Research-driven articles, optimized for AI answer engines and traditional search, published from your own WordPress admin. A real editorial method, native WordPress blocks, and your own API keys. Free, GPL, no lock-in.
Download free plugin v1.1.0 →WordPress 6.4+ · PHP 8.1+ · GPLv2 · bring your own OpenRouter and fal.ai keys
Answer engine optimization (AEO) is the work of getting your content picked when ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google's AI answers a question. Traditional SEO earns a position in a list of links. WordPress AEO earns a place inside the one answer most readers now see. The two overlap heavily, and the same article can win both when it is built for it.
Answer engines quote content that answers the question early, carries facts with sources, shows real experience, and reads cleanly. They skip content that buries the answer, invents credentials, or carries the sentence patterns of unedited AI output. So a WordPress AEO plugin has one real job: produce articles that engines can trust and quote, at a pace one person can sustain.
Most AI writing plugins fail that job. They take a keyword, make one model call, and paste whatever comes back. The result reads like everything else the same model wrote that day. It carries no research, no sources, and no reason for an engine to prefer it. Auto AEO was built the other way, around the editorial method below.
Traditional WordPress SEO optimizes a page to earn a click from a list. WordPress AEO optimizes the same page to be quoted inside an answer, where there is no click to earn until the reader decides to go deeper. That shifts what matters most in four concrete ways.
None of this replaces your existing SEO work. Keyword research, internal links, and site health still matter, and your current SEO plugin still handles them. The plugin adds the answer-engine layer on top of the stack you already trust, instead of asking you to replace it.
Good articles are not written in one pass, and this one is not either. Research comes before planning, planning before drafting, and editing after both. Nothing is generated until you save a brand context profile, so what comes out reads like your publication rather than a generic assistant.
The subject is researched before a word is written: what the question actually asks, the terms and definitions that belong in a complete answer, figures with real sources behind them, and what the pages already ranking cover well or leave open.
An outline built to be answered rather than padded. Question-shaped headings, the point made early under each one, and room for the internal and external links the piece needs. Experience and authority are drawn from the author identity you save, never invented.
The article, written to the house style and brand context you saved, so it reads like your publication instead of a generic assistant.
Two editorial passes. First a readability edit for sentence length, rhythm, repetition, and filler. Then an SEO and AEO proofread covering headings, links, keyword use, and whether the piece is ready to be quoted in an answer.
Style is not left to chance from one article to the next. The standards below are applied to everything the plugin produces, and you can tighten them or add your own.
This is ordinary editorial discipline, applied consistently. It matters here because readers and answer engines reward the same things: a clear answer, stated early, that can be trusted and quoted.
Articles are built from native core blocks: paragraphs, headings, lists, tables, quotes, images, details, and groups. The highlight feature uses the editor's own highlight format, so you can change or remove it like any other formatting. There is no custom block, no shortcode soup, and nothing breaks if you ever deactivate the plugin.
Schema is generated where it earns its keep. Article, FAQPage, and HowTo JSON-LD are created per post and stored on the post itself, which is exactly the structured data answer engines lift from. On classic-editor sites the article is stored as clean plain HTML instead of block markup.
A WordPress plugin for AEO has no business fighting your SEO plugin. Auto AEO detects what you run and cooperates. Meta titles and descriptions are written into Yoast SEO, Rank Math, All in One SEO, SEOPress, The SEO Framework, or Slim SEO, whichever is active, so you edit them exactly where you already expect to.
When one of those plugins is active, Auto AEO also stops outputting its own Article markup. Your pages never ship two competing schema graphs, which is a real and common cause of rich-result problems on sites that stack plugins carelessly.
Here is the full compatibility picture, by area:
| Area | What happens |
|---|---|
| SEO plugins | Yoast SEO, Rank Math, All in One SEO (AIOSEO), SEOPress, The SEO Framework, and Slim SEO. The meta title and description are written into whichever one is active, and the plugin stops emitting its own Article schema so you never ship two graphs. |
| Editors | The block editor gets native Gutenberg core blocks. Classic Editor sites get clean HTML instead. There is no custom block either way. |
| Caching | WP Rocket, LiteSpeed Cache, W3 Total Cache, SG Optimizer, and WP-Optimize are purged for each published post. |
| Multilingual | Polylang and WPML get a language assigned on every generated post. |
| Multisite | Runs per site, with its own settings, keys, and topic queue on each. |
| Page builders and Jetpack | No special handling is needed. Articles are ordinary posts made of core blocks, so Elementor, Divi, Beaver Builder, Jetpack, and your theme treat them exactly like posts you wrote by hand. |
| WooCommerce stores | Runs alongside it. The plugin publishes posts, not products, so your catalogue and product data are untouched. |
| Post types | Articles are published as standard posts. Custom post types are not a target in this version. |
The rule behind the table is simple. The plugin writes standard WordPress data using WordPress APIs, so anything that reads posts keeps working, and anything that already owns a job, like your SEO plugin owning meta fields, keeps owning it.
Generation never runs inside your browser request, so it cannot die with a tab. A job is handed to a detached process. WP-Cron picks it up if that never lands. A watchdog restarts anything that stalls. Close the tab, reload the page, or walk away: the article keeps writing, and the progress screen reattaches to whatever is still running when you come back.
Images work the same way. A featured image plus a configurable number of inline images are generated in the visual style you chose during setup. Each one lands in the media library with a title and descriptive alt text, placed after the section it illustrates.
Set a cadence, a publishing window, and a weekly cap. Then choose whether autopilot saves drafts for your review or publishes directly. When the topic queue runs low, autopilot refills it on its own from your brand context and everything already on the site, skipping anything you have covered. You can still add topics yourself, and the queue page shows what is waiting, where each topic came from, and lets you remove anything you do not want written.
The weekly cap matters more than it sounds. Publishing velocity that outruns your ability to review is how AI content programs go wrong. The cap holds the pace at what you can actually read before it ships.
The plugin connects to OpenRouter for writing and fal.ai for images, on keys you create yourself. Nothing is sent anywhere until you add a key. You pay those providers directly for exactly the tokens and images you use, with no markup and no plugin subscription on top.
This design has a second benefit: model choice. OpenRouter fronts every major model, so you can run the earlier work on a cheaper one and reserve a stronger model for the draft. You decide the cost per article through the models and image count you pick. Secrets are stored encrypted in your WordPress database.
Auto AEO writes. AnswerRank decides what is worth writing. Connect your account and the buyer questions where AI assistants are not yet recommending you flow into the topic queue, so every article aims at a measured gap instead of a guess.
That completes the loop between measuring and publishing: see where you are invisible, publish against those exact questions, then re-analyse and watch the answers change. The features page covers the measurement side in depth.
Start your free AnswerRank trial →Use the download button on this page. The file is the complete plugin, about 140 KB.
In your admin, open Plugins, Add New, Upload Plugin, choose the zip, and click Install Now.
Activate the plugin, open its settings, and paste your OpenRouter key. Add a fal.ai key if you want images.
Describe your brand, audience, house style, and author identity. This is deliberate: nothing generates until the profile exists, because that profile is what keeps articles from sounding generic.
Add a topic and run it. Watch it work, review the draft, publish. Then queue topics and turn on autopilot when you trust the output.
Requirements: WordPress 6.4 or newer, PHP 8.1 or newer. Tested up to WordPress 6.8. Support: support@answerrank.so
Yes. The plugin is free and licensed GPLv2. You bring your own OpenRouter key for writing and a fal.ai key for images, so you pay those providers directly for exactly what you use. There is no plugin subscription and no per-article fee from us.
Yes, by design. Meta titles and descriptions are written into Yoast SEO, Rank Math, All in One SEO, SEOPress, The SEO Framework, or Slim SEO, whichever is active. When one of them is running, the plugin also stops outputting its own Article schema so your pages never ship two competing graphs.
Google's guidance targets unhelpful content, not the tool that wrote it. The plugin exists to produce the helpful kind: researched, sourced, honestly attributed, and edited before it ships. Review what it drafts and treat the output as a strong first version rather than a finished one, which is how any writing should be published.
The plugin writes without one. Connecting an account is what makes it aim: the questions where AI assistants are not recommending you flow into the topic queue, so you publish toward measured gaps rather than guesses.
You pay OpenRouter for the model calls and fal.ai for the images, at their prices, on your own keys. Cost per article depends on the model you pick and the image count you set. The settings screen lets you choose cheaper models for early stages and a stronger one for the draft.
Yes. On a block-editor site, articles are built from native core blocks: paragraphs, headings, lists, tables, quotes, images, details, and groups. On a classic-editor site, the article is stored as plain HTML instead. There is no custom block and no lock-in either way.
New versions are published on this page as a fresh zip. Upload the new version through Plugins, Add New, Upload Plugin, and WordPress replaces the old one in place. Your settings, saved context profiles, and queue survive the upgrade.
AnswerRank Auto AEO is a free WordPress AEO plugin that turns a topic into a researched, sourced, schema-ready article built from native Gutenberg blocks. It cooperates with your SEO plugin, holds keyword density in a healthy range, and writes structured data that AI Overviews and answer engines can actually lift. Download it, add your keys, save your context profile, and publish your first article today.
AnswerRank shows whether ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI recommend your brand. 7-day free trial.