Dec 15 2025
WooCommerce Is Integrating Agentic AI Capabilities via @sejournal, @martinibuster

WooCommerce announced that it will roll out integration with Stripe’s Agentic Commerce Suite, which will enable AI shopping assistants to conduct transactions.

Agentic AI Shopping

Agentic AI seems a long way off but OpenAI currently supports end-to-end shopping from the discovery and comparison stages to completing purchases. With the rollout in WooCommerce the infrastructure will be in place to enable over four million stores to be accept product browsing and payments through AI agents.

Stripe Agentic Commerce Suite

Stripe’s Agentic Commerce Suite uses the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), an open source protocol jointly created by Stripe and OpenAI. ACP is model agnostic and does not lock in users to any particular payment provider.

ACP is compatible with the Model Context Protocol (MCP) which was created by Anthropic initially for connecting AI models to external data. The significance is that MCP enables models to call APIs, retrieve data, and perform actions.

According to the official WooCommerce announcement:

“WooCommerce is proud to be a launch partner. Woo merchants will be among the first to benefit when Agentic Commerce Suite rolls out in the coming months.

This is a significant moment for WooCommerce merchants. Instead of building custom integrations for every new AI shopping assistant or platform, you’ll be able to connect your product catalog once and reach customers shopping through whichever AI agent they prefer. Stripe handles discovery, checkout, payments, and fraud protection, while you continue using your existing WooCommerce + Stripe stack.”

This represents a step toward putting the necessary infrastructure in place to enable consumers to interact with AI as part of a new shopping experience. The very near future may see a dramatic change in shopping habits, something SEOs and merchants will have to consider.

Featured Image by Shutterstock/TarikVision

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Dec 11 2025
WordPress Meets Vibe Coding: White-Labeled Platform & API For Search-Ready AI Websites

This post was sponsored by 10Web. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.

Not long ago, building a website meant a discovery call, a proposal, a sitemap, and a few weeks of back and forth. Today, we go from “I need a website” to “Why isn’t it live yet?” People are getting used to typing a short prompt and seeing an entire site structure, design, and a first-draft of their site in minutes. That doesn’t replace all the strategy, UX, or growth work, but it changes expectations about how fast the first version should appear, and how teams work.

This shift puts pressure on everyone who sits between the user and the web: agencies, MSPs, hosting companies, domain registrars, and SaaS platforms. If your users can get an AI-generated site somewhere else in a few clicks, you better catch the wave or be forgotten.

That’s why the real competition is moving to those who control distribution and can embed an AI-native, white-label builder directly into products. WordPress still powers over 43% of all websites globally, and remains the default foundation for many of these distribution players.

Now that AI-native builders, reseller suites, and website builder APIs are available on top of WordPress, who will own that experience and the recurring revenue that comes with it.

AI & Vibe Coding Is Turning Speed-To-Launch Into a Baseline 

AI site builders and vibe coding tools have taught people a new habit: describe what you want, get a working draft of a site almost immediately.

Instead of filling out long briefs and waiting for mockups, users can:

  • Type or paste a business description,
  • Point to a few example sites,
  • Click generate,
  • And see a homepage, key inner pages, and placeholder copy appear in minutes.

For non-technical users, this is magic. For agencies and infrastructure providers, it’s a new kind of pressure. The baseline expectation has become seeing something live quickly and refining it afterward.

This demand is everywhere:

  • Small businesses want a site as soon as they buy a domain or sign up for SaaS.
  • Creators expect their website to follow them seamlessly from the tools they already use.
  • Teams inside larger organizations need landing pages and microsites created on demand, without long internal queues.

If you’re an agency, MSP, hosting provider, domain registrar, or SaaS platform, you’re now measured against that baseline, no matter what your stack was designed for. Bolting on a generic external builder isn’t enough. Users want websites inside the experience they trust and already pay you for, with your branding, your billing, and your support.

AI-native builders that are built directly into your stack are no longer a nice bonus but an essential part of your product.

With Vibe Coding Leveling The Field: What Is Your Differentiator? 

In this environment, the biggest advantage doesn’t belong to whoever ships the flashiest AI demo. It belongs to whoever owns the distribution channels:

  • Agencies and MSPs, the ground level players holding client relationships and trust.
  • Hosting and cloud providers where businesses park their infrastructure.
  • Domain registrars where the online journey starts.
  • SaaS platforms, already owning the critical data needed to reflect and sync with company websites.

These players already control the key moments when someone goes from thinking they need a website to taking action.

  • Buying a domain
  • Using a vertical SaaS product
  • Working with an MSP or agency retainer
  • Adding a new location, service, or product line

If, at those moments, the platform automatically provides an AI-generated, editable site under the same login, billing, and support, the choice of stack is made by default. Users simply stay with the builder that’s already built into the service or product they use.

This is why white-label builders, reseller suites, and website builder APIs matter. They give distribution owners the opportunity to:

  • Brand the website experience as their own
  • Decide on the underlying technology (e.g., AI-native WordPress)
  • Bundle sites with hosting, marketing, or other services
  • Keep the recurring revenue and data inside their ecosystem

In other words, as AI pushes the web toward instant presence, distribution owners who embed website creation into their existing flows become the gatekeepers of which tools, stacks, and platforms win.

How To Connect WordPress Development, SEO & Vibe Coding

For most distribution owners, WordPress is still the safest base to standardize on. It powers a huge share of the web, has a deep plugin and WooCommerce ecosystem, and a large talent pool, which makes it easier to run thousands of sites without being tied to a single vendor. Its open-source nature also allows full rebranding and custom flows, exactly what white-label providers need, while automated provisioning, multisite, and APIs make it a natural infrastructure layer for branded site creation at scale. The missing piece has been a truly AI-native, generation-first builder. The latest AI-powered WordPress tools are closing that gap and expanding what distribution owners can offer out of the box.

Use AI-Native WordPress & White Label Embeddable Solutions

Most of the visible WordPress innovation around AI and websites has happened in standalone AI builders or coding assistants, relying on scattered plugins and lightweight helpers. The CMS is solid, but the first version of a site is still mostly assembled by hand.

AI-native WordPress builders move AI into the core flow: from intent straight to a structured, production-ready WordPress site in one step. In 10Web’s case, Vibe for WordPress is the first to bring Vibe Coding to the market with a React front end and deep integrations with WordPress. As opposed to previous versions of the builder or other website builders working off of generic templates and content, Vibe for WordPress allows the customer to have unlimited freedom during and after website generation via chat based AI and using natural language.

For distribution owners, AI only matters if it is packaged in a way they can sell, support, and scale. At its core, the 10Web’s White Label solution is a fully white-labeled AI website builder and hosting environment that partners brand as their own, spanning the dashboard, onboarding flows, and even the WordPress admin experience.

Instead of sending customers to a third-party tool, partners work in a multi-tenant platform where they can:

  • Brand the entire experience (logo, colors, custom domain).
  • Provision and manage WordPress sites, hosting, and domains at scale.
  • Package plans, track usage and overages, and connect their own billing and SSO.

In practice, a telco, registrar, or SaaS platform can offer AI-built WordPress websites under its own brand without building an editor, a hosting stack, or a management console from scratch.

APIs and White-Label: Quickly Code New Sites Or Allow Your Clients To Feel In Control

There is one fine nuance, yet so important. Speed alone isn’t a deciding factor on who wins the next wave of web creation. Teams that can wire that speed directly into their distribution channels and workflows will be the first to the finish line.

The White label platforms and APIs are two sides of the same strategy. The reseller suite gives partners a turnkey, branded control center; the API lets them take the same capabilities and thread them through domain purchase flows, SaaS onboarding, or MSP client portals.

From there, partners can:

  • Generate sites and WooCommerce stores from prompts or templates.
  • Provision hosting, domains, and SSL, and manage backups and restore points via API.
  • Control plugins, templates, and vertical presets so each tenant or region gets a curated, governed stack.
  • Pull usage metrics, logs, and webhooks into their own analytics and billing layers.

For MSPs and agencies treating websites as a packaged, recurring service, see more predictable revenue and stickier client relationships. They bake “website included” into retainers, care plans, and bundles, using white-label reseller dashboard to keep everything under their own brand.

As for SaaS platform and vertical solutions, instead of just giving partners a branded dashboard, 10Web’s Website Builder API lets them embed AI-powered WordPress site creation and lifecycle management directly into their own products. At a high level, it’s a white-label AI builder you plug in via API so your users can create production-ready WordPress sites and stores in under a minute, without ever leaving your app.

In this model, when someone buys a domain, signs up for a SaaS tool, or comes under an MSP contract, they experience the AI website Builder as a built-in part of the product. And the distribution owner, armed with white-label and API tools, is the one who captures the recurring value of that relationship.

The Next Wave

WordPress remains the foundation distribution owners trust, the layer they know can scale from a single landing page to thousands of client sites. With 10Web’s  AI-native builder, reseller dashboard, and API, it isn’t playing catch-up anymore, but is quickly becoming the engine behind fast, governed, repeatable site creation.

For agencies, MSPs, cloud infrastructure providers, and SaaS platforms, that means they can sell websites as a packaged service. The winners of the next wave are the ones who wire AI-native, white-label WordPress into their distribution and turn “website included” into their default.

Unlock new revenue by selling AI. Websites, Hosting, AI Branding, AI Agents, SMB Tools, and your own services.

GET STARTED FOR FREE

Image Credits

Featured Image: Image by 10Web. Used with permission.

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Dec 4 2025
5 Reasons To Use The Internet Archive’s New WordPress Plugin via @sejournal, @martinibuster

The Internet Archive, also known as the Wayback Machine, is generally regarded as a place to view old web pages, but its value goes far beyond reviewing old pages. There are five ways that Archive.org can help a website improve their user experience and SEO. The Wayback Machine’s new WordPress plugin  makes it easy to benefit from the Internet Archive automatically.

1. Copyright, DMCA, And Business Disputes

The Internet Archive can serve as an independent timestamped record to prove ownership of content or to defend against false claims that someone else wrote the content first. The Internet Archive is an independent non-profit organization and there is no way to fake an entry, which makes it an excellent way to prove who was first to publish disputed content.

2. The Worst Case Scenario Backup

Losing the entire website content due to hardware failure, ransomware, a vulnerability, or even a datacenter fire is almost always within the realm of possibility. While it’s a best-practice to always have an up to date backup stored off the server, unforseen mistakes can happen.

The Internet Archive does not offer a way to conveniently download website content. But there are services that facilitate it. It used to be a popular technique with spammers to use these services to download the previous content from expired domains and bring them back to the web. Although I’ve not used any of these services and therefore can’t vouch for any of them, if you search around you’ll be able to find them.

3. Fix Broken Links

Sometimes a URL gets lost in a website redesign or maybe it was purposely removed but then find out later that the page is popular and people are linking to it. What do you do?

Something like this happened to me in the past where I changed domains and decided I didn’t need certain of the pages. A few years later I discovered that people were still linking to those pages because they were still useful. The Internet Archive made it easy to reproduce the old content on the new domain. It’s one way to recover the Page Rank that would otherwise have been lost.

Having old pages archived can help in reviving old pages back into the current website. But you can’t do this unless the page is archived and the new plugin makes sure that this happens for every web page.

4. Can Indicate Trustworthiness

This isn’t about search algorithms or LLMs. This is about trust with other sites and site visitors. Spammy sites tend to not be around very long. A documented history on Archive.org can be a form of proof that a site has been around for a long time. A legitimate business can point to X years of archived pages to prove that they are an established business.

5. Identify Link Rot

The Internet Archive Wayback Machine Link Fixer plugin provides an easy way to archive your web pages at Archive.org. When you publish a new page or update an older page the Wayback Machine WordPress plugin will automatically create a new archive page.

But one of the useful features of the plugin is that it automatically scans all outbound links and tests them to see if the linked pages still exist. The plugin can automatically update the link to a saved page at the Internet Archive.

The official plugin lists these features and benefits:

  • “Automatically scans for outbound links in post content
  • Checks the Wayback Machine for existing archives
  • Creates new snapshots if no archive exists
  • Redirects broken or missing links to archived versions
  • Archives your own posts on updates
  • Works on both new and existing content
  • Helps maintain long-term content reliability and SEO”

I don’t know what they mean about maintaining SEO but one benefit they don’t mention is that it keeps users happy and that’s always a plus.

Wayback Machine Is Useful For Competitor Analysis

The Internet Archive makes it so easy to see how a competitor has changed over the years. It’s also a way to catch competitors who are copying or taking “inspiration” from your content when they do their annual content refresh.

The Wayback Machine can let you see what services or products a competitor offered and how they were offered. It can also give a peek into what changed during a redesign which tells something about what their competitive priorities are.

Takeaways

  • The Internet Archive provides practical benefits for website owners beyond simply viewing old pages.
  • Archived snapshots help address business disputes, lost content, broken links, and long-term site credibility.
  • Competitor history and past site versions become easy to evaluate through Archive.org.
  • The Wayback Machine WordPress plugin automates archiving and helps manage link rot.
  • Using the Archive proactively can improve user experience and support SEO-adjacent needs, even if indirectly.

The six examples in this article show that the Internet Archive is useful for SEO, competitor research, and for improving the user experience and maintaining trust. The Internet Archive’s new WordPress plugin makes archiving and link-checking easy because it’s completely automatic. Taken together, these strengths make the Archive a useful part of keeping a website reliable, recoverable, and easier for people to use.

The Internet Archive Wayback Machine Link Fixer is a project created by Automattic and the Internet Archive, which means that it’s a high quality and trusted plugin for WordPress.

Download The Internet Archive WordPress Plugin

Check it out at the official WordPress plugin repository: Internet Archive Wayback Machine Link Fixer By Internet Archive

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Red rose 99

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Nov 21 2025
WordPress SEO Checklist: Get Ready For (Site) Launch via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

WordPress powers more than 40% of the web, and there’s a reason for that dominance. The platform combines flexibility with relative ease of use, making it accessible to beginners while offering enough depth for advanced users.

But that accessibility comes with a catch. WordPress doesn’t automatically optimize itself for search engines. Out of the box, it’s a solid foundation, but you need to configure it properly to compete in search results.

I’ve worked with WordPress for over 12 years and seen what works and what doesn’t. I’ve seen how the right hosting choice can transform site performance. I’ve watched plugins conflict and crash sites. I’ve learned which optimizations move the needle and which ones waste your time.

Like understanding your analytics, some WordPress fundamentals should be second nature if you’re serious about SEO. These aren’t temporary tactics that might work this month. They’re foundational decisions that determine whether your site can compete.

To help you set up WordPress correctly from the start, I’ve rounded up the SEO essentials that make the biggest difference. From choosing hosting that won’t tank your Core Web Vitals to selecting plugins that won’t introduce security vulnerabilities, this guide covers what matters.

Whether you’re launching your first site or managing an established publication, these fundamentals apply.

Getting The Foundation Right

WordPress maintenance can feel overwhelming, especially when you’re juggling multiple priorities.

The platform wouldn’t generate 70 million new posts each month if it were impossible to manage. But there’s a gap between “functional” and “optimized for search.”

The challenge isn’t learning to use WordPress. It’s understanding which technical decisions impact SEO and which ones don’t matter.

Over the past few years, I’ve tested different hosting environments, experimented with caching configurations, and evaluated dozens of plugins. Some changes made measurable differences in performance. Others were invisible to both users and search engines.

WordPress is ideal for SEO. No other platform offers the same combination of flexibility, plugin ecosystem, and community support. You don’t need coding skills to get started.

But SEO success doesn’t happen automatically. It requires understanding the technical foundation and making informed choices about hosting, themes, plugins, and optimization.

Here’s what matters, starting with the decisions you make before your site even goes live.

Choosing Web Hosting That Won’t Tank Your Rankings

Web hosting is the first technical decision that impacts your WordPress SEO, and it’s one of the most important.

A slow, unreliable host creates problems that no amount of optimization can fix. If your site takes ten seconds to load or goes down during traffic spikes, you’ll lose visitors and rankings.

People abandon sites that take too long to load. That’s not just a user experience problem. It’s a revenue problem.

Budget hosting can work for small personal sites, but serious publishers need hosting that can handle traffic, maintain uptime, and deliver fast page loads consistently.

Before choosing a hosting provider, evaluate these factors:

  • Plugin support and compatibility.
  • Backup frequency and restoration process.
  • Staging environment availability.
  • Bandwidth allocation.
  • Operating system (Linux vs. Windows).
  • Shared server quality and neighbors.

Understanding how hosting impacts SEO can help you make the right choice for your site’s needs.

The benefits to SEO include increased website speed, better Core Web Vitals performance, improved uptime reliability.

Web hosting for WordPress:

  • Kinsta ($35/month starting, managed WordPress hosting with server-level caching).
  • Cloudways (managed cloud hosting with excellent value).
  • SiteGround (note: renewal rates can be 3x higher than intro pricing).

Read more: Choosing A Web Hosting Provider.

Accelerating Content Delivery With CDN

A CDN (Content Delivery Network) can transform your site’s performance, especially if you have a global audience.

CDNs cache static content like images, JavaScript, and CSS on servers distributed around the world. When someone visits your site, the CDN delivers content from the server closest to them, reducing latency and speeding up page loads.

This matters for SEO because faster load times improve user experience and boost your Core Web Vitals scores. Sites with good Core Web Vitals performance tend to rank better in search results.

Many premium hosting providers now include CDN services, so check whether yours already offers this before adding a separate solution. If your host doesn’t include a CDN, several excellent options exist:

  • Cloudflare (free tier available with robust features including SSL, CDN, and DDoS protection across 310+ data centers).
  • BunnyCDN (cost-effective pay-as-you-go pricing).
  • KeyCDN (mid-tier option with strong performance).
  • Imperva CDN (formerly Incapsula, enterprise-focused with integrated security features).

Picking A Theme That Works With Search Engines

Most people choose WordPress themes based on aesthetics, which makes sense. Your site should look good.

But visual appeal shouldn’t be your only criteria. Some beautiful themes are built on bloated code that tanks your page speed. Others lack proper schema markup or responsive design.

An SEO-friendly theme combines clean code, fast load times, and proper technical implementation. These features matter more than most design elements because they directly impact how search engines crawl and rank your site.

When evaluating themes, look for these characteristics:

  • Clean and fast code. Well-written themes load faster and give search engines less to process.
  • Minimal CSS and JavaScript files. Fewer files mean fewer HTTP requests and faster page loads.
  • Simple, intuitive layout. Clear navigation helps users and search engines understand your site structure.
  • Responsive design. Mobile-friendliness is a fundamental prerequisite.
  • Schema markup support. Structured data helps search engines understand your content.

SEO-friendly WordPress themes:

  • GeneratePress ($59/year for GP Premium): Consistently rated as one of the fastest WordPress themes with minimal DOM size and lean performance.
  • Astra ($49/year for Pro): Active development with 50+ updates in the past year, lightweight design, and 1+ million active installations.
  • Kadence ($69/year for Kadence Pro): Offers a feature-rich free version with. In active development with 400,000+ installations.
  • Blocksy ($69/year for Pro): Modern, React-powered theme optimized for WordPress Full Site Editing. Lightweight install at ~27KB.
  • Divi ($89/year): Complete visual builder with extensive layout library. Divi 5 (in public beta) offers a complete rebuild with performance improvements.

Optimizing For Core Web Vitals Performance

Core Web Vitals have become the primary way hosting and theme choices impact SEO. These metrics measure how fast, stable, and responsive your website feels to users.

The three Core Web Vitals are Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Interaction to Next Paint (INP), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). INP replaced First Input Delay (FID) in March 2024, making it crucial to optimize for this newer metric.

WordPress sites have historically struggled with Core Web Vitals compared to other platforms. Recent data shows only 43.44% of WordPress sites pass Core Web Vitals assessments. But that doesn’t mean you’re doomed to poor performance.

The good news is that with the right hosting, theme, and optimization approach, you can achieve excellent Core Web Vitals scores even on WordPress.

Setting Up HTTPS & SSL Certificates

While HTTPS has been a confirmed ranking factor since 2014, its importance continues growing. HTTPS isn’t optional anymore. It’s mandatory for any site that wants to be taken seriously.

The shift to HTTPS protects user data and builds trust with visitors. Browsers now actively warn users when they visit non-HTTPS sites, which can destroy your credibility before anyone even reads your content.

Most quality hosting providers now include free SSL certificates through Let’s Encrypt. If yours doesn’t, that’s a red flag about the hosting provider itself.

Setting up HTTPS is straightforward, but you need to make sure you properly redirect all HTTP URLs to HTTPS versions. Otherwise, you risk duplicate content issues and mixed content warnings.

Choosing The Right Cache Plugin For Speed

Cache plugins can improve WordPress performance by storing static versions of your pages and serving them to visitors instead of generating each page from scratch.

The speed difference is measurable. A site that takes two seconds to load will outperform one that takes seven seconds, both in user experience and search rankings.

But not all cache plugins are created equal. Some introduce security vulnerabilities or conflicts that cause more problems than they solve.

Cache plugin options:

  • WP Rocket ($59/year, easiest to use, comprehensive features, 3+ million users).
  • LiteSpeed Cache (free, best for LiteSpeed servers, powerful server-side caching).
  • WP Fastest Cache (free/premium $49.99, highest rated at 4.9/5 stars, 1+ million users, user-friendly interface).

Important note: If you’re on premium managed hosting like Kinsta, WP Engine, or SiteGround, you don’t need a cache plugin. These hosts provide server-level caching that’s more powerful than any plugin.

W3 Total Cache can’t be recommended due to a critical security vulnerability (CVE-2024-12365) discovered in January 2025. While the vulnerability has been patched, better alternatives exist that offer superior performance and easier configuration.

Important note: If you’re on premium managed hosting like Kinsta, WP Engine, or SiteGround, you don’t need a cache plugin. These hosts provide server-level caching that’s more powerful than any plugin.

Protecting Your Site With Security Plugins

Security isn’t just about protecting your site from hackers. It’s about protecting your rankings.

When a site gets hacked, Google can remove it from search results. Even a brief security incident can tank your traffic for months. That’s why having solid security measures isn’t optional.

Security plugin options:

  • Wordfence (5+ million installations, built-in firewall, malware scanning).
  • Sucuri (700,000+ installations, comprehensive security suite).
  • Patchstack (20,000+ installations, virtual patching for vulnerabilities).

These plugins monitor your site for threats, block suspicious activity, and alert you to potential vulnerabilities before they become problems.

Installing Essential SEO Plugins

When it comes to SEO plugins, you have several excellent options. The key is picking one that matches your technical comfort level and sticking with it.

Yoast SEO remains the industry standard with 10+ million installations. It handles meta descriptions, XML sitemaps, schema markup, and provides real-time content analysis. Keep it updated to the latest version for security.

Alternative SEO plugin options:

  • Rank Math (3+ million installations, more features in free version).
  • All in One SEO (3+ million installations, good alternative approach).
  • SEOPress (300,000+ installations, lightweight, no branding in free version).
  • SureRank (30,000+ installations, new option from trusted Brainstorm Force).

These plugins handle the technical SEO basics that every WordPress site needs. They generate XML sitemaps, add meta descriptions and title tags, insert schema.org structured data, and provide ways to manage internal linking and redirects.

Submitting Your XML Sitemap

Getting your XML sitemap submitted to Google Search Console should be one of your first tasks after launching your WordPress site.

Your sitemap tells search engines which pages exist on your site and how they’re organized. Without it, search engines have to discover your content on their own, which can be slow and incomplete.

Most SEO plugins generate your XML sitemap automatically. You’ll typically find it at [yoursite.com/sitemap.xml] or [yoursite.com/sitemap_index.xml].

Once you have your sitemap URL, log into Google Search Console and submit it under the Sitemaps section. This helps Google crawl your site more efficiently and index your pages faster.

Setting Up Permalinks Correctly

Good news! WordPress now uses SEO-friendly permalinks by default.

The platform changed its default permalink structure in WordPress 4.2 to use the post name structure (example.com/post-name/), which is SEO-friendly right out of the box.

If you’re working with an older site or someone changed this setting, verify your permalink structure. Go to Settings → Permalinks and make sure you’re using Post Name structure rather than the outdated Plain option (?p=123).

For existing sites with the old structure, changing permalinks requires setting up 301 redirects to avoid broken links. This is technical work that’s worth getting right, but it’s not something you should rush into without proper planning.

Optimizing Images For Speed And SEO

WordPress makes image optimization straightforward. You can add alt text and manage image metadata without touching code.

Image optimization recommendations:

  • Name your image files with descriptive, keyword-rich phrases before uploading.
  • Write descriptive alt text that explains what the image shows.
  • Include your brand name in image metadata when appropriate.

Modern browsers support WebP and AVIF image formats, which can reduce file sizes by 25-35% compared to JPEG without quality loss. Converting your images to these formats is recommended for optimal Core Web Vitals scores.

Several plugins can handle automatic conversion and optimization, or you can convert images before uploading.

Configuring Your Robots.txt File

Misconfigured robots.txt files are surprisingly common, and they can block search engines from indexing your most important content.

Robots.txt is a file that tells search engines which parts of your site to crawl and which to ignore. It’s a simple concept that gets complicated fast when you start blocking the wrong things.

Robots.txt best practises:

  • Block unnecessary areas: Disallow the /wp-admin/ directory to prevent search engines from crawling backend pages.
  • Keep valuable content open: Ensure that important site sections remain crawlable so your pages can be indexed.
  • Include your sitemap: Add your XML sitemap URL at the end of the file to help search engines discover your content efficiently.

The key is not blocking things you want indexed. That sounds obvious, but it’s surprisingly common to see sites accidentally blocking their entire blog or important category pages.

Maintaining Your WordPress Installation

Setting up WordPress correctly is only half the battle. Ongoing maintenance protects your SEO investment and prevents small issues from becoming major problems.

Regular maintenance tasks like fixing broken links and backing up your site aren’t glamorous work. But neglecting them can wipe out months or years of optimization effort.

The good news is that maintenance doesn’t need to be time-consuming. A few strategic tasks performed regularly keep your site healthy and your rankings stable.

Backing Up Your Site Regularly

Regular backups protect your site. A single security incident or server failure can wipe out years of work.

The frequency of your backups should match your publishing schedule. Daily backups make sense for active sites. Weekly or monthly backups work for sites that update less frequently.

Backup recommendations:

  • Use cPanel for backups if you’re comfortable with server administration.
  • Install a plugin like Backup Buddy, UpdraftPlus, or Duplicator Pro for automated backups.
  • Check whether your hosting provider includes automatic daily backups before adding a plugin.

The backup method matters less than having one. Choose the approach that fits your technical comfort level and stick with it.

Looking Forward

Keeping up with WordPress technology can feel like a full-time job. Between new plugins, constant updates, and changing SEO best practices, even seasoned users can get overwhelmed.

But the fundamentals never change. A fast, secure, well-maintained site built on solid hosting, a clean theme, and optimized content will always outperform one that isn’t.

WordPress continues to be the most flexible and scalable platform for building sites that rank, if you put the right foundation in place. The strategies in this guide give you everything you need to do exactly that.

More Resources:

Featured Image: ImageFlow/Shutterstock

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Nov 13 2025
Why WordPress 6.9 Abilities API Is Consequential And Far-Reaching via @sejournal, @martinibuster

WordPress 6.9, scheduled for release on December 2, 2025, is shipping with a new Abilities API that introduces a new system designed to make advanced AI-driven functionality possible for themes and plugins. The new Abilities API will standardize how plugins, themes, and core describe what they can do in a format that humans and machines can understand.

This positions WordPress sites to be understood and used more reliably by AI agents and automation tools, since the Abilities API provides the structured information those systems need to interact with site functionality in a predictable way.

The Abilities API is designed to address a long-standing issue in WordPress: functionality has been scattered across custom functions, AJAX handlers, and plugin-specific implementations. According to WordPress, the purpose of the API is to provide a common way for WordPress core, plugins, and themes to describe what they can do in a standardized, machine-readable form.

This approach enables discoverability, clear validation, and predictable execution wherever an ability originates. By centralizing the description and exposure of capabilities, the Abilities API provides a centralized way to describe functionality that might otherwise be scattered across different implementations.

What An Ability Is

The announcement defines an “ability” as a self-contained unit of functionality that includes its inputs, outputs, permissions, and execution logic. This structure allows abilities to be managed as separate pieces of functionality rather than fragments buried in theme or plugin code. WordPress explains that registering abilities through the API lets developers define permission checks, execution callbacks, and validation requirements, ensuring predictable behavior wherever the ability is used. By replacing isolated functions with defined units, WordPress creates a clearer and more open system for interacting with its features.

What Developers Gain From Abilities API

Developers gain several advantages by registering functionality as abilities. According to the announcement, abilities become discoverable through standardized interfaces, which means they can be queried, listed, and inspected across different contexts. Developers can organize them into categories, validate inputs and outputs, and apply permission rules that define who or what can execute them. The announcement notes that one benefit is automatic exposure through REST API endpoints under the wp-abilities/v1 namespace. This setup shifts WordPress from custom-coded actions to a system where functionality is defined in a consistent and reachable way.

Abilities Best Practices

One of the frustrating paint points for WordPress users is when a plugin or theme conflicts with another one. This happens for a variety of reasons but in the case of the Abilities API, WordPress has created a set of rules that should help prevent conflicts and errors.

WordPress explains the practices:

Ability names should follow these practices:

  • Use namespaced names to prevent conflicts (e.g., my-plugin/my-ability)
  • Use only lowercase alphanumeric characters, dashes, and forward slashes
  • Use descriptive, action-oriented names (e.g., process-payment, generate-report)
  • The format should be namespace/ability-name

Abilities API

The Abilities API introduces three components that work together to provide a complete system for registering and interacting with abilities.

1. The first is a PHP API for registering, managing, and executing abilities.

2. The second is automatic REST API exposure, which ensures that abilities can be accessed through endpoints without extra developer effort.

3. The third is a set of new hooks that help developers integrate with the system. These components, according to the announcement, bring consistency to how abilities are described and executed, forming a base described in the announcement as a consistent way to register and execute abilities.

The Abilities API is guided by several design goals that help it function as a long-term foundation.

Discoverability
Discoverability is a central goal, allowing every ability to be listed, queried, and inspected.

Interoperability
Interoperability is also emphasized, as the uniform schema lets different parts of WordPress create workflows together.

Security
Security is a part of the new API by design with permission checks defining who and what can invoke abilities.

Part Of The AI Building Blocks Initiative

The Abilities API is not an isolated change but part of the AI Building Blocks initiative meant to prepare WordPress for AI-driven workflows. The announcement explains that this system provides the base for AI agents, automation tools, and developers to interact with WordPress in a predictable way.
Abilities are machine-readable and exposed in the same manner across PHP, REST, and planned interfaces, and the announcement describes them as usable across those contexts. The Abilities API provides the metadata that AI agents and automation tools can use to understand and work with WordPress functionality.

The introduction of the Abilities API in WordPress 6.9 potentially marks a huge change in how functionality is organized, described, and accessed across the platform. By creating a standardized system for defining abilities and exposing them in different contexts, WordPress introduces a system that positions WordPress to be in the forefront of future AI innovations for years to come. This is a big and consequential update to WordPress that will be here in a few short weeks.

Featured Image by Shutterstock/AntonKhrupinArt

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
seo enhancements
Nov 13 2025
SEO Basics: What is link building?

Link building is an essential part of SEO. It helps search engines find, understand, and rank your pages. You can write the perfect post, but if search engines cannot follow at least one link to it, your content may stay hidden from view.

Table of Contents

  1. What is link building?
  2. What is a link?
  3. Internal and external links
  4. Anchor text and why it matters
  5. Why we build links
  6. Link building as digital PR
  7. Link quality over quantity
  8. Avoid shady link-building tactics
  9. How to earn high-quality links
  10. Link building in the era of AI and LLM search
  11. Examples of effective link building
  12. In conclusion
  13. TL;DR

For Google to discover your pages, you need links from other websites. The more relevant and trustworthy those links are, the stronger your reputation becomes. In this guide, we explain what link building means in 2025, how it connects to digital PR, and how AI-driven search now evaluates trust and authority.

If you are new to SEO, check out our Beginner’s guide to SEO for a complete overview.

A link, or hyperlink, connects one page on the internet to another. It helps users and search engines move between pages.

For readers, links make it easy to explore related topics. For search engines, links act like roads, guiding crawlers to discover and index new content. Without inbound links, a website can be difficult for search engines to find or evaluate.

You can learn more about how search engines navigate websites in our article on site structure and SEO.

In HTML, a link looks like this:

Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress

The first part contains the URL, and the second part is the clickable text, called the anchor text. Both parts matter for SEO and user experience, because they tell both people and search engines what to expect when they click.

There are two main types of links that affect SEO. Internal links connect pages within your own website, while external links come from other websites and point to your pages. External links are often called backlinks.

Both types of links matter, but external links carry more authority because they act as endorsements from independent sources. Internal linking, however, plays a crucial role in helping search engines understand how your content fits together and which pages are most important.

To learn more about structuring your site effectively, see our guide to internal linking for SEO.

Anchor text and why it matters

The anchor text describes the linked page. Clear, descriptive anchor text helps users understand where a link will take them and gives search engines more context about the topic.

For example, “SEO copywriting guide” is much more useful and meaningful than “click here.” The right anchor text improves usability, accessibility, and search relevance. You can optimize your own internal linking by using logical, topic-based anchors.

For more examples, read our anchor text best practices guide.

Link building is the process of earning backlinks from other websites. These links act as votes of confidence, signaling to search engines that your content is valuable and trustworthy.

Search engines like Google still use backlinks as a key ranking signal, but the focus has shifted away from quantity and toward quality and context. A single link from an authoritative, relevant site can be worth far more than dozens from unrelated or low-quality sources.

Good link building is about creating genuine connections, not collecting as many links as possible. When people share your content because they find it useful, you gain visibility, credibility, and referral traffic. These benefits reinforce one another, helping your brand stand out both in traditional search and in AI-driven environments where authority and reputation matter most.

In 2025, link building has evolved into a form of digital PR. Instead of focusing purely on SEO tactics, marketers now use link building to boost brand visibility and credibility.

Digital PR revolves around storytelling, relationship-building, and public exposure. A successful strategy might involve pitching articles or insights to journalists, collaborating with bloggers, or publishing original research that earns citations across the web. When your business appears in trusted media or professional communities, you gain not just backlinks but also brand mentions and citations that reinforce your authority.

Citations are particularly important in today’s search landscape. They are references to your brand or content, even without a clickable link. Search engines and AI systems treat them as indicators of credibility, especially when they appear on reputable sites. Combined with consistent author information and structured data, they help demonstrate your E-E-A-T—Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.

You can learn more about building brand authority in our article on E-E-A-T and SEO.

Not all links are created equal. A high-quality backlink from a well-respected, topic-relevant website has far more impact than multiple links from small or unrelated sites.

Consider a restaurant owner who earns a link from The Guardian’s food section. That single editorial mention is far more valuable than a dozen random directory links. Google recognizes that editorial links earned for merit are strong signals of expertise, while low-effort links from unrelated pages carry little or no value.

High-quality backlinks usually come from sites with strong reputations, clear editorial standards, and engaged audiences. They fit naturally within content and make sense to readers. Low-quality links, on the other hand, can make your site appear manipulative or untrustworthy. Building authority takes time, but the reward is a reputation that search engines and users can rely on.

Read more about this long-term approach in our post on holistic SEO.

Because earning good links can take time, some site owners resort to shortcuts like buying backlinks, using link farms, or participating in private blog networks. These tactics may offer quick results, but they violate Google’s spam policies and can trigger severe penalties.

When a site’s link profile looks unnatural or manipulative, Google may reduce its visibility or remove it from results altogether. Recovering from such penalties can take months. It is far safer to focus on ethical, transparent methods. Quality always lasts longer than trickery.

The best way to earn strong backlinks is to produce content that others genuinely want to reference. Start by understanding your audience and their challenges. Once you know what they are looking for, create content that provides clear answers, unique insights, or helpful tools.

For example, publishing original data or research can attract links from journalists and educators. Creating detailed how-to guides or case studies can draw links from blogs and businesses that want to cite your expertise. You can also build relationships with people in your industry by commenting on their content, sharing their work, and offering collaboration ideas.

Newsworthy content is another proven approach. Announce a product launch, partnership, or study that has real value for your audience. When you provide something genuinely useful, you will find that links and citations follow naturally.

Structured data also plays a growing role. By using Schema markup, you help search engines understand your brand, authors, and topics, making it easier for them to connect mentions of your business across the web.

For a more detailed approach, visit our step-by-step guide to link building.

Search is evolving quickly. Systems like Google Gemini, ChatGPT, and Perplexity no longer rely solely on backlinks to determine authority. They analyze the meaning and connections behind content, paying attention to context, reputation, and consistency.

In this new landscape, links still matter, but they are part of a wider ecosystem of trust signals. Mentions, structured data, and author profiles all contribute to how search and AI systems understand your expertise. This means that link building is now about being both findable and credible.

To stay ahead, make sure your brand and authors are clearly represented across your site. Use structured data to connect your organization, people, and content. Keep your messaging consistent wherever your brand appears. When machines and humans can both understand who you are and what you offer, your chances of visibility increase.

You can read more about how structured data supports this process in our guide to Schema and structured data.

There are many ways to put link building into action. A company might publish a research study that earns coverage from major industry blogs and online magazines. A small business might collaborate with local influencers or community organizations that naturally reference its website. Another might produce in-depth educational content that other professionals use as a trusted resource.

Each of these examples shares the same principle: links are earned because the content has genuine value. That is the foundation of successful link building. When people trust what you create and see it as worth sharing, search engines take notice too.

In conclusion

Link building remains one of the strongest ways to build visibility and authority. But in 2025, success depends on more than collecting backlinks. It depends on trust, consistency, and reputation.

Think of link building as part of your digital PR strategy. Focus on creating content that deserves attention, build relationships with credible sources, and communicate your expertise clearly. The combination of valuable content, ethical outreach, and structured data will help you stand out across both Google Search and AI-driven platforms.

When you build for people first, the right links will follow.

TL;DR (2025 Version)

Link building means earning links from other websites to show search engines that your content is credible and valuable. In 2025, it is part of digital PR, focused on relationships, trust, and reputation rather than quantity.

AI-driven search now looks at citations, structured data, and contextual relevance alongside backlinks. Focus on quality, clarity, and authority to build long-term visibility online.

Ethical link building remains one of the best ways to grow your brand’s reach and reputation in search.

Avatar of Brendan Reid
Brendan Reid

Brendan is a seasoned writer with a particular interest in SMEs. What he really enjoys is being able to provide real, actionable steps that can be taken today to start making business better for everyone.

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Nov 10 2025
Automattic Disputes Use Of Word “Automatic” For WordPress Product via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Lawyers representing Automattic, the for-profit founded by WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg, sent a trademark complaint letter to WordPress developer Kevin Geary, asking him to rebrand his WordPress CSS framework, which is currently named Automatic.css, claiming that the similarity to Mullenweg’s Automattic could lead to consumer confusion.

The letter caught some in the WordPress industry by surprise, since Geary had months ago shown good-faith compliance after Mullenweg tweeted a request for Geary to place a disclaimer in the footer of Automatic.css.

Screenshot Of Mullenweg’s July 2025 Tweet To Geary

Kevin Geary

Kevin Geary is a well-liked and popular member of the WordPress developer community since 2005. He’s currently developing a WordPress page builder called EtchWP (currently in Alpha stage) and is behind the well-received CSS framework called Automatic CSS (ACSS). ACSS is a CSS framework that simplifies design consistency within a website, easiliy integrating with page builders like Bricks, Gutenberg, and Oxygen which are popular within the web design community.

A YouTube video and accompanying article from a year ago caused a stir because he documented himself trying to use WordPress’s native Block Editor and coming away from the experience with a large list of issues that need fixing.

He wrote about the Gutenberg workflow:

“Is this the “for everyone” experience? Is this the true vision of the WordPress block editor? …it’s wildly inefficient and impractical.”

Elsewhere he noted that most people are confused about what Gutenberg is supposed to be, citing results of an informal poll of his Twitter followers showing disagreement whether it’s supposed to be a page builder or not.

He concluded:

“It’s NOT for:

Beginner web developers who want to learn how to build websites.

Intermediate web developers who want to build custom websites.

Advanced web developers who want to build custom websites.

Most agencies & freelancers (unless they’re committed to building custom blocks).

I want to like it, I really do. As it stands now, though, the only viable way to use the block editor to build a custom site is with third-party tools. Native ain’t cutting it.”

All of this is to say that Geary is a passionate supporter of WordPress, even when he criticizes the block editor or the “tragedy of the commons” support model underlying WordPress.

Automattic’s Letter To Geary

Geary tweeted a copy of the letter sent to him in which Mullenweg’s lawyers asked him to rebrand his WordPress CSS framework.

Part of the letter stated:

“We represent Automattic Inc. in intellectual property matters. As you know, our client owns and operates a wide range of software brands and services, including the very popular web building and hosting platform WordPress.com. Automattic is also well-known for its longtime and extensive contributions to the WordPress system.

Our client owns many trademark registrations for its Automattic mark covering those types of services and software. As a result of our client’s extensive marketing efforts and support of the WordPress system, consumers have come to closely associate Automattic with WordPress and its related offerings.

We are writing about your use of the name and mark Automatic (sometimes with a CSS or .CSS suffix) to provide a CSS framework specifically designed for WordPress page builders. As we hope you can appreciate, our client is concerned about your use of a nearly identical name and trademark to provide closely related WordPress services. Automattic and Automatic differ by only one letter, are phonetically identical, and are marketed to many of the same people. This all enhances the potential for consumer confusion and dilution of our client’s Automattic mark.

We assume you share Automattic’s interest in ensuring that consumers are not confused or misled by the use of nearly identical names and trademarks to provide related services in the WordPress ecosystem. To protect against any such confusion or dilution, Automattic requests that you rebrand away from using Automatic or anything similar to Automattic. I suggest that we schedule a time to discuss the logistics and a mutually agreeable transition timeline for the change. Please let me know some days and times when you are available.”

Matt Mullenweg responded to Kevin Geary’s tweet by noting that he “owns” the automatic.com domain. But that’s actually a misstatement. Nobody “owns” a domain name. A domain name can only be registered.

Mullenweg’s tweet:

“We also own http://automatic.com. You had to know this was a fraught naming area.”

To which Geary responded:

“AutomaticCSS is called “automatic” because it’s the only CSS framework that does a lot of things automatically.

Congratulations on owning the domain name for a generic term. Let me know when that fact becomes relevant.”

Social Response To Automattic’s Letter

Most of the responses to Geary’s tweet were supportive although one person questioned Geary’s use of the word Automatic, tweeting:

“Why go with “AutomaticCSS” as the name though?

Options like “AutoCSS” or even “AutomatedCSS” would have been even more suitable IMHO.

It could indeed raise the question of whether there was some other motive at play. Just sharing my thoughts!”

That tweet was the outlier, most of the responses were supportive.

Simon Zeimke tweeted:

“A letter from hell. How could a generic Term be IP?”

Lee Milroy responded:

“This is absurd, a product that has been around for 4 years is all of a sudden going to create “confusion”?

Really Matt needs to do some work… like the terrible WP Dashboard experience”

WordPress Drama

Geary hasn’t tweeted about his next move, and it’s been over a week now. Many in the WordPress community would probably prefer to see the drama fade so everyone can get back to making WordPress better.

Featured Image by Shutterstock/IgorZh

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Nov 4 2025
Kinsta Managed WordPress Host Won’t Charge For Bot Traffic via @sejournal, @martinibuster

WordPress managed web hosting company Kinsta announced that it is changing how it bills its customers by not charging users for bandwidth related to unwanted bot and scraper traffic.

Daniel Pataki, CTO at Kinsta explained:

“In the past 12 months we’ve seen bot traffic rise due to the prevalence of both good and bad uses of AI. These bots can not be filtered as effectively, modifying our typical visits-to-bandwidth ratio. We’re working internally and with Cloudflare to improve bot filtering, but our top priority remains our customers’ success. Reducing bot-related costs as quickly as possible will have the greatest impact.”

Bot And Scraper Traffic Out Of Control

Anyone who’s watched their live traffic statistics can confirm that scraper and hacker bots make up a significant amount of traffic to a website, accounting for as much as half of the bandwidth costs for a website. I still remember the time I added a forum to a content site a few years ago and purposely left it without bot protection to see how long it would take to get spammed. I didn’t have to wait long; a spam bot registered itself and started posting spam within minutes.

Kinsta is providing bandwidth-based options that don’t charge for wasted bandwidth while also providing options such as caching and CDNs that help mitigate the impact of bad bot visits.

Kinsta’s announcement explains:

“Now with bandwidth-based options, Kinsta is giving customers more choice, transparency and control in how they pay for hosting: by visits or bandwidth. Customers are not locked into a single pricing model. This is consistent with Kinsta’s long-term approach of delivering quality and building trust. The new pricing option is setting the standard for hosting by giving customers the freedom to choose how they pay, in a way that reflects how the modern web actually works.”

The new feature is available to every visitor-based tier, enables the flexibility to switch between visits and bandwidth-based, and with improved usage notifications plus no charges for scrapers and bad bots the risk of unexpectedly running out of bandwidth is lower.

Read Kinsta’s announcement:

Kinsta Launches Bandwidth-Based Pricing to Give Website Owners and Developers More Hosting Control

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Paul shuang

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Oct 27 2025
Automattic’s Legal Claims About SEO… Is This Real? via @sejournal, @martinibuster

SEO plays a role in Automattic’s counterclaim against WP Engine. The legal document mentions search engine optimization six times and SEO once as part of counterclaims asserting that WP Engine excessively used words like “WordPress” to rank in search engines as part of an “infringement” campaign that uses WordPress trademarks in commerce. A close look at those claims shows that some of the evidence may be biased and that claims about SEO rely on outdated information.

Automattic’s Claims About SEO

Automattic’s counterclaim asserts that WP Engine used SEO to rank for WordPress-related keywords and that this is causing confusion.

The counterclaim explains:

“WP Engine also has sown confusion in recent years by dramatically increasing the number of times Counterclaimants’ Marks appear on its websites. Starting in or around 2021, WP Engine began to sharply increase its use of the WordPress Marks, and starting in or around 2022, began to sharply increase its use of the WooCommerce Marks.”

Automattic next argues that the repetition of keywords on a web page is WP Engine’s SEO strategy. Here’s where their claims become controversial to those who know how search engines rank websites.

The counterclaim asserts:

“The increased number of appearances of the WordPress Marks on WP Engine’s website is particularly likely to cause confusion in the internet context.

On information and belief, internet search engines factor in the number of times a term appears in a website’s text in assessing the “relevance” of a website to the terms a user enters into the search engine when looking for websites.

WP Engine’s decision to increase the number of times the WordPress Marks appear on WP Engine’s website appears to be a conscious “search engine optimization” strategy to ensure that when internet users look for companies that offer services related to WordPress, they will be exposed to confusingly written and formatted links that take them to WP Engine’s sites rather than WordPress.org or WordPress.com.”

They call WP Engine’s strategy aggressive:

“WP Engine’s strategy included aggressive utilization of search engine optimization to use the WordPress and WooCommerce Marks extremely frequently and confuse consumers searching for authorized providers of WordPress and WooCommerce software;”

Is The Number Of Keywords Used A Ranking Factor?

I have twenty-five years of experience in search engine optimization and have a concomitantly deep understanding of how search engines rank content. The fact is that Automattic’s claim that search engines “factor in the number of times” a keyword is used in a website’s content is incorrect. Modern search engines don’t factor in the number of times a keyword appears on a web page as a ranking factor. Google’s algorithms use models like BERT to gain a semantic understanding of the meaning and intent of the keyword phrases used in search queries and content, resulting in the ability to rank content that doesn’t even contain the user’s keywords.

Those aren’t just my opinions; Google’s web page about how search works explicitly says that content is ranked according to the user’s intent, regardless of keywords, which directly contradicts Automattic’s claim about WPE’s SEO:

“To return relevant results, we first need to establish what you’re looking for – the intent behind your query. To do this, we build language models to try to decipher how the relatively few words you enter into the search box match up to the most useful content available.

This involves steps as seemingly simple as recognizing and correcting spelling mistakes, and extends to our sophisticated synonym system that allows us to find relevant documents even if they don’t contain the exact words you used.”

If Google’s documentation is not convincing enough, take a look at the search results for the phrase “Managed WordPress Hosting.” WordPress.com ranks #2, despite the phrase being completely absent from its web page.

Screenshot Of WordPress.com In Search Results

What Is The Proof?

Automattic provides a graph comparing WP Engine’s average monthly mentions of the word “WordPress” with mentions published by 18 other web hosts. The comparison of 19 total web hosts dramatically illustrates that WP Engine mentions WordPress more often than any of the other hosting providers, by a large margin.

Screenshot Of Graph

Here’s a close-up of the graph (with the values inserted) showing that WP Engine’s monthly mentions of “WordPress” far exceed the number of times words containing WordPress are used on the web pages of the other hosts.

Screenshot Of Graph Closeup

People say that numbers don’t lie, and the graph presents compelling evidence that WP Engine is deploying an aggressive use of keywords with the word WordPress in them. Leaving aside the debunked idea that keyword-term spamming actually works, a closer look at the graph comparison shows that the evidence is not so strong because it is biased.

Automattic’s Comparison Is Arguably Biased

Automattic’s counterclaim compares eighteen web hosts against WP Engine. Of those eighteen hosts, only five (including WPE) are managed WordPress hosting platforms. The remaining fourteen are generalist hosting platforms that offer cloud hosting, VPS (virtual private servers), dedicated hosting, and domain name registrations.

The significance of this fact is that the comparison can be considered biased against WP Engine because the average mention of WordPress will naturally be lower across the entire website of a company that offers multiple services (like VPS, dedicated hosting, and domain name registrations) versus a site like WP Engine that offers only one service, managed WordPress hosting.

Two of the hosts listed in the comparison, Namecheap and GoDaddy, are primarily known as domain name registrars. Namecheap is the second biggest domain name registrar in the world. There’s no need to belabor the point that these two companies in Automattic’s comparison may be biased choices to compare against WP Engine.

Of the five hosts that offer WordPress hosting, two are plugin platforms: Elementor and WPMU Dev. Both are platforms built around their respective plugins, which means that the average number of mentions of WordPress is going to be lower because the average may be diluted by documentation and blog posts about the plugins. Those two companies are also arguably biased choices for this kind of comparison.

Of the eighteen hosts that Automattic chose to compare with WP Engine, only two of them are comparable in service to WP Engine: Kinsta and Rocket.net.

Comparison Of Managed WordPress Hosts

Automattic compares the monthly mentions of phrases with “WordPress” in them, and it’s clear that the choice of hosts in the comparison biases the results against WP Engine. A fairer comparison is to compare the top-ranked web page for the phrase “managed WordPress hosting.”

The following is a comparison of the top-ranked web page for each of the three managed WordPress hosts in Automattic’s comparison list, a straightforward one-to-one comparison. I used the phrase “managed WordPress hosting” plus the domain name appended to a search query in order to surface the top-ranked page from each website and then compared how many times the word “WordPress” is used on those pages.

Here are the results:

Rocket.net

The home page of Rocket.net ranks #1 for the phrase “rocket.net managed wordpress hosting.” The home page of Rocket.net contains the word “WordPress” 21 times.

Screenshot of Google’s Search Results

Kinsta

The top ranked Kinsta page is kinsta.com/wordpress-hosting/ and that page mentions the word “WordPress” 55 times.

WP Engine

The top ranked WP Engine web page is wpengine.com/managed-wordpress-hosting/ and that page mentions the word “WordPress” 27 times.

A fair one-to-one comparison of managed WordPress host providers, selected from Automattic’s own list, shows that WP Engine is not using the word “WordPress” more often than its competitors. Its use falls directly in the middle of a fair one-to-one comparison.

Number Of Times Page Mentions WordPress

  • Rocket.net: 21 times
  • WP Engine: 27 times
  • Kinsta: 55 times

What About Other Managed WordPress Hosts?

For the sake of comparison, I compared an additional five managed WordPress hosts that Automattic omitted from its comparison to see how often the word “WordPress” was mentioned on the top-ranked web pages of WP Engine’s direct competitors.

Here are the results:

  • WPX Hosting: 9
  • Flywheel: 16
  • InstaWP: 22
  • Pressable: 23
  • Pagely: 28

It’s apparent that WP Engine’s 27 mentions put it near the upper level in that comparison, but nowhere near the level at which Kinsta mentions “WordPress.” So far, we only see part of the story. As you’ll see, other web hosts use the word “WordPress” far more than Kinsta does, and it won’t look like such an outlier when compared to generalist web hosts.

A Comparison With Generalist Web Hosts

Next, we’ll compare the generalist web hosts listed in Automattic’s comparison.

I did the same kind of search for the generalist web hosts to surface their top-ranked pages for the query “managed WordPress hosting” plus the name of the website, which is a one-to-one comparison to WP Engine.

Other Web Hosts Compared To WP Engine:

  1. InMotion Hosting: 101 times
  2. Greengeeks: 97 times
  3. Jethost: 71 times
  4. Verpex: 52 times
  5. GoDaddy: 49 times
  6. Cloudways: 47 times
  7. Namecheap: 41 times
  8. Liquidweb: 40 times
  9. Pair: 40 times
  10. Hostwinds: 37 times
  11. KnownHost: 33 times
  12. Mochahost: 33 times
  13. Panthen: 31 times
  14. Siteground: 30 times
  15. WP Engine: 27 times

Crazy, right? WP Engine uses the word “WordPress” less often than any of the other generalist web hosts. This one-to-one comparison contradicts Automattic’s graph.

And just for the record, WordPress.com’s top-ranked page wordpress.com/hosting/ uses the word “WordPress” 62 times, over twice as often as WP Engine’s web page.

Will Automattic’s SEO Claims Be Debunked?

Automattic’s claims about WP Engine’s use of SEO may be based on shaky foundations. The claims about how keywords work for SEO contradict Google’s own documentation, and the fact that WordPress.com’s own website ranks for the phrase “Managed WordPress Hosting” despite not using that exact phrase appears to debunk their assertion that search engines factor the number of times a user’s keywords are used on a web page.

The graph that Automattic presents in their counterclaim does not represent a comparison of direct competitors, which may contribute to a biased impression that WP Engine is aggressively using the “WordPress” keywords more often than competitors. However, a one-to-one comparison of the actual web pages that compete against each other for the phrase “Managed WordPress Hosting” shows that many of the web hosts in Automattic’s own list use the word “WordPress” far more often than WP Engine, which directly contradicts Automattic’s narrative.

I ran WP Engine’s Managed WordPress Hosting URL in a Keyword Density Tool, and it shows that WP Engine’s web page uses the word “WordPress” a mere 1.92% of the time, which, from an SEO point of view, could be considered a modest amount and far from excessive. It will be interesting to see how the judge decides the merits of Automattic’s SEO-related claims.

Featured Image by Shutterstock/file404

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Oct 20 2025
Mullenweg Talks About Commercially Motivating WordPress Companies via @sejournal, @martinibuster

At the recent WordCamp Canada, WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg answered a question about how individuals and agencies could support the WordPress ecosystem against “bad actors” who don’t share the same community values. The question gave Mullenweg the opportunity to portray himself as the victim of a court that’s muzzling his free speech and to encourage the WordPress community to vote with their pocketbooks.

Question About Protecting WordPress Against Bad Actors

The person asking the question had two things on their mind:

1. How can individuals and agencies help protect WordPress’s community values from exploitative or profit-driven actors?

2. Should there be a formal certification system to identify and promote ethical contributors and agencies within the ecosystem?

The question asked reinforced that the WordPress community is divided into two sides, with those who stand with Mullenweg in his dispute with WP Engine and those on the other side who disapprove of the drama.

This is the question that was asked:

“WordPress has always thrived because of its open, community-driven ethos, but as the ecosystem grows, we’re seeing more like large, profit-driven players who don’t necessarily share the values. How can individual contributors and agencies like ours actively help protect WordPress and uphold the values and ethics that have sustained it from bad actors and people who might try to exploit the community.

And do you see room for something more formal, like a certification for individuals and agencies that define what being a good actor is to help educate clients and even the market to help kind of protect in a more proactive way from those sorts of bad actors?”

The question paints assumes a polarization in the WordPress community, with the exploitative profit-seeking bad actors on one side and the ethical WordPress supporters on the other.

No Bad Actors

Matt Mullenweg began his answer by stating that he’s not one to call anyone a bad actor.

He answered:

“So first, I’ll say, I don’t want to say that there’s bad actors. I think there might be bad actions sometimes and just temporarily bad actors who hopefully will be good in the future. So, you know, every saint has a past, every sinner has a future. So I never want to define like any company or any person is like permanently good or bad. Let’s talk about actions. “

Is This You?

It was a strange way to begin his answer because he used the phrase “bad actors” in his at last years WordCamp USA that called out WP Engine:

“I think that we also just need to call out bad actors. And you got to, the only way to fight a bully is to fight them back. If you just allow them to run rampant on the playground, they’re just going to keep terrorizing everyone.”

He followed that speech with a blog post where he went further and called WP Engine a “cancer to WordPress.”

You can hear it at the 33:48 minute mark of the recording from last year’s WordCamp

Motivating Good Behavior

Mullenweg continued his answer by discussing ways to motivate companies to give back to the WordPress community while also enforcing the GPL and protecting the WordPress trademark. Lastly, he encouraged the WordPress community to vote with their wallets by spending money on companies that that are defined as “good” and giving less to businesses who are presumably defined as a bad actors.

He continued:

“So second, I think with these actions, we can start to create incentive systems. And it’s part of what we’re doing with Five for the Future, which is basically saying you contribute back, which also implies that you’re not violating the GPL or something like that.

So we’ve got the hard stuff, like if you violate the GPL, you’re gonna get a letter, violate the trademark, that is more of a legal thing, but also the gentle stuff, like how can we encourage a good behavior by giving people higher rankings in the directory or in the showcase, for example, then finally, I’ll just say vote with your wallet.”

At this point he continued with the topic of motivating companies to do the right thing and drifted off into talking about WP Engine without actually naming WP Engine.

Mullenweg continued:

“So each one of you here has the ability to strongly influence these companies. By the way, if they’re commercially motivated, great. Let’s commercially motivate them to do the right thing by giving more business to the good companies and less business to the other companies.

This has actually been happening a lot the past year. I think I can say this. There’s a site called WordPressEngineTracker.com, which is currently tracking a number of sites that have left a certain host. It’s about to crash 100,000, about to cross 100,000, that have switched to other hosts, and over 74,000 have gone offline since September of last year.

We actually used to make all this data public. It was all the whole list was on there. They got a court order, so that way the data could be fact-checked by press or other people. There was actually a court order that made us take that down. So again, trying to muzzle free speech and transparency. But we’re allowed to keep that site up, so check it out while you can.”

Mullenweg’s comments frame spending choices as a form of moral expression within the WordPress ecosystem. By urging the community to “commercially motivate” companies, he encourages consumer spending as a way of enforcing ethical accountability, implicitly targeting WP Engine and unnamed others that fall short.

He positioned himself as the victim whose free speech is muzzled, but the court order simply required him and Automattic to stop sharing a spreadsheet of WP Engine’s customers. He also framed the whole dispute as one about ethics and morals, invoking the religious imagery of sinners and saints. WordPress is both a business and a community, but it’s not a religion. So it’s somewhat odd that those connections were made in the context of contributing money or time back into WordPress, which is a cultural obligation but not a legal (or religious) one.

Watch the Q & A here:

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments