WordPress Integration Guide
Auto-publish SEO Sniper articles to your WordPress site as native WP posts. Compatible with self-hosted WordPress and WordPress.com Business+ plans.
Prerequisites
WordPress 5.6+ (REST API enabled)
Application Passwords were added in WP 5.6 and are on by default. Most managed WordPress hosts (Kinsta, WP Engine, etc.) leave them on.
Author, Editor, or Administrator role
The WordPress user you connect must be able to create posts. Subscriber / Contributor roles aren't enough.
HTTPS on your WP site
Application Password auth is rejected over plain HTTP.
Connect from SEO Sniper
Create a WordPress Application Password
In your WordPress admin panel, open Users → Profile → Application Passwords (scroll to the bottom of your profile page). Type a name like “SEO Sniper” and click Add New Application Password. WordPress shows a one-time password that looks like xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx.
Copy this password immediately — WordPress only shows it once. The spaces are part of the password.
Paste credentials into SEO Sniper
Go to Settings → Integrations → WordPress Connection in the SEO Sniper dashboard. Enter:
- Your WordPress site URL — e.g.
https://yoursite.com(no trailing slash) - The WordPress username (not email)
- The Application Password you just generated
Click “Test Connection”
SEO Sniper will round-trip a request against your WordPress REST API to confirm the credentials work. On success, the status badge flips to Connected.
Install the optional Meta Bridge plugin
If you use Yoast, AIOSEO, RankMath, or SEOPress and want SEO Sniper to populate the SEO title / description fields those plugins manage, install the SEO Sniper Meta Bridge plugin from the WordPress Plugin Directory. SEO Sniper auto-detects it on every connection test — no configuration needed in the plugin itself.
Without the Meta Bridge plugin, posts still publish successfully but SEO meta fields managed by Yoast/AIOSEO/RankMath/SEOPress won't be populated — your articles will use WordPress's default meta tags instead.
Optional Settings
Default post status (draft or publish)
Set whether pushed articles arrive in WordPress as drafts (so you can review before going live) or as immediately-published posts.
Default category
Assign every pushed article to a specific WordPress category by default.
Send keywords as tags
Toggle on to copy each article's target keywords into WordPress post tags.
What Gets Synced
Post content as native WordPress HTML
Body is pre-styled with your selected article style so it renders the same on WordPress as it does on the SEO Sniper preview.
SEO meta (with Meta Bridge plugin)
Yoast, AIOSEO, RankMath, and SEOPress fields are populated from each article's metaTitle / metaDescription. After every push, the plugin rebuilds indexables so the SEO data shows up immediately.
Featured image
Uploaded to your WordPress media library with alt text and attached as the post's featured image.
Categories & tags
Default category from your settings, plus keywords as tags if enabled.
Retry on transient failures
Failed pushes are automatically retried every 30 minutes with exponential backoff. Persistent failures surface as in-app notifications.
H1 stripped from body
WordPress renders the post title separately, so we strip the leading
<h1>from pushed HTML to avoid duplicate headings.
Troubleshooting
“Application Passwords are disabled”
Some security plugins (Wordfence, Sucuri) disable Application Passwords by default. Either enable them in the plugin settings or whitelist the WP REST API endpoint.
401 Unauthorized on Test Connection
Most common causes: typo in the username (use the WP login name, not email); password copied without the spaces; site is on plain HTTP; or a security plugin blocking the REST API.
Posts appear but SEO meta fields are blank
The Meta Bridge plugin isn't installed or activated. Install it from your WP admin under Plugins → Add New → search “SEO Sniper Meta Bridge”, then click Test Connection again — SEO Sniper auto-detects the plugin on every test.
Formatting looks off on the published post
Your WordPress theme may strip or override certain CSS. Either pick a different article styling template in SEO Sniper, or write custom CSS scoped to article posts in your theme.
Prefer to pull articles instead of pushing?
If you'd rather have your WordPress site pull articles from SEO Sniper via REST API (e.g. for a custom theme, a wp_remote_get cron, or a build pipeline), use the public REST API instead of this connection.
REST API Reference