SureRank 1.9.0 with SureRank Premium 1.8.0 has shipped a few new features, including Front-end SEO editing directly from your live site, Author SEO for multi-author publications, Custom JSON-LD Schema support, a new MCP setup screen, and a headless REST API for decoupled WordPress setups. Plus a clean set of Pro additions and fixes across both tracks.
This is the most substantial free release SureRank has shipped. Let’s go through what matters most.
Table of Contents
- Front-End SEO Meta Box: Edit SEO From Your Live Site
- Author SEO: Per-Author Titles, Descriptions, and Social Previews
- Custom JSON-LD Schema
- SureRank AI Abilities and MCP Controls:
- Headless REST API: SureRank Now Works With Decoupled WordPress
- XML Sitemap Now Includes Post-Type Archive Pages
- Everything Else That Is New and Fixed
- Also in Premium 1.8.0
- Get the Update
Front-End SEO Meta Box: Edit SEO From Your Live Site
You can now open and edit the SureRank SEO meta box directly from the front end of your site using the WordPress admin bar.
This sounds like a convenience feature. In practice it is more than that.
Archive pages, author archives, date archives, and taxonomy pages have always been awkward to optimize because you had to know where to find them in the WordPress backend. Now you browse to any page on your live site, click the admin bar, and the SEO meta box opens right there. Edit the title, description, social preview, and save without navigating through the backend at all.
For agencies managing sites on behalf of clients, this changes how SEO optimization workflows actually feel. For solo site owners, it removes a navigation step that was quietly slowing everything down.
Author SEO: Access to have SEO Settings for your Author
Take a health blog with three contributors a nutritionist, a fitness coach, and a mental wellness writer. Each of them has an author archive page on your site. Google reads those pages to understand who is writing your content and whether they are credible sources in their field. Especially in niches like health, finance, and legal, this matters more than most people realize.
The problem is that until now, every author archive page got the same generic treatment, whatever your theme template produced. No custom title, no tailored description, nothing that actually represented that specific contributor.
SureRank 1.9.0 fixes this. Each author now gets their own SEO Title, Meta Description, and Social Preview. Your nutritionist’s archive can highlight her clinical background. Your fitness contributor can lead with his certifications. Every author page becomes a proper SEO asset instead of an afterthought.
Custom JSON-LD Schema
You can now write your own JSON-LD schema directly inside the SureRank schema builder. Add any custom structured data you need without touching a separate plugin or dropping code into your theme.
Custom JSON-LD Schema is a Premium 1.8.0 feature. Smart-tag support where your schema dynamically pulls in live data is included as part of it.
This is the kind of schema flexibility that advanced users and developers typically need a separate plugin or custom code for. It is now built into SureRank with a proper UI.
Want to unlock this into your UI? Just follow this document and you’ll be able to see it inside your Meta Box and Schema Builder
SureRank AI Abilities and MCP Controls:
SureRank now includes a dedicated setup screen for enabling AI agent integration. You can turn MCP support on or off with a single toggle, and follow the guided steps to connect an AI client including setting up an MCP adapter, configuring application passwords, and completing the client-side setup.
This replaces the previous manual configuration process with a structured, step-by-step interface. If you have been curious about using AI agents to manage your SEO settings but found the setup unclear, this screen walks you through it properly.
Headless REST API: SureRank Now Works With Decoupled WordPress
If you are running WordPress as a headless CMS with a front end built in Next.js, Gatsby, Astro, Nuxt, or anything similar, you have always had a problem with SEO plugins. They render meta tags on the server-side PHP template. When your front end is completely separate, those tags never reach the page.
SureRank 1.9.0 solves this cleanly.
A new public REST API serves your SEO meta tags, schema markup, and social preview data directly so your headless front end can fetch and render them without scraping the page or building a custom solution. This includes REST fields and a JSON sitemap endpoint, giving decoupled front ends everything they need in one place.
This is a meaningful capability gap closed. Headless WordPress is no longer a workaround for SureRank users. It is a first-class supported setup.
XML Sitemap Now Includes Post-Type Archive Pages
Post-type archive pages the index pages for custom post types like /portfolio/, /courses/, and /resources/ were previously missing from the SureRank XML sitemap. They are now included automatically.
If you have custom post types on your site, Google can now discover and index their archive pages through your sitemap without any additional configuration.
Everything Else That Is New and Fixed
Focus keyword migration. When you migrate from another SEO plugin, your primary focus keyword now carries over correctly. Previously this was lost during import.
Broken links ignore list. You can now mark specific URLs as ignored in the broken links checker. If a link keeps getting flagged but you know it is valid, you can stop it from appearing in the report permanently.
Schema date and time picker. The schema date picker now lets you select a time as well as a date important for Event schema where the exact time is part of the structured data.
Archive titles fixed. Author, date, and post-type archive page titles now follow your configured title format and separator correctly.
Duplicate URL fix. The ?replytocom parameter has been stripped from comment reply links, preventing duplicate low-value URLs from appearing in search.
Site Health check improved. The homepage reachability check now correctly identifies HTTP error status codes instead of reporting a healthy page when the server is returning errors.
Safer migrations. Imported settings are sanitized and JSON-LD output is hardened to prevent issues during plugin migrations.
Also in Premium 1.8.0
Link checker improvement. The link checker no longer follows redirects, so valid links that return a redirect are no longer reported as broken. This eliminates a significant source of false positives in the Link Manager.
Event schema date-time picker. Event schema now supports both date and time selection through an improved picker, consistent with the Core improvement.
CSV redirect imports from Apple Numbers. Redirect CSV files exported from Apple Numbers now import correctly.
Role Manager expanded. The Headless REST API setting can now be granted to specific roles through Role Manager. Useful for agencies giving clients controlled access without opening up the full settings. Role Manager capability filters are also now registered on the front end.
Link suggestions refined. The link suggestions accordion is now hidden on front-end meta box views where it does not belong. Link suggestion tooltips also render correctly inside the front-end shadow root.
Get the Update
SureRank 1.9.0 is available now. Update from your WordPress Plugins page.
The free plugin covers front-end SEO editing, Headless REST API, Author SEO, Robots.txt analysis, AI agent integration, Schema, Sitemaps, Site Audits, and GSC integration, all at no cost.
If you want AI-powered Meta Generation, Internal Link Suggestions, Automatic Social Preview Images, Advanced Schema, and instant Google Indexing, SureRank Premium unlocks the full toolkit.
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