Seo Metadata Audit

Purpose

Identify WooCommerce products and categories missing SEO meta titles or meta descriptions, or where these fields are shorter than recommended lengths. Exports a prioritized gap report for SEO improvement. Checks for Yoast SEO, RankMath, and All in One SEO field naming conventions stored in meta_data. Read-only — no data is modified.

Prerequisites

• WooCommerce store with REST API enabled
• Consumer Key with Read scope
• An SEO plugin (Yoast, RankMath, or AIOSEO) is recommended but not required
• Minimum WooCommerce version: 3.5.0

Parameters

Authentication

WooCommerce uses OAuth 1.0a for HTTP and Basic Auth over HTTPS.

For HTTPS stores (recommended):

Authorization: Basic base64(consumer_key:consumer_secret)

For HTTP stores (development only): Use OAuth 1.0a — include oauth_consumer_key, oauth_nonce, oauth_signature, oauth_signature_method=HMAC-SHA1, oauth_timestamp, oauth_version=1.0

Never log or output consumer_key or consumer_secret values.

See docs/AUTHENTICATION.md for full setup instructions.

Safety

Read-only skill — no mutations are executed. Safe to run at any time.

Workflow Steps

Step 1 — Fetch all published products

GET /wp-json/wc/v3/products?status=publish&per_page=100&page=1

Extract: id, name, sku, meta_data

Step 2 — Extract SEO meta from meta_data

SEO field key names by plugin:

Fall back to the product name as title and short_description as description if SEO fields are absent.

Step 3 — Score each product

Flag if:

• SEO title is absent or length < min_title_chars
• SEO title length > max_title_chars
• SEO description is absent or length < min_description_chars
• SEO description length > max_description_chars

Step 4 — Audit categories (if include_categories: true)

GET /wp-json/wc/v3/products/categories?per_page=100&page=1

Apply same scoring to category name and description fields.

Step 5 — Sort and export

Sort by number of issues descending.

API Endpoints Used

GET  /wp-json/wc/v3/products              — product list with meta_data
GET  /wp-json/wc/v3/products/categories   — category list

Pagination Strategy

WooCommerce REST API uses page/per_page pagination (not cursor-based).

Standard pattern:

page = 1
while True:
  response = GET /endpoint?per_page=100&page=page
  process(response)
  if len(response) < 100: break
  page += 1

Maximum per_page is 100 for most endpoints. The X-WP-Total and X-WP-TotalPages response headers report totals. Always read X-WP-TotalPages on the first request to estimate job size.

Session Tracking

Claude MUST emit the following output at each stage. This is mandatory.

STARTUP:

╔══════════════════════════════════════════╗
║  SKILL: woo-seo-metadata-audit           ║
║  STORE: <store_url>                      ║
║  TIME:  <ISO-8601 UTC>                   ║
║  MODE:  READ-ONLY                        ║
╚══════════════════════════════════════════╝

PER-OPERATION (emit after each API call batch):

[N/TOTAL] <METHOD> <endpoint> → <result_count> records | params: <key>=<val>

COMPLETION (human format):

╔══════════════════════════════════════════╗
║  COMPLETE: woo-seo-metadata-audit        ║
║  RECORDS PROCESSED: <n>                  ║
║  OUTPUT: <filename>                      ║
╚══════════════════════════════════════════╝

COMPLETION (json format):

{
  "skill": "woo-seo-metadata-audit",
  "store": "<store_url>",
  "completed_at": "<ISO-8601>",
  "records_processed": <n>,
  "output_file": "<path>",
  "dry_run": false
}

Output Format

CSV filename: woo-seo-metadata-audit_<YYYY-MM-DD>.csv Columns: type, id, sku, name, seo_title, seo_title_length, seo_description, seo_description_length, title_issue, description_issue, issue_count

Error Handling

Best Practices

• Set seo_plugin to match the plugin installed on your store for accurate field extraction.
• Prioritize products with zero SEO meta set over those with short meta — missing fields have more impact.
• Run monthly as part of an SEO maintenance routine.
• Combine with woo-product-data-completeness-score for a full catalog quality check.