SiteBoost — Site Connection & Audit

You can copy this method and connect and audit the site yourself. Buy Now is Will doing the one-time setup: Application Password, REST API check, full inventory, and the baseline reports.

Site Connection and Audit is a service. Square lists it as a one-time setup at $297. It is the front door for every other SiteBoost SKU. The public vertical pages include it inside the pilot. Alone, it is how a site gets on the board without anyone rewriting a post yet.

Self-hosted WordPress only. REST API on (the default). Squarespace, Wix, and Webflow are not compatible. The /siteboost/ hub is blunt about that.

How Will connects a site

wp-connect is the gateway skill. Nothing else in the WordPress stack runs until this works. The 23-site stack article on tygartmedia.com puts a new site at about 20 minutes: Application Password, registry, first audit.

1. Confirm the site is self-hosted WordPress. Open /wp-json/wp/v2/ in a browser. You should see a JSON index, not a 404. If the REST API is blocked, stop and fix that before anyone shares a password.
2. In WordPress, go to Users → Profile (or Users → Application Passwords, depending on version). Create an Application Password for a user who can edit posts. Name it something you will recognize later, like “SiteBoost” or “REST audit.” Copy it once. This is not the login password. wp-connect will not use the login password.
3. Test the connection. GET https://yoursite.com/wp-json/wp/v2/users/me with HTTP Basic auth, username plus the Application Password. A 200 with your user object means you are in. A 401 means the password or user is wrong. A 403 often means a security plugin is blocking REST for that user.
4. Confirm you can list posts: GET /wp-json/wp/v2/posts?per_page=1&status=publish. If users/me works but posts 403, the user is missing the edit_posts capability.
5. Write down: site URL, WordPress version if you can see it, hosting (WP Engine, SiteGround, Flywheel, Kinsta, Cloudflare in front, or other), whether Yoast / Rank Math / AIOSEO is present, and who holds the Application Password. Do not put the password in a public doc.

The public SiteBoost pages name the hosts they have used this pattern on: WP Engine, Flywheel, SiteGround, Cloudflare-proxied sites, GCP Compute Engine, DigitalOcean, Kinsta, bare metal. The requirement is the REST API, not a specific host.

Do not install a plugin to “help” the connection. SiteBoost’s rule is no plugins added to the client site. Application Passwords are built into WordPress 5.6 and later.

What the audit checks

wp-site-audit is the skill that runs at the start of any new site. Fetch all published posts (per_page=100, walk pages). For each post, score the same fields:

• Word count. Thin is under 500 words.
• Title tag and slug quality.
• Excerpt / meta description present, empty, or polluted (raw JSON or leftover code in the excerpt is a real pattern; wp-clean-meta exists to strip it).
• Categories and tags. Uncategorized is a fail. wp-taxonomy-fix wants 1 to 2 categories and 5 to 10 tags.
• Featured image present or not.
• Internal links in (orphans: nothing points here) and internal links out (dead-end posts).
• Schema present or not, and which types if you can see them (Article, FAQPage, HowTo, BreadcrumbList, Speakable).
• FAQ section present or not.
• Outbound source citations present or not.

Also roll up site-level numbers: total published posts, total pages (count them, do not edit them), taxonomy health (how many categories, how many unused tags, how many posts still Uncategorized).

The 60-point WordPress SEO Audit Template on tygartmedia.com is the longer human version of this, in six categories: Technical, On-Page, Content, Schema, Local, Analytics. Tools it wants open: Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, PageSpeed Insights, your SEO plugin, validator.schema.org, an incognito window. Order matters: Technical first, then On-Page, Content, Schema, Local, Analytics. A quick pass is the high-impact rows. A full pass is a few hours the first time. Re-audit quarterly, and after a redesign, a migration, or a plugin purge.

SiteBoost’s service audit, as sold, is the content-and-baseline cut of that: inventory, schema gaps, FAQ gaps, before numbers. It is not a Core Web Vitals engagement and it is not a local-pack rebuild. If you want the 60-point sheet as a Notion checklist, that is a different SKU (WordPress SEO Audit Template).

The four reports you should produce

The public SiteBoost pages name these deliverables. If you are doing this yourself, write the same four:

1. Content inventory. One row per published post. URL, title, date, word count, category, meta yes/no, FAQ yes/no, schema yes/no, internal links in/out, notes.
2. Schema gap report. Which posts have no JSON-LD. Which have plugin-bloated or invalid markup. Priority by page type (Article on posts, FAQPage where a FAQ exists or should, HowTo only on real procedures).
3. FAQ gap report. Which posts have no Q and A block and no FAQPage schema. Those are the AEO queue.
4. Before baseline. Search Console coverage and the queries / URLs you will watch. A short note on AI visibility for a handful of real questions in your market (do you show up in Perplexity or an AI Overview today?). Write the date. This is what a 60-day report compares to.

Priority the way wp-site-audit does: Critical (taxonomy / metadata), High (SEO / AEO / thin content), then optimization (links, expansion). The recommended next skills, if you are running Claude, are wp-taxonomy-fix, wp-content-expand, wp-schema-inject, wp-interlink, then the refresh stack.

What you do not do in this SKU

• Do not rewrite posts. That is Existing Post Optimization or the Pilot.
• Do not publish new articles. That is New Article Publishing.
• Do not edit Pages, bios, or service templates unless the owner asked in writing. Toolbox rule: posts, not pages.
• Do not leave the Application Password in chat logs or a public Notion page.
• Do not claim results. You do not have a after yet. You have a before.

If you want Will to connect and audit

You can create the Application Password and fill a spreadsheet this afternoon. Buy Now is Will doing the connection and the four reports, then emailing you the baseline and the recommended ten. Same Square button at the top. $297, one time.

The Pilot Bundle includes this connection plus ten post optimizations and the 60-day report. The Monthly Retainer assumes the site is already connected. If you only want the skill files so your own Claude can connect and audit, that is the WordPress SEO Skill Pack (Starter has wp-connect, wp-post-fetch, and wp-site-audit).