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Waggle in the WordPress Editor: SEO Fields, AEO Score, and Previews

Everything Waggle does to a single page is in one editor panel, split into four sections: SEO, AEO readiness, Indexing and Preview. Open any post or page, find Waggle in the editor sidebar, and you can write the search snippet, see how legible the page is to AI answer engines, control indexing, and preview both the Google result and the social card — without leaving the editor.

The SEO and AEO readiness panels are open by default because they’re the ones you use on every post. Indexing and Preview start collapsed.

The SEO panel: what are the character limits?

Waggle counts characters live and changes colour as you approach the limits that matter:

Field Turns amber at Turns red at
SEO Title 60 characters 70 characters
Meta Description 155 characters 165 characters

Those thresholds exist because Google truncates by pixel width, not character count, and those numbers are the practical ceilings for most Latin-script titles and descriptions. Amber means “you’re at the edge”; red means “expect truncation”.

Going over is not fatal — a truncated description still gets read, and AI answer engines don’t truncate at all. But a title that ends mid-word in the search results costs clicks.

The fields, in order

  • SEO Title — the <title> tag and the blue line in search results.
  • Meta Description — the grey summary beneath it.
  • Focus Keywords — comma-separated, for your own reference and available to agents.
  • Social title (optional) — overrides the SEO title on share cards only. Leave it empty and it falls back automatically; the placeholder tells you so.
  • Social description (optional) — same behaviour for the description.
  • Canonical URL — must be an absolute http(s) URL; Waggle validates it as you type.
  • Social Image — a media-library picker. Used on share cards instead of the featured image.

What does “Generate with AI” do?

It drafts the SEO title, meta description and focus keywords from the post’s content in one call, fills the fields, and shows a snackbar. It writes to the fields, not to the database — nothing is saved until you save the post.

If the fields already had values, the snackbar says so plainly and offers a one-click Undo:

Replaced the SEO title, description & keywords with the AI draft.

The button requires a connected AI provider. Without one it is disabled with an inline notice reading “Connect an AI provider (WordPress 7.0+) to generate SEO copy.” See connecting an AI provider.

The AEO readiness panel: what is this score?

A live score out of 100 rating how easily an AI answer engine can lift and quote this page. It is a deterministic rubric — no AI call — with one bullet per signal showing the points earned out of the points available.

The signals are: early answer, statistics, cited sources, quotations, readability, question headings, freshness, attribution and FAQ coverage. The three highest-weighted are early answer (18), cited sources (17) and statistics (16) — together nearly half the score. Full weights and the research behind them are in how Waggle scores content for AI answer engines.

Before you save a new post, the panel reads “Save the post to see its AEO score.” After that it refetches on every real save — autosaves don’t trigger it. Press Rescan to force a recount.

The panel closes with a deliberate disclaimer:

A guide to how legible this page is to AI answer engines. Write for people first.

That is not boilerplate. Writing to maximise a rubric produces worse pages; the score is there to catch omissions, not to be gamed.

The Indexing panel: two different kinds of hiding

Two toggles that sound similar and do very different things:

  • Hide from search engines — adds noindex to this page’s robots meta. Search engines drop it. The page still exists and still serves normally.
  • Hide the Markdown version — stops publishing this page’s .md variant. The HTML page is completely unaffected and still indexed.

The Markdown toggle only appears when the post type actually publishes Markdown, so you won’t see it everywhere. Its help text flips to tell you the current state. For bulk control across many pages at once, see machine files.

The Preview panel

Two mockups, both driven by the fields above:

  • Google Preview — the URL, blue title and two-line description as they’d appear in search results.
  • Social Preview — the share card, with the image resolved in order: social image → featured image → your site-wide default from SEO → Social.

Previews are illustrative. Google rewrites titles and descriptions when it judges its own version more useful, and no plugin can prevent that.

FAQ

Do I have to fill in every field?

No. Leave the SEO title empty and Waggle falls back to the post title; leave the description empty and search engines will compose their own from the page. Filling them in means you choose the wording rather than an algorithm.

Why is my AEO score low on a page I think is good?

The rubric rewards specific, extractable things — a direct answer near the top, concrete numbers, outbound citations, quotes, question-style headings. A well-written essay with none of those scores low without being bad writing. Read the per-signal bullets: each one names what’s missing.

Does the AEO score affect my Google ranking?

No. It is Waggle’s own diagnostic for answer-engine legibility, not a signal any search engine reads.

What’s the difference between the SEO title and the social title?

The SEO title goes in <title> and search results. The social title is used only on share cards — Facebook, LinkedIn, X. Set the social one only when you want the share card to say something different.

Can I set a canonical to another site?

Yes, the field accepts any absolute URL. Do so only when this page genuinely is a republication of that one, since it tells search engines to credit the other URL instead of yours.

Do agents have access to these fields?

Yes. waggle/update-seo-meta writes them and waggle/get-aeo-score reads the score, both through the WordPress Abilities API — and the write ability applies values you approved rather than inventing them.

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