Grain & Mortar - Session Notes

Date: February 2, 2026

What We Worked On

• Fixed About page meta description to include focus keyphrase "graphic design agency"
• Built SEO bulk action tools with "regenerate mode" to review all pages (not just missing)
• Created Yoast content filter to feed hardcoded template content to Yoast analyzer
• Tested bulk meta description generator and keyword suggester

Key Decisions Made

• Regenerate mode UX: Click button → confirm dialog asks "Include all pages?" → OK for all, Cancel for missing only
• Keyword suggestion pattern: For projects, pull from Industries taxonomy (Branding, Website, Illustration); for pages, use location-based keywords (Omaha design agency)
• Meta description source priority: Excerpt → ACF fields → post_content → page_modules
• Yoast content filter: Server-side only - real-time Gutenberg analysis has limitations with hardcoded templates

Changes Made

Committed (d2c503f on feature/header-footer-simplification): - assets/js/seo-dashboard-actions.js - Frontend bulk action UI with regenerate mode - inc/seo-dashboard/ajax-handlers.php - AJAX endpoints for meta/keyword operations - inc/seo-dashboard/class-seo-bulk-actions.php - Meta description generator & keyword suggester - inc/seo-dashboard/class-yoast-content-filter.php - Feeds template content to Yoast - inc/seo-dashboard/js/yoast-content-filter.js - JS integration for Yoast real-time - inc/seo-dashboard/init.php - Updated to load new classes

About page (post 625): - Meta description updated to: "Grain & Mortar is an Omaha graphic design agency creating brands and websites that are as functional as they are beautiful since 2011." (134 chars) - SEO score improved: 40 → 47 - Readability improved: 60 → 90

Still Pending

• class-seo-csv-import.php exists but not committed (CSV bulk import functionality)
• About page SEO still yellow (47) due to template content not being visible to Yoast's word count
• Plan file exists at ~/.claude/plans/enchanted-finding-turing.md with full SEO improvement strategy

Technical Notes

• Yoast Draft.js editor: Very difficult to manipulate programmatically. Used wp.data.dispatch('yoast-seo/editor').updateData() to set meta description instead of DOM manipulation
• WP-CLI not available: Local by Flywheel doesn't have wp-cli in PATH, so used browser automation for WordPress changes
• Dashboard shows 88 pages, bulk tools filter to ~80 (excluding noindex pages)

Session saved February 2, 2026