Lightweight SEO for WordPress — no bloat, no upsells, just what you need.

Essential SEO in ~1,500 lines of PHP: meta tags, Open Graph, Twitter Cards, XML sitemaps, Schema/JSON-LD markup, canonical URLs, and per-post SEO fields with live preview.

• WordPress 6.0+
• PHP 7.4+

cp -r lean-seo /path/to/wp-content/plugins/
wp plugin activate lean-seo

Zero configuration required — activate and it works.

• Meta Tags — Title, description, Open Graph, Twitter Cards
• XML Sitemaps — Auto-generated, paginated for large sites (1000 posts per page)
• Schema/JSON-LD — WebSite, Organization, Article, BreadcrumbList
• Canonical URLs — Proper canonicalization
• Per-Post SEO — Custom title/description meta box with live preview

// Custom description for special pages
add_filter( 'lean_seo_custom_description', function( $desc ) {
    if ( is_page( 'special' ) ) return 'Custom description';
    return $desc;
} );

// Default OG image fallback
add_filter( 'lean_seo_default_image', function( $url ) {
    return 'https://example.com/default.jpg';
} );

// Add post types to the SEO meta box
add_filter( 'lean_seo_meta_box_post_types', function( $types ) {
    $types[] = 'product';
    return $types;
} );

// Add custom sitemaps to the index
add_action( 'lean_seo_sitemap_index', function() {
    echo '<sitemap><loc>' . home_url( '/custom.xml' ) . '</loc></sitemap>';
} );

Lean SEO registers abilities via the WordPress Abilities API (wp_abilities_api_init) for programmatic SEO management:

The audit checks title length, description length, word count, heading structure, internal/external links, image count, and alt text coverage — returning a 0–100 score with actionable issue details.

Version constant mismatch: The plugin header declares version 1.0.1 but LEAN_SEO_VERSION is defined as 1.0.0. This is cosmetic and does not affect functionality.

Why not Yoast? Lean SEO does the same essential work in ~1,500 lines vs. megabytes. No configuration wizard, no upsells, no admin bloat.

Does it work with custom post types? Yes. Use the lean_seo_meta_box_post_types filter to add SEO fields to any post type.

License: GPL-2.0+ Author: Sarai Chinwag for Extra Chill