WordPress SEO, from research to published
Connect WordPress with an Application Password and Opinly publishes straight to your blog — posts, images, categories and authors. Your existing content is imported on the way in, and the analytics plugin goes on over that same connection rather than a snippet you paste.
- CONNECT WITH
- An Application Password, from WordPress's own authorize screen or pasted in by hand
- OPINLY PUBLISHES
- HTML posts with their categories and excerpt, images uploaded to your media library, and SEO title and description into Rank Math or Yoast
- OPINLY IMPORTS
- Your existing posts, authors, categories and images
- ANALYTICS
- The pixel ships as a plugin — Opinly installs it for you when the connected WordPress user is an Administrator; otherwise you upload it and paste a key. WooCommerce revenue included
Connecting WordPress
The guided route never asks you to type a credential into Opinly — WordPress issues the Application Password on its own authorize screen and hands it back. If your site cannot support that, the manual route is three fields.
- 1Enter your site URL
Opinly checks that the WordPress REST API answers and that Application Passwords are available. If either check fails it tells you which one — REST API disabled, no Application Passwords, site unreachable — and switches to manual setup rather than leaving you guessing.
- 2Approve Opinly in WordPress
You land on your own WordPress authorize screen for an application named Opinly. Sign in as an Editor or Administrator, because Opinly publishes as that user. WordPress generates the Application Password itself and sends it back; Opinly stores it encrypted. No credentials are typed into Opinly at any point.
- 3Or set it up by handOPTIONAL
Pick the WordPress user Opinly publishes as — the wizard suggests a dedicated Editor, but any Editor or Administrator works, including your own account. On that user's profile, under Application Passwords, generate one named Opinly, and paste the username, the 24-character password and your site URL into the wizard. That password is not your WordPress login password.
- 4Allow-list the Opinly IP addressesOPTIONAL
If a firewall or a security plugin restricts REST API access, the wizard lists the addresses Opinly publishes from so you can permit them.
- 5Turn on the analytics plugin
Approve Opinly in WordPress and the install follows on its own: Opinly installs and activates the Opinly Analytics plugin over the REST API and writes your connect key into its settings. That needs a user allowed to install plugins — an Administrator; an Editor cannot. Set the site up by hand and nothing installs on its own — open Web Analytics in Opinly and click Enable on my site to run the same install with the credentials you saved. Where the user cannot install plugins or a host blocks remote installs, Opinly falls back to giving you the plugin and a key to paste in yourself.
What actually publishes
Including the parts that constrain you. WordPress is among the most complete of Opinly's CMS integrations, and it still has rules worth knowing before you connect.
- Posts go up as HTML
- Opinly renders the post to HTML and pushes it to your blog through a queued worker that sends from a fixed set of IP addresses — which is why the allow-list step exists.
- Images land in your media library
- In-body images are uploaded to WordPress media and the markup is rewritten to the WordPress URL. That upload runs when the image is optimised, on a background queue, not at publish — so a post published before optimisation finishes goes up pointing outside your media library until a later publish picks up the uploaded copy. The title image is different: it is uploaded on demand at publish and set as the featured image — on a new post in a follow-up call once the post exists, so themes that read the post ID see it.
- Authors come from WordPress
- Your WordPress users sync down and stay the source of truth. Authors are not created in Opinly for a WordPress site, and an author that only exists in Opinly is removed by the WordPress sync. The author is assigned to the post in a separate call, not in the publish payload.
- Categories work both ways
- Your WordPress categories sync down as folders, including hierarchy, and folders you create in Opinly are pushed up as categories on the next sync. Publishing sends the post's categories with it, so a new post lands in the category you picked rather than WordPress's default.
- Excerpt and SEO meta go with the post
- The post's Description is sent as the WordPress excerpt. If your site runs Rank Math or Yoast SEO (27.7 or newer), the Meta title and Meta description are written into that plugin's SEO title and meta description — and editing them on a live post updates WordPress without republishing the body. With any other SEO plugin, or none, they stay in Opinly.
- Tags are not supported
- WordPress tags are not part of the integration. Opinly hides the tag surface entirely for WordPress sites rather than showing you something that will not reach your blog.
- Unpublishing leaves the live post alone
- Unpublishing archives the post in Opinly. The article stays live on WordPress until you delete it there.
The pixel is a plugin, not a snippet
On the guided connect there is nothing extra to do — approve Opinly in WordPress as an Administrator and the plugin goes on straight after. Connect by hand and it does not: you turn WordPress tracking on from Opinly's analytics settings, which runs the same remote install using the credentials you saved. Either way the install needs a user allowed to install plugins; with an Editor you upload the plugin and paste a key.
- No snippet to paste
- Opinly installs the plugin, activates it and configures it with your key. The tracker script ships inside the plugin and is enqueued the normal WordPress way — nothing is loaded from a remote host at runtime.
- WooCommerce revenue, reported twice
- A purchase event fires on the order-received page, verified against the order key so a guessed URL cannot fake a sale, and a signed server-side webhook reports the order when it moves to processing or completed. Both are deduplicated by order ID, so the sale counts once even if the buyer never reaches the thank-you page.
- WooCommerce is not required
- Without a store you still get page views, clicks, campaign sources and form submissions, and a form submission can be treated as a valued conversion.
- Consent is respected
- The plugin registers with the WordPress Consent API and follows a consent plugin's decision for the statistics category. With no such plugin installed, a setting on the plugin controls tracking.
- Form values are never captured
- Field names are recorded, field values are not — the exception being an email address a visitor enters in an email field, which is used to identify them.
- Requirements
- The plugin declares WordPress 5.0 or later and PHP 7.4 or later.
Frequently asked questions
- Does Opinly replace my WordPress SEO plugin?
- No, and it is not trying to. An on-page SEO plugin manages the things WordPress renders — title tags, meta output, your XML sitemap. Opinly sits upstream of that: competitor and keyword research, site audits, AI-search visibility, then writing, scheduling and publishing the post into WordPress. If you run Rank Math or Yoast SEO, Opinly fills in each post's SEO title and meta description in that plugin when it publishes. The two do different jobs and run side by side.
- Do I need to install a plugin to publish?
- No. Publishing uses the WordPress REST API with an Application Password, so there is nothing to install for content. The only plugin involved is the analytics pixel, and Opinly installs that one for you when the connected WordPress user is an Administrator and your host allows remote installs.
- What does my WordPress site need for this to work?
- The REST API has to be reachable and Application Passwords have to be available. Opinly probes for both before it offers the guided connect and names the failing check if it cannot find them, at which point you can still connect manually with a password you generate yourself.
- What happens to the posts already on my blog?
- They are imported. Opinly pulls down your posts, authors, categories and images so your library starts full rather than empty. After import, Opinly is the source of truth for the body — editing a post inside WordPress will not flow back on its own, though a slug change will. To bring WordPress edits in, pull the post's latest WordPress content over its draft in Opinly.
- Can I create an author in Opinly for my WordPress site?
- No. WordPress users are the authors, they sync one way into Opinly, and an Opinly-only author is deleted by the sync. Create the user in WordPress and it will appear.
- Can I schedule posts?
- Yes. Scheduling is handled by Opinly rather than by WordPress, so the queue and the publish time live in one place across every site you run.
- Webflow integration →
Connects with a Site API token. In beta.
- Wix integration →
Connects with an API key and site ID. In beta.
- Shopify integration →
Connects with Shopify app install. In beta.
- Framer integration →
Connects with a project URL and a Framer API key. Stable.
- HubSpot integration →
Connects with a HubSpot sign-in (OAuth). In beta.
Point Opinly at your WordPress blog
Import what you have, publish what comes next, and see which posts earn the traffic.