Polymetric AI Search Optimizer vs Smush – Image Optimization, Compression, Lazy Load, WebP & CDN

Your best article is already written. It just isn’t structured the way AI search engines want to read it. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, and Claude don’t return ten blue links. They read a page, lift the answer, and cite a source. If your content buries the answer three paragraphs down, or wanders before it gets to the point, it gets skipped – no matter how good it is or how well it ranks on Google. Polymetric AI Search Optimizer fixes that without making you start over. It adds a panel to the WordPress block editor that restructures the post you’re editing for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) and Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), so the engines can find the answer, understand it, and quote you. It takes your actual words and reorganizes them – clear structure, key-takeaway summaries, featured-snippet answer blocks, the formats AI systems pull from – while preserving your voice, your specifics, and every single link including affiliate and UTM parameters. You bring your own Anthropic or OpenAI API key – a typical 1,500-word rewrite costs roughly 2 to 8 cents. No markup, no middleman: your content goes straight to the provider you choose, and your key is stored encrypted on your own site. How it works Open any post in the WordPress editor. Open the Polymetric AI Search Optimizer sidebar and pick a preset, or choose individual tactics. Click Rewrite. The plugin sends your content to your chosen AI model and gets back an optimized version. Review the full rewrite in the preview pane. Apply it, or discard it. Nothing changes until you say so, and your previous version is saved as a WordPress revision. No content is published automatically. Ever. You are always the editor. What makes it different It rewrites what you have. Not a content generator. Your research, your numbers, your opinions – kept. It protects your voice. The optimizer matches your existing tone, vocabulary, and rhythm instead of flattening everything into the same AI monotone. It guards your keywords. Add the phrases that must survive verbatim, and it reads your Yoast SEO or RankMath focus keyword automatically and locks it too – your exact target terms come through the rewrite word for word. It never drops a link. Every href, including affiliate links and tracking parameters, survives the rewrite verbatim. It shows you everything first. Full preview before anything touches your post. One click to undo via revisions. You control the keys. Bring your own Anthropic or OpenAI key. No markup on your API usage, no middleman server holding your content. What it does NOT do No content generation from nothing – it only restructures content you already have. No fact-invention or claim-fabrication – numbers, percentages, dates, prices, and names are preserved, never generalized away. No automatic publishing – you preview and apply. The optimization tactics Pick a preset or toggle these tactics individually: Optimize the heading hierarchy (your H1 post title is left untouched) Add bullets and lists Add comparison tables where the data supports them Add a key-takeaways summary up top Add a 40-60 word featured-snippet answer block for AI Overviews and position-zero Add a linked table of contents Add HowTo steps with HowTo JSON-LD schema for procedural content Tighten paragraphs (remove filler, no meaning lost) Presets Not sure where to start? Pick a preset: Quick polish – structure only, keeps your voice. The safe default. Custom – check the exact tactics you want, ignore the rest. Built to fit your existing stack Reads your focus keyword straight from Yoast SEO or RankMath and loads it as a protected phrase, preserved verbatim through the rewrite. Detects page builders (Elementor, Divi, Beaver Builder, Bricks, Oxygen, WPBakery, and more) and warns you before touching content it shouldn’t. Pure block-editor sidebar. Vanilla JavaScript, zero jQuery. Long posts are handled in sections automatically, splitting at heading boundaries so a few-thousand-word guide optimizes without timing out. Images, figures, and source tables are preserved in place. Free and Pro The free plugin does the core job, on your own Anthropic or OpenAI key: All eight tactics: headings, bullets, comparison tables, key takeaways, featured-snippet block, table of contents, how-to steps with schema, and tighten paragraphs Preview-and-apply with full revision safety Protects your Yoast/RankMath focus keyword automatically, plus any keywords you add yourself Bring-your-own-key for Anthropic or OpenAI Pro (sold separately at polymetriclabs.com) adds the tactics that rewrite your words for citation, plus the controls to aim them: Rewrite tactics: lead-with-answer openers, simpler language, full Q&A reformatting, FAQ sections with FAQPage schema, and inline key-term definitions Additional presets: Full AI optimization and Rewrite as Q&A AI keyword detection – automatically finds the entities and key terms worth protecting A brand-voice override applied to every rewrite Per-post custom instructions – content briefs, goals, and do-not-edit notes, saved with each post God Mode – bulk optimize posts straight from the posts list A hosted plan is also planned: managed API access (no key of your own needed) and auto-optimization on publish. For full details and documentation, visit polymetriclabs.com/ai-search-optimizer. Source code The editor sidebar’s minified bundle in assets/sidebar/build/ is compiled with @wordpress/scripts from the human-readable React and SCSS source in assets/sidebar/src/, which is included in this package. To rebuild it, run npm install then npm run build from the plugin directory. Third-Party Services To rewrite a post, this plugin sends its content to an external AI provider. This happens only when you click Rewrite – never in the background, on page load, or on a schedule. Content goes directly from your site to the provider you select in Settings, using your own API key, and is not routed through any intermediary server. Anthropic (Claude) Post content is sent to the Anthropic Messages API (api.anthropic.com) for rewriting. Service: Anthropic Terms of Service: https://www.anthropic.com/terms Privacy Policy: https://www.anthropic.com/privacy OpenAI (GPT) Post content is sent to the OpenAI Chat Completions API (api.openai.com) for rewriting. Service: OpenAI Terms of Use: https://openai.com/policies/terms-of-use Privacy Policy: https://openai.com/policies/privacy-policy Your API key is stored encrypted in your WordPress database using AES-256-GCM and is sent only to the provider you selected.

Compress images, optimize images, and enable image lazy load automatically with the powerful Smush image optimizer to keep your WordPress site fast, without losing quality. Smush makes it easy to optimize images, compress images, and deliver images faster across your entire WordPress site. This all-in-one image optimizer automatically reduces image file sizes, enables image lazy load, and serves modern formats like WebP and AVIF, all without breaking image quality or adding extra work. Whether you’re running a blog, store, or portfolio, Smush helps you optimize images at scale and keep your site fast with a trusted WordPress image optimizer. Trusted by 1+ Million Sites | 4.8/5 Star Rating Get everything you need to optimize images and speed up your site. Smush works out of the box with no complicated setup – just install and let it handle the rest. Compress images without losing quality Reduce image file size automatically while keeping your images sharp and clear. Smush is an easy-to-use image optimizer which let’s you compress images using both lossless and lossy compression, giving you the best balance of quality and performance without extra work. You can also compress images outside the media library using Directory Smush, making it easy to optimize images stored in theme folders, plugins, or other directories on your server. Lazy load images for faster pages Enable image lazy load across your site so images load only when needed. This image optimizer improves initial page speed and creates a smoother experience for visitors without extra configuration. Serve WebP and AVIF images automatically (PRO) Convert images to WebP and AVIF and serve them automatically to supported browsers. Smush helps you optimize images using next-gen formats to reduce file size and improve load times across your WordPress site. Deliver images faster with an Image CDN (PRO) Serve images through a global image CDN to reduce latency and improve load times for visitors around the world. 119 global CDN servers Up to 500 GB of bandwidth Faster image delivery based on visitor location Improved performance for image-heavy and high-traffic sites Automatically resize and fix image dimensions (PRO) Eliminate common PageSpeed warnings and improve layout stability with automatic image sizing. Smush dynamically resizes images to perfectly fit their containers, regardless of original size, helping fix the “Properly size images” warning in Google PageSpeed Insights. It also automatically adds missing width and height attributes to your images, improving rendering speed and reducing layout shifts. This helps you meet the “Ensure images have explicit width and height” recommendation without any manual work. Optimize your entire site, automatically Smush works across your whole site as a powerful image optimizer to optimize images as you upload them and maintain performance over time without manual work. Optimize images automatically on upload Compress images in bulk or individually Works with your existing media library No need to re-upload images Enable image lazy load across your site Convert images to WebP and AVIF Deliver images with an integrated image CDN Automatically resize and serve correctly sized images Optimize images outside the media library with Directory Smush Built for performance Smush improves page speed and overall performance by reducing image weight and improving how images are delivered. Reduce page load times Improve user experience Better performance for image-heavy pages Supports image lazy load and preload images (PRO) for faster perceived performance Works with your existing setup Smush is built to work with your current WordPress setup, including popular themes, page builders, and plugins. Compatible with Gutenberg, Elementor, WPBakery, and more Works with WooCommerce stores No need to change your workflow Easy to enable and configure Designed to be simple You don’t need to be a performance expert to optimize images with Smush image optimizer. Works out of the box Simple settings when you need them No technical knowledge required Safe to use on any site Why choose Smush? There are plenty of image optimization plugins, but Smush focuses on making it easy to optimize images, compress images, and improve performance without complexity. As a leading WordPress image optimizer, Smush gives you powerful optimization tools without the technical hassle. Trusted by over 1 million WordPress users Built specifically for WordPress Regular updates and improvements Backed by the WPMU DEV team Get started in minutes Install Smush, activate it, and start to compress images, optimize images, and enable image lazy load right away. This easy-to-use image optimizer helps most sites see improvements immediately without changing how they upload or manage images. About Us WPMU DEV is a premium supplier of quality WordPress plugins, services and support. Learn more here: https://wpmudev.com/ Don’t forget to stay up to date on everything WordPress from the Internet’s number one resource: WPMU DEV Blog Hey, one more thing… we hope you enjoy our free offerings as much as we’ve loved making them for you! Contact and Credits Originally written by Alex Dunae at Dialect (dialect.ca, e-mail ‘alex’ at ‘dialect dot ca’), 2008-11.