  3. Headings H1 (weight: 6) — Verifies each page has exactly one H1 tag and checks heading hierarchy (no skipping from H1 to H3).
  4. Image Alt Text (weight: 5) — Counts images missing alt text on each page. Score is the average alt text coverage across all pages.
  5. Internal Links (weight: 5) — Checks each page has at least one internal link in the content area.
  6. Thin Content (weight: 4) — Flags pages with fewer than 300 words (posts/pages) or 30 words (taxonomy terms). Supports Greek and all Unicode languages.
  7. Duplicate Titles (weight: 4) — Finds pages sharing identical title tags.
  8. Duplicate Descriptions (weight: 4) — Finds pages sharing identical meta descriptions.
  9. Canonical Tag (weight: 3) — Checks every page has a canonical URL tag.
  10. OG/Twitter Tags (weight: 3) — Checks for Open Graph and Twitter Card meta tags.

Technical Checks (7):

  1. SSL/HTTPS (weight: 4) — Verifies the site uses HTTPS.
  2. XML Sitemap (weight: 3) — Checks for an XML sitemap at standard locations.
  3. Robots.txt (weight: 3) — Checks for a robots.txt file.
  4. SEO Plugin (weight: 2) — Detects if Yoast, Rank Math, SEOPress, or another SEO plugin is active.
  5. Schema Markup (weight: 2) — Checks the homepage for structured data (JSON-LD).
  6. PHP/WP Version (weight: 2) — Checks for outdated PHP or WordPress versions.
  7. Permalink Structure (weight: 2) — Verifies pretty permalinks are enabled (not plain ?p=123).

How the Score Works

Each check produces a score from 0 to 100. Content checks use ratio-based scoring — for example, if 80% of your pages have good titles, the Title Tag score is approximately 80. Pages with minor issues (e.g., slightly short title) count as half credit, not zero.

The final score is a weighted average of all 17 checks. Checks that matter more for SEO (like Title Tags, weight 8) count more than less critical checks (like Permalink Structure, weight 2).

Grading scale:
* A = 90-100 (Excellent)
* B = 80-89 (Good)
* C = 65-79 (Needs improvement)
* D = 50-64 (Poor)
* F = 0-49 (Critical issues)

A score of 100 means zero issues found. If any issues exist, the maximum score is 99.

Taxonomy-Aware Scoring

Not all pages are equal. The plugin uses a tiered system for taxonomy terms:

  • High priority (full weight): Posts, pages, product categories — these are your main landing pages
  • Medium priority (half weight): Tags, product tags, custom taxonomies — supporting pages
  • Low priority (info only): Product attributes (e.g., color, size) — filtering pages that typically shouldn’t rank

Low-priority terms are flagged for information but don’t affect your score. This prevents product attributes from unfairly dragging down your SEO score.

Developers can customize tiers with the msa_taxonomy_tier filter.

Rendered HTML Analysis

Unlike most lightweight SEO plugins that only read database content, Simplicity SEO Audit fetches the actual rendered HTML of each page — exactly what Google sees. This means:

  • H1 tags added by your theme are detected
  • Page builder content (Elementor, Divi, WPBakery) is analyzed
  • Shortcode output is included in word counts
  • Navigation and footer elements are stripped — only the main content area is analyzed

If a page cannot be fetched (e.g., password-protected), the plugin falls back to the database content.

REST API

The plugin provides a REST API endpoint for external integrations:

GET /wp-json/seo-audit/v1/stats?token=YOUR_TOKEN

The token is auto-generated on activation and stored in the database. The endpoint returns site URL, page counts, audit summary, per-check scores, and pricing tier information. It is read-only and uses timing-safe token comparison.

Privacy

  • All scanning happens on your own server — no data is sent automatically
  • The REST API is token-protected and read-only
  • Scan results are stored in your WordPress database only
  • All data is deleted when you uninstall (delete) the plugin
  • See “Third-Party Services” below for details on the optional connection to seo.simplicity.gr

Third-Party Services

This plugin connects to seo.simplicity.gr in the following ways:

  1. CTA Links: The plugin dashboard includes a “Get the Full Report” link that directs you to seo.simplicity.gr. The link includes your site URL and a locally-generated API token as URL parameters.

  2. REST API Endpoint: The plugin registers a REST API endpoint (/wp-json/seo-audit/v1/stats) that allows seo.simplicity.gr to retrieve your scan summary (score, grade, number of checks, number of issues, and total page count). Access requires a valid API token. No page content, URLs, or personal data is transmitted.

Screenshots

Dashboard with SEO score and check results
Dashboard with SEO score and check results
Detailed issues list with URLs
Detailed issues list with URLs
HTML export report
HTML export report

Installation

  1. Upload the simplicity-seo-audit folder to /wp-content/plugins/
  2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
  3. Go to the “Simplicity SEO Audit” menu item in your admin sidebar
  4. Click “Scan” and wait for the results (typically 1-3 minutes depending on site size)

Or install via ZIP:

  1. Go to Plugins > Add New > Upload Plugin
  2. Choose the simplicity-seo-audit.zip file
  3. Click “Install Now” then “Activate”

FAQ

How many pages does it scan?

Up to 200 pages, proportionally sampled across your content types. If your site has 600 products, 30 pages, and 20 posts, the sample will reflect those proportions.

Why does the scan take a few minutes?

The plugin fetches the rendered HTML of each page (up to 200 HTTP requests to your own site). This is what makes the results accurate — we see what Google sees. Typical scan time is 1-3 minutes.

Does it work with WooCommerce?

Yes. Products, product categories, product tags, and product attributes are all supported with appropriate scoring tiers.

Does it work with page builders?

Yes. Because we fetch the rendered HTML, content from Elementor, Divi, WPBakery, Oxygen, Bricks, and other page builders is fully analyzed.

Why is my thin content score different from other SEO plugins?

Simplicity SEO Audit counts words in the rendered HTML content area, not just the database post_content. This includes product descriptions, related product sections, and other template-generated content. The word count threshold is 300 for posts/pages and 30 for taxonomy terms.

Will uninstalling the plugin leave data behind?

No. When you delete (not just deactivate) the plugin, all scan results, tokens, and transients are removed from the database.

Can I customize which taxonomies are high/medium/low priority?

Yes. Use the msa_taxonomy_tier filter:

add_filter( 'msa_taxonomy_tier', function( $tier, $taxonomy, $post ) {
    if ( $taxonomy === 'brand' ) return 'high';
    return $tier;
}, 10, 3 );

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Contributors & Developers

“Simplicity SEO Audit” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

Contributors

Translate “Simplicity SEO Audit” into your language.

Interested in development?

Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.

Changelog

1.2.1

  • Plugin Check / review: removed set_time_limit() calls from the scanner
  • Plugin Check / review: HTML export loads CSS via wp_enqueue_style() / wp_print_styles(), not echoed style or link tags
  • Updated Tested up to: 7.0

1.2.0

  • Full internationalization — English default with Greek translation included
  • All UI strings are now translatable via standard WordPress i18n
  • Added languages/ directory with .pot template and Greek .po/.mo files
  • Fixed CORS headers for REST API (moved to rest_pre_serve_request filter)
  • Performance: cached site counter results to eliminate duplicate DB queries
  • Performance: cached SEO plugin detection per request
  • Performance: replaced ORDER BY RAND() with PHP shuffle for faster URL sampling
  • Added scan duration notice (“This may take 1–3 minutes…”)
  • Fixed singular/plural for “pages need improvement”
  • Improved CTA copy and label consistency across dashboard and export

1.1.0

  • Added rendered HTML analysis — pages are fetched like a search engine, detecting theme H1s, page builder content, and shortcode output
  • Added taxonomy-aware tiered scoring — product attributes get zero penalty, tags half penalty, categories full weight
  • Fixed scoring to use ratio-based calculation instead of cumulative penalties — scores now reflect actual percentage of pages with issues
  • Fixed Unicode word counting — Greek and other non-Latin languages are now counted correctly
  • Added HTML report export button in the dashboard
  • Added “X pages need improvement” messages on each check
  • Added score cap at 99 when issues exist — 100 means truly perfect
  • Fixed admin notices from other plugins overlapping the dashboard
  • Added uninstall.php to zip for clean data removal
  • Improved content area extraction with semantic HTML selectors (main, article, role=”main”)
  • Heading and internal links checks now skip taxonomy terms (theme-generated, not editorial)
  • Duplicate detection skips low-priority taxonomy terms

1.0.0

  • Initial release
  • 17 SEO checks (10 content + 7 technical)
  • 4-batch scanning process for up to 200 pages
  • Weighted scoring with letter grades
  • WooCommerce and taxonomy term support
  • REST API with token authentication
  • Yoast SEO, Rank Math, and SEOPress integration
  • Proportional sampling across content types
  • Noindex page filtering

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