SEO

SEO Architecture Overview

Server-Side Rendering for Crawlability

The most important SEO feature in Grid Panda is server-side rendering of filtered states. When Googlebot or any crawler requests a filtered URL, Grid Panda renders the correct posts in the initial HTML response — no JavaScript execution required.

This works via FilterParamHandler, which hooks into wp at priority 5 (before the shortcode renders), parses all fx_ query parameters from the request, and injects the resulting WP_Query clauses into the grid query:

// Request URL:
GET /shop/?fx_color=red&fx_brand=apple

// FilterParamHandler parses:
$selections = [
  'color' => ['red'],
  'brand' => ['apple'],
]

// Injects into WP_Query:
tax_query: [
  { taxonomy: 'pa_color', field: 'slug', terms: ['red'] },
  { taxonomy: 'pa_brand', field: 'slug', terms: ['apple'] }
]

// Grid shortcode renders filtered products server-side
// Googlebot sees the actual filtered product list in HTML

The same mechanism applies to clean URLs — UrlRewriter converts/shop/filter/color-red/brand-apple/into fx_ params before FilterParamHandler runs.

Clean Filter URLs

By default, Grid Panda uses query string URLs (?fx_color=red). Enable Clean URLs in Grid Panda → Settings → SEO to use permalink-style URLs:

Clean URL Format

Each filter segment follows the pattern {facet-slug}-{value}. Multiple facets are separate path segments. Multiple values within one facet use + as separator. Range values use - between min and max.

Custom Base URL per Facet

// Override the base URL for sitemap filter URLs per facet
add_filter( 'gridpanda/seo/sitemap_base_url', function( $base_url, $slug, $value ) {
    if ( 'product_cat' === $slug ) {
        return home_url( '/shop/' );
    }
    return $base_url;
}, 10, 3 );

Canonical URLs

Grid Panda outputs a <link rel="canonical"> tag for every filtered page. The canonical is the clean URL version of the current filter state — this prevents parameter-order variations from creating duplicate content:

<!-- These two URLs have the same canonical: -->
/shop/?fx_brand=apple&fx_color=red
/shop/?fx_color=red&fx_brand=apple

<link rel="canonical" href="/shop/filter/brand-apple/color-red/" />
<!-- (with clean URLs enabled; sorts slugs alphabetically) -->

Customise the canonical via the gridpanda/seo/canonical filter.

Robots Meta Directives

Grid Panda adds a <meta name="robots"> tag to filtered pages. Two strategies are available (Grid Panda → Settings → SEO → Robots Strategy):

// Selectively allow specific filter combinations to be indexed
add_filter( 'gridpanda/seo/robots', function( $directives, $active_filters, $page ) {
    // Allow single-category filter pages to be indexed
    if ( count( $active_filters ) === 1 && isset( $active_filters['product_cat'] ) ) {
        return []; // No robots restrictions
    }
    return $directives;
}, 10, 3 );

Meta Title & Description Templates

Customise the page title and meta description for filtered pages using template strings with placeholders. Configure in Grid Panda → Settings → SEO:

Override programmatically via the gridpanda/seo/meta_title andgridpanda/seo/meta_description filters.

Open Graph

When Enable Open Graph is on (default: true), Grid Panda outputs Open Graph meta tags on filtered pages for correct social sharing previews:

<meta property="og:title"       content="Red Products | MyShop" />
<meta property="og:description" content="Browse our Color Red products..." />
<meta property="og:url"         content="https://myshop.com/shop/filter/color-red/" />
<meta property="og:type"        content="website" />

Structured Data (JSON-LD)

Grid Panda outputs a Schema.org ItemList JSON-LD script tag on grid pages. Each post in the current result set is added as a ListItem. Post type determines the inner schema:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "ItemList",
  "name": "Products — Color: Red",
  "numberOfItems": 12,
  "itemListElement": [
    {
      "@type": "ListItem",
      "position": 1,
      "url": "https://myshop.com/product/red-widget/",
      "item": {
        "@type": "Product",
        "name": "Red Widget",
        "url": "https://myshop.com/product/red-widget/",
        "image": "https://myshop.com/wp-content/uploads/red-widget.jpg",
        "offers": {
          "@type": "Offer",
          "price": "29.99",
          "priceCurrency": "USD",
          "availability": "https://schema.org/InStock"
        }
      }
    }
  ]
}
</script>

Customise the structured data via thegridpanda/seo/structured_data filter.

XML Sitemap Integration

Enable Sitemap Integration in Grid Panda → Settings → SEO to include indexable filter URLs in the XML sitemap. Grid Panda integrates with three sitemap systems:

Indexable URL Generation

Only single-facet-value URLs are included in the sitemap by default (depth=1). Multi-facet combinations grow exponentially and would consume crawl budget — they are excluded unless thegridpanda_seo_max_indexable_depth is set above 2.

Only facets with seo_indexable: true in their config are included. Range, date_range, and rating facets are always excluded (non-enumerable values).

// Customise which URLs appear in the sitemap
add_filter( 'gridpanda/seo/sitemap_urls', function( $urls ) {
    // Remove URLs with very low estimated traffic
    return array_filter( $urls, function( $url ) {
        return ! str_contains( $url['url'], '/color-black/' );
    } );
} );

SEO Settings Reference