ProbonoSEO Basic

You installed a foreign-made SEO plugin, but between the half-English settings screen and the endless switches, you never figured out what to actually configure — so it just sits there, half set up. You run a Japanese-language site, yet the tool wasn't built for Japanese text. Character-count guidance is tuned for English, there are countless options, and you can never quite tell whether any of it is actually working on your Japanese posts. Before long you're spending more time configuring the SEO tool than doing SEO. ProbonoSEO Basic exists to end exactly that. ProbonoSEO Basic is a free, made-in-Japan SEO plugin that starts working automatically the moment you activate it. No expertise, no long setup wizard. The essentials for a Japanese-language site are simply on. Tired of this with foreign-made SEO plugins?

• Too many options — you can't tell which ones to touch
• Character-count and separator optimization assume English, so it never matches how Japanese actually looks
• Getting real value out of it requires tutorials, or a paid course
• Yearly renewal fees and monthly subscriptions that keep piling up
• It claims to do dozens of things, yet you can't feel what is actually working

The more a tool competes on feature count, the deeper the configuration swamp gets. ProbonoSEO Basic chose the opposite path. With ProbonoSEO, you just install and activate ProbonoSEO Basic ships with the commonly used basics already switched on. Title optimization, automatic meta descriptions, canonical URLs, structured data (schema), breadcrumbs, internal links, and page-speed groundwork all start working the instant you activate it. There are only two steps:

1. Install the plugin
2. Click "Activate"

That's it — the SEO foundation for your Japanese-language site is in place. You can fine-tune every switch in the admin screen if you want, but it is designed so that doing nothing still works correctly from the start. How it differs from a typical foreign-made SEO plugin We won't name names, but the differences from a typical foreign-made SEO plugin are clear.

• Setup burden — Typical foreign-made plugins ask for a lot of upfront configuration and learning before they pay off. ProbonoSEO Basic assumes the basics are auto-on and that it should "work without being configured."
• Fit for Japanese — Whether the tool is built around Japanese text structure: character-count feel, separators, and natural summaries. ProbonoSEO Basic was designed from scratch for Japanese-language sites.
• Cost — Many foreign-made plugins lock their better features behind a monthly or yearly subscription. ProbonoSEO Basic is free, with a one-time (buy-once) philosophy. Costs don't grow with every renewal.
• Data handling — ProbonoSEO Basic sends no data to external servers and collects no usage statistics. Everything stays inside your site.

Why "Japanese optimization" actually matters In the end, SEO quality comes down to one thing: does it read naturally as Japanese? ProbonoSEO Basic solves that concretely.

• Titles and meta descriptions — Automatically tuned to a length that won't get truncated in search results (meta descriptions around 70–120 characters). It picks the best separator for Japanese and tidies up full-width/half-width characters and symbols.
• Natural summaries from your content — It generates a natural Japanese description from the article body, smoothing conjunctions and sentence endings. Even when the excerpt field is empty, you still get a search-ready description.
• Automatic duplicate avoidance — Detects duplicate titles and descriptions and warns you, reducing the risk of diluted ranking signals.

"Reads naturally in Japanese" — that obvious-but-overlooked baseline is guaranteed with zero configuration. Built for the age of AI search Search is rapidly shifting from a list of links to AI that generates the answer. Whether you get cited and referenced by AI search — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overview — will increasingly decide your traffic. ProbonoSEO Basic meets that shift head-on (AIO = AI Optimization).

• Allow AI crawlers — Automatically appends major AI crawlers such as GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, and Googlebot-Extended to robots.txt (it never rewrites existing rules — it only appends at the end). This makes your site available for AI to read.
• Structured data output — Emits FAQ (FAQPage), Article, and Organization structured data so AI can accurately understand and quote your content.

Search-engine optimization and AI-search optimization, handled by a single plugin — both with nothing more than "activate." What changes after you install it

• Just publishing a post automatically produces search-ready titles, descriptions, and structured data
• Shares on social platforms (Facebook, X, LINE) keep their intended appearance
• Breadcrumbs and internal links convey your site structure and improve navigation
• Lazy-loading for images/iframes and script optimization lay the groundwork for faster pages
• AI crawlers and structured data prepare your content to be picked up by AI search

The time you used to spend wondering "what do I need to configure for SEO?" goes back to writing. Mostly automatic — so configuration stays minimal ProbonoSEO Basic includes many features (74 items), but the number isn't the selling point. What matters is that nearly all of them work correctly and automatically from the start. So there are very few switches you actually need to look at. Read the list below as "what's already working behind the scenes." Title optimization (7) Title-tag optimization, separator settings, site-name append, title/H1 consistency check, category-name append, duplicate-title avoidance, symbol & emoji tidying Meta description (7) Automatic generation, content extraction, key-term prioritization, natural Japanese summarization, forbidden-phrase removal, length optimization, duplicate check Canonical (5) Basic canonical, automatic generation, trailing-slash normalization, www normalization, parameter removal OGP / Twitter (12) OGP output, OGP title/description, automatic OG image, fixed OG image, Facebook optimization, LINE preview formatting, thumbnail optimization, image-size detection, alt priority, Japanese-URL support, Twitter card Schema / Breadcrumbs (16) Structured data (Article, WebSite, WebPage, Organization, Person, BreadcrumbList, SearchAction, ImageObject) and breadcrumbs (home, category, tag, post, page, archive, search, 404) Internal links / Speed (12) Prev/next, same-category, child-page and related-post links, tag relation logic, external-link nofollow, category-link format, image/iframe lazy loading, CSS/JS minification, core-script optimization Article SEO (6) Heading structure, image alt, image count, word count, category match, and tag-duplicate checks Site diagnosis (3) Title-duplicate diagnosis, meta-description-duplicate diagnosis, page-speed quick check AIO / AI search (4) AI-crawler permission (automatic robots.txt append), FAQ Schema, Article Schema, Organization Schema Other (2) Unnecessary meta-element cleanup, Google Search Console verification code Free and one-time — all of it Everything above is free. No monthly subscription, no yearly renewal fee. "Try it free first, confirm it fits my site, then decide" — being able to make that call is the real value of a buy-once philosophy. Use it to build your site's foundation without worrying about creeping costs. Why you can use it with peace of mind

• No data collection — No data is sent to external servers and no usage is tracked. Everything stays within your site.
• Automatic conflict avoidance — Even if another SEO plugin is already installed, ProbonoSEO Basic automatically detects it and suppresses duplicate output, avoiding trouble when switching or running side by side.
• Continuous development by Japanese developers — Built and maintained by developers who understand Japanese-language sites, keeping pace with WordPress core updates.

When you want to go further (Pro) When you need AI-powered SEO assistance, competitor analysis, or more advanced rich snippets, a separate Pro version is available. See https://seo.prbn.org. Even the Basic version is more than enough to put a solid SEO foundation under your Japanese-language site. Just install it and try SEO isn't something you "perfect before you start" — it's about getting the right foundation in place quickly and then keeping writing. ProbonoSEO Basic gives you that foundation with nothing more than activating it. Free, buy-once, and no data collection. There's nothing to lose. Install it and press "Activate." From that day, your Japanese-language site starts moving toward being picked up by search — and by AI search.

1.6.2

• Minor fixes

1.6.1

• Adjusted the fixed OGP image URL preview display, plus other minor refinements

1.6.0

• WordPress 7.0 compatibility
• Migrated Gutenberg sidebar registration from deprecated wp.editPost to the unified wp.editor package (works on WordPress 6.6+)
• Admin tab styles updated to follow WordPress admin theme CSS variables
• Removed unused legacy sidebar script

1.5.9

• Minor improvements.

1.5.8

• Minor wording adjustments.

1.5.8

• Enhanced: implemented CSS/JS minification for improved page speed and Core Web Vitals scores

1.5.7

• Improvement: user settings are now preserved across plugin reactivation (activation hook no longer resets saved options)
• Removed: non-functional CSS minification and JS minification toggles (were stubbed out and had no effect)
• Cleanup: removed unused stub files (breadcrumb-schema.php, prepublish-safety.php)

1.5.6

• Added AIO / AI Search Optimization features (expanded to 74 features)
• Added AI crawler permission via automatic robots.txt append
• Added FAQ Schema (FAQPage) output
• Added Article Schema output
• Added Organization Schema output

1.5.5

• Added manual tab to admin dashboard

1.5.4

• Fixed JavaScript localization variable name mismatch
• Improved Gutenberg sidebar stability

1.5.3

• SVN release fix

1.5.2

• Removed Pro license check code
• WordPress.org guideline compliance

1.5.1

• Stable tag alignment fix
• Text Domain correction for WordPress.org compliance

1.5.0

• WordPress.org Plugin Check full compliance
• PHPCS coding standards compliance
• Security-related code improvements

1.4.2

• WordPress 6.9 compatibility
• Plugin Check compliance (code quality improvements)

1.0.0

• Initial release
• 70 free features for Japanese SEO optimization