Tygart Media documents the Starter method so site owners can run connect → audit → clean meta → on-page refresh in wp-admin or via Claude. The $29 Buy on Square option delivers five packaged .skill files (wp-connect, wp-post-fetch, wp-site-audit, wp-clean-meta, wp-seo-refresh) by email within 24 hours of checkout.

Starter is the first tier of the WordPress SEO Skill Pack by Will Tygart. It is the connect-and-on-page layer only. Tygart Media ships AEO refresh, GEO refresh, schema injection, and interlink skills in the Pro tier ($79), not in Starter.

Starter vs Pro vs DIY (honest scope)

What you need before any skill runs

• Claude Pro, Max, or Team. The sales page names those tiers.
• A self-hosted WordPress site with the REST API on.
• A WordPress Application Password. Users → Profile. Thirty seconds. Not the login password.

No plugin is required. Everything in this pack talks to /wp-json/wp/v2/.

If you bought the zip: drop the skill files into Claude Desktop (Cowork) or Claude Code. Then say “connect to my WordPress site” and give the URL, username, and Application Password. The skills ship with placeholders (USER:PASS, SITE). You fill those in. There are no client credentials in the pack.

The five skills, and the method each one encodes

1. wp-connect

Gateway. Must run first. Takes site URL, username, Application Password. Tests GET /wp-json/wp/v2/users/me. Returns whether you are authenticated and which endpoints answered. No other wp- skill works until this is green. If you are doing it by hand, that same curl is the test.

2. wp-post-fetch

Load one post so you can see it the way the editor sees it. The refresh skills fetch with context=edit. By hand: GET /wp-json/wp/v2/posts/{id}?context=edit. Read title, slug, excerpt, content, categories, tags. Do not write yet. You cannot refresh what you have not read.

3. wp-site-audit

Run this at the start of a site, not after you have already rewritten three posts. Fetch published posts (per_page=100, paginate). For each post, mark:

• Missing tags, categories, featured image, excerpt / meta
• Metadata pollution (raw JSON or leftover code in the excerpt)
• Orphans (no internal links in) and dead-ends (no internal links out)
• Thin content (under 500 words)
• Schema present or not
• Taxonomy health

Output a prioritized report: Critical (taxonomy / metadata), High (SEO / AEO / quality), then optimization opportunities. That report is your work order. Starter will not auto-fix taxonomy or inject schema. It will tell you which posts are dirty.

4. wp-clean-meta

Strip pollution. The 23-site stack article describes this as removing legacy artifacts from excerpts. The audit skill flags raw JSON / code in excerpt fields. Do this before you write a new meta description, or you will be fighting leftover plugin junk. By hand: open the post, clear a garbage excerpt, save a real 140 to 160 character description.

5. wp-seo-refresh

The on-page pass. Fetch the post, name the target keyword from the topic, then write:

1. Title, max about 60 characters, keyword-rich, front-loaded
2. Meta description, about 155 to 160 characters
3. Slug: lowercase, hyphenated, keyword-rich (only change it if the current slug is junk)
4. H2 / H3 hierarchy
5. Keyword distribution, including the first 100 words
6. A note of internal-link opportunities (Starter does not run wp-interlink; you place the links yourself or upgrade)

Then update the post via the REST API and report what changed.

A Starter session you can run today

1. Connect. users/me returns 200.
2. Audit the site. Write the Critical and High lists.
3. Clean meta on anything the audit marked as polluted.
4. Pick one High post that is over 500 words. Fetch it. Run the SEO refresh fields above.
5. Validate the title and meta lengths. Ping IndexNow (Rank Math Instant Indexing, Yoast, or the official IndexNow plugin). Confirm in Bing Webmaster Tools.

That is the honest Starter method: connect, see the mess, clean the excerpt, fix on-page SEO on one post. Title, slug, meta, headings. Not FAQ schema. Not entity saturation. Not a link graph.

What Starter does not do

• No wp-aeo-refresh. No definition box, no 6 to 8 FAQs, no FAQPage schema.
• No wp-geo-refresh. No speakable / LLMS.txt / named-entity pass as a skill.
• No wp-schema-inject, wp-interlink, wp-taxonomy-fix, wp-full-refresh, or content pipeline.
• No new-article factory. You can still write a post by hand using the six-step workflow on the New Article Publishing page.

If you want those, Pro is the 14-skill stack. Agency adds onboarding and thin-content expansion. If you want Will to do the post instead of running skills, that is SiteBoost Existing Post Optimization.

Frequently Asked Questions

If you want the packaged files

You can keep a checklist and do every Starter step in wp-admin. Buy Now is the five .skill files delivered by email after checkout, genericized, with placeholders for your own site. Same Square button at the top. $29.

Install, connect, audit, clean, refresh. That is the pack. The sales page’s “full refresh post 123” line (SEO then AEO then GEO then schema then interlink) is the Pro orchestrator, not Starter.