Let your team do SEO without touching the settings.

Why SEO needs permissions

On a one-person blog, permissions don't matter. As soon as more people work on a site, they start to. A freelance writer should be able to set the title and description of the post they're writing. They probably shouldn't be able to change the title template for every post on the site, set a page to noindex or add a redirect that sends your pricing page somewhere else.

Some SEO settings are harmless to get slightly wrong. Others can quietly remove pages from search results, break links or change how every page appears in Google. A role manager lets you hand out the everyday work while keeping the high-impact controls with the people who understand them.

The five permissions

Manage settings

Access to Rilea SEO, then Settings, and to the Tools page. That covers title and description templates, sitemaps, schema, social defaults, breadcrumbs, local SEO, WooCommerce settings, image SEO, redirects and 404 options, IndexNow, the role manager itself, and the import, export and reset tools. Changes here affect the whole site, so most sites give this permission only to administrators.

Edit SEO fields

Access to the main parts of the Rilea SEO panel in the editor: the SEO title, meta description, focus keyphrase, related keyphrases, synonyms, cornerstone flag and social fields. This is what writers need to optimise their own content.

Edit advanced fields

Access to the advanced section of the panel: noindex, nofollow and the other robots settings, canonical URL, per-post redirect, schema type and custom schema. These settings can take a page out of search or point search engines elsewhere, so they suit editors and SEO specialists rather than every writer. In the bulk editor, only people with this permission can change noindex.

Manage redirects

Access to Rilea SEO, then Redirects, and the 404 Monitor. Redirects affect what visitors and search engines see across the site, so this suits editors, SEO staff and developers.

Bulk editor and tools

Access to the bulk editor, the Rilea SEO dashboard, Link Insights and the SEO Analyzer. It's useful for anyone doing regular SEO housekeeping.

How permissions combine with WordPress roles

Rilea SEO's permissions sit on top of WordPress's own. A contributor can only edit their own drafts in WordPress, so even with permission to edit SEO fields, they can only change SEO on those drafts. An author can edit their own published posts, so they can optimise those and nothing else. This means you never accidentally give someone access to content they couldn't already edit.

Anyone with WordPress's own permission to manage options, which normally means administrators, always has every Rilea SEO permission. That keeps the site owner in control and makes it impossible to remove your own access to the role manager.

The defaults

When you first install Rilea SEO, before you save any choices in the role manager, these defaults apply:

• Administrators: everything.
• Editors: edit SEO fields, edit advanced fields, manage redirects, and use the bulk editor and tools. Not settings.
• Authors: edit SEO fields.
• Contributors and subscribers: no Rilea SEO permissions.

These suit most editorial teams. Once you save your own choices in the role manager, your settings replace the defaults for every role.

Example setups

A blog with freelance writers

• Authors: edit SEO fields, so writers set their own titles, descriptions and keyphrases.
• Editors: everything except settings, so they can fix robots settings and redirects during editing.
• Administrators: settings and templates.

A shop with a small team

• Shop managers: edit SEO fields, edit advanced fields and manage redirects, so they can handle discontinued products and set product schema.
• Editors: edit SEO fields for blog content.
• Administrators: settings.

An agency managing a client site

• Agency staff with administrator accounts: everything.
• Client editors: edit SEO fields only, so they can keep titles and descriptions up to date as they publish, without changing the technical setup.

Good practice for teams

• Give the least access that works. Start with fewer permissions and add more when someone needs them.
• Keep settings with one or two people. Templates and site-wide rules are easy to change and hard to notice when they go wrong.
• Train writers on the panel. A short walk-through of the keyphrase, the checks and the Google preview gets better results than permissions alone.
• Review redirects together. Agree who adds redirects during migrations and redesigns, so two people don't create conflicting rules.
• Revisit when people change roles. When someone leaves or moves role in WordPress, their Rilea SEO access changes with it automatically.

Moving from another plugin

If you used Rank Math's role manager, set up the same choices in Rilea SEO's role manager after switching; role settings aren't part of the import. If you used Yoast SEO's SEO Manager or SEO Editor roles, those roles stay on your site after you deactivate Yoast SEO until you remove them, and you can give them Rilea SEO permissions in the role manager while you decide.

Developers

Rilea SEO's permissions are WordPress capabilities: rilea_manage_settings, rilea_edit_meta, rilea_edit_advanced, rilea_manage_redirects and rilea_bulk_edit. You can check them with current_user_can() in your own code, for example to show a custom SEO dashboard only to people who can use the bulk editor. Because they're mapped at runtime from the role manager's choices, they don't need to be stored on roles, and removing Rilea SEO leaves your roles exactly as they were.

Checking access is right

After changing permissions, log in as a test user for each role, or use a user-switching plugin, and check three things: whether they can see the Rilea SEO menu items you expect, whether the Rilea SEO panel shows the sections you intended in the post editor, and whether advanced settings are hidden where they should be. It takes a few minutes and avoids surprises when your team starts publishing.

What each person sees

The role manager doesn't just block actions; it changes what people see, so the interface stays simple for each role.

• Without "Edit SEO fields", the Rilea SEO panel doesn't appear in the post editor at all, and the SEO fields don't appear on category and tag screens.
• Without "Edit advanced fields", the panel shows the title, description, keyphrases, analysis and social tabs, but the advanced section with robots, canonical, redirect and schema settings is hidden. The Rilea SEO bulk actions in the posts list are hidden too.
• Without "Manage redirects", the Redirects and 404 Monitor screens don't appear in the menu.
• Without "Bulk editor and tools", the bulk editor, dashboard, Link Insights and SEO Analyzer don't appear.
• Without "Manage settings", the Settings and Tools screens don't appear.

Fewer options on screen means fewer mistakes, and less to explain when someone new joins the team.

Writers and the analysis

Writers with permission to edit SEO fields get the full content analysis: the keyphrase checks, readability, inclusive language, the Google preview and internal link suggestions. That's where most of the day-to-day value of an SEO plugin lies. A writer who sees that their keyphrase is missing from the introduction, or that their paragraphs are too long, can fix it before an editor ever sees the draft.

Editors then review the advanced settings that writers can't see: whether the page should be indexed, whether the canonical is right, which schema type suits it, and whether an old URL needs a redirect. Splitting the work this way keeps each person focused on what they know best.

Multisite networks

On a WordPress multisite network, each site has its own Rilea SEO settings, including its own role manager choices. Site administrators control access on their own site. Network super admins, who can manage options everywhere, always have every Rilea SEO permission on every site.

Security

Every Rilea SEO screen and action checks the person's permission on the server, not just in the interface. Hiding a menu item isn't the only safeguard: if someone without permission tried to reach a settings screen or save an advanced field directly, the request would be refused. Saves are also protected with WordPress nonces, the standard protection against requests forged from other sites. Combined with WordPress's own rules about who can edit which posts, that keeps each person's access exactly as wide as you intended and no wider.

Keeping a record

When your team grows, write down who has which role and why, especially for anyone with settings or redirect access. Review it when people join or leave, or at least once a year. It takes minutes, and it means you'll know who to ask when a template or redirect changes unexpectedly.

Common questions from teams

Can a writer see the SEO score without editing anything?

The SEO and readability scores appear as columns in the posts list for anyone who can see the list. To see the full checks and change the fields, a person needs permission to edit SEO fields.

Can I give one person extra access without changing their whole role?

Rilea SEO's permissions follow roles, so the simplest way is to give that person a role with the access they need, such as editor. If you use a role-editing plugin to create a custom role, it appears in the role manager and you can set its permissions there.

What happens to permissions if I deactivate Rilea SEO?

Nothing remains to clean up. The permissions only exist while Rilea SEO is active, and your WordPress roles stay exactly as they were. If you reactivate it, your role manager choices are still saved.

Do these permissions apply on Shopify?

Not yet. Rilea SEO for Shopify uses the staff permissions you set in Shopify. A Rilea SEO role system for Shopify staff is on the roadmap.