Requirements & installation
What Core SEO needs, and how to install the free plugin and Core SEO Premium.
Core SEO is a free WordPress plugin. Core SEO Premium is an add-on on top of it: it needs the free plugin installed and active.
Requirements#
| Needed | |
|---|---|
| WordPress | 6.5 or newer (tested up to 7.1) |
| PHP | 8.0 or newer |
| Core SEO Premium | Core SEO installed and active |
| Premium licence check | The PHP sodium extension (standard in PHP 8) |
| Site crawl | The PHP DOM extension (standard on almost every host) |
Install Core SEO#
Install Core SEO from Plugins → Add New (search for “Core SEO”), or upload the zip under Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin, then click Activate. The Core SEO menu appears in the WordPress sidebar.
Is another SEO plugin still active? Then Core SEO prints nothing on your site yet, so you never get double titles. See Switching from Yoast SEO or Rank Math.
Install Core SEO Premium#
- Download both zips from My account → Downloads on xolius.com: Core SEO and Core SEO Premium.
- Install and activate Core SEO first, then Core SEO Premium.
- Enter your licence key under Core SEO → Licence (see Core SEO Premium & licence).
- For the AI features, add your Anthropic API key under Core SEO → AI settings (see AI settings).
First steps#
- Open Core SEO → Dashboard: it shows what to do first.
- Check the title separator and home page under Core SEO → Titles & home page.
- Fill in who runs the site under Site identity, and a default share image under Social sharing.
- Verify the site in Google Search Console under Webmaster tools, and submit your sitemap.
- Open a few pages in the editor and set a focus keyphrase.