Set up in about ten minutes.
Most of Ptero SEO works the moment it's activated. These are the four things worth doing deliberately.
Install and activate
Ptero SEO 1.0.0 — free release
Requires WordPress 6.0+ and PHP 7.4+. Download the ZIP, then upload it in WordPress to install.
Download Ptero SEO 1.0.0Install the free plugin
Download ptero-seo.zip. In WordPress, go to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin, select the ZIP, click Install Now, then Activate Plugin. It needs WordPress 6.0+ and PHP 7.4+.
Flush your permalinks
Visit Settings → Permalinks once and save. Sitemaps are served through rewrite rules, so they need one flush before /sitemap_index.xml resolves.
Set your publisher identity
Ptero SEO → Settings → Social & entity. Set the organisation name, logo and official profiles — these feed the Organization entity every page references.
News publishers should set the organisation type to NewsMediaOrganization.
Submit your sitemap once
Add /sitemap_index.xml in Google Search Console. Google retired its ping endpoint, so this is a one-time manual step — after that it recrawls on its own schedule.
Upgrade with Freemius
Freemius is our licensing and payment provider for Publisher. The free release works without a paid licence.
Open Upgrade in WordPress
Install and activate the free plugin, then go to Ptero SEO → Upgrade. Select the Publisher plan and billing period in the Freemius checkout; review the final price and taxes before paying.
Activate your Publisher licence
Follow the Freemius purchase confirmation to download and activate Publisher. If you already have a licence, open Ptero SEO → Account and use the licence activation option. Publisher features require an active licence or trial.
Manage your subscription
Use Ptero SEO → Account or the Freemius customer portal to manage your licences, billing, downloads and subscription. For purchase questions, contact us.
Migrating from another plugin
Ptero SEO imports from Yoast SEO, Rank Math, All in One SEO and SEOPress — titles, descriptions, canonicals, robots directives, social metadata and focus keyphrases, with template variables converted to Ptero's syntax as it goes.
Import first, deactivate second
Go to Ptero SEO → Tools → Import and run the importer for your current plugin. Existing Ptero values are kept unless you tick overwrite, and nothing is deleted from the other plugin.
Spot-check a few pages
Open two or three posts and look at the preview in the editor panel. Check the title, description and canonical look right.
Then deactivate the old plugin
Running two SEO plugins produces duplicate canonicals, duplicate schema and duplicate Open Graph tags. Ptero SEO will warn you while both are active, and Tools → Plugin conflicts explains exactly what is being doubled up.
Connecting Search Console
There are three routes, and the first one that applies to you is the one to take.
Already have Site Kit?
Nothing to do. Ptero SEO uses Site Kit's existing connection automatically — no second sign-in. Site Kit only exposes web search data, so Discover and Google News figures show as unavailable on this route.
Publisher licence
Click Sign in with Google in Settings → Integrations and pick the account with Search Console access. Read-only, and you can disconnect at any time from here or from your Google account.
Your own OAuth client
Free, and always available. Create a Web application client in Google Cloud, enable the Search Console API, and paste the client ID and secret. Takes about five minutes, once.
Whichever route you use, Search Console data is fetched by your site directly from Google and stored in your own database. Pterosoft Studio never receives it.
Turning on Google News
This section needs the Publisher add-on. Everything above works without it.
Enable the module
Ptero SEO → Settings → Google News → Enable Google News SEO. This adds the News sitemap, NewsArticle schema, the compliance checker and the freshness protections.
Set the publication name exactly
It must match the name registered in Google Publisher Center character for character. A mismatch is the single most common reason a News sitemap is ignored.
Decide what counts as news
Choose which post types qualify, and exclude the categories that shouldn't be there — opinion, sponsored content, press releases and evergreen explainers each have their own exclusion.
Assign your transparency pages
Settings → Trust & editorial. Point at your About, Contact, editorial policy, corrections policy and ownership pages. These get referenced from your publisher schema and are checked by the site audit.
Run the audits
News & Discover → Transparency audit for the site-wide view, then open any recent article and run the per-article checks from the editor panel.
Quick reference
Sitemap URLs
/sitemap_index.xml
/post-sitemap.xml
/category-sitemap.xml
/author-sitemap.xml
/news-sitemap.xml
Breadcrumbs in a theme
[ptero_breadcrumbs]
<?php ptero_seo_breadcrumbs(); ?>
or the “SEO Breadcrumbs” block
Editorial roles
Writers get keyphrases, titles and descriptions. Editors add per-post indexing and schema. SEO Managers get settings, templates and redirects — so a writer cannot noindex the publication by accident.
Multisite
Every site keeps its own settings, sitemaps, redirects and reports. Network admins set defaults and can lock individual settings. API keys are always per site and can never be set network-wide.
Something not covered here? Get in touch — support questions are how documentation gets written.