Backup and Restore SEO

What it is

SEO data backup / restore takes a full snapshot of your SEO and puts it back when you need it. The snapshot is stored in the database — the last five are kept, oldest first out — and can also be downloaded as a JSON file. For every published item it captures:

SEO title, meta description and focus keyphrase, read through the active plugin's adapter (so it works even for All in One SEO's custom table);
the AISA AI Search Context;
rotation variants for title and description, multilingual ones included, plus the per-post rotation cap and sync flag;
the URL slug;
term SEO for the enabled taxonomies, and image alt text and titles.

Restore writes the snapshot back through whatever adapter is active at that moment. It is an exact restore, not a top-up: an item that was empty when the snapshot was taken goes back to empty even if it has gained SEO since. That is what makes Restore a real undo for a 1-Click SEO run, and what makes restoring with a different SEO plugin active a migration in its own right. Older v4 backups, which did not record the full list of items, restore only what they contain.

Restore from file is a section at the bottom of the same card, not a card of its own: you upload a JSON snapshot and restore from that instead of from the list. It is how you carry SEO from one site to another, or recover a snapshot saved months ago.

Where to find it

AISA → Utility, second card: SEO data backup / restore. Inside it, in order: the buttons to create a snapshot and to download the current one, the table of Saved backups with restore and download per row, and the Restore from file section.

Snapshots also appear here when you did not create them by hand. Bulk operations can take one automatically before a mass run, and SEO data transfer / sync creates one before it writes anything — which is why undoing a transfer means restoring its backup from this card, and not learning a second mechanism.

Requirements & tier

Free, with the administrator capability (manage_options). Backup and restore of the core SEO fields need an adapter to read and write them: with no SEO plugin active, AISA's own fields and the AI Search Context are captured all the same. If there is nothing to save, no snapshot is created rather than an empty one.

How to use

Open AISA → Utility and find SEO data backup / restore.
Press Create backup before anything risky: a 1-Click run, a bulk operation, a plugin change. Or press Download current snapshot (.json) to keep a copy outside the site.
To go back, pick the snapshot in the Saved backups table and restore it. The site returns to the state of that moment, empty fields included.
To restore a file, scroll to Restore from file, upload the JSON and confirm.
To undo a transfer, restore the backup the transfer created — it is the most recent row, with the count of items it saved.

Questions people ask

Where are snapshots stored? In the aisa_seo_backups option, not autoloaded, keeping the five most recent. Any of them can be downloaded as JSON and restored later, on this site or another one.
Can Restore undo a 1-Click SEO run? Yes. Because the snapshot records which items existed and which were empty, restoring puts the empty ones back to empty — a genuine undo, not a partial overwrite.
How do I cancel a transfer I regret? Restore the backup that the transfer created just before writing. It is in the table on this card, and it returns both the fields it filled and the ones it overwrote.
Is “Restore from file” a separate feature? No, it is a section of this card. Same restore, starting from a JSON file you upload instead of a snapshot in the list.
Does backup work without an SEO plugin? Yes. In standalone mode AISA's own fields and the AI context are captured; there simply is no third-party storage to read.

SEO data transfer / sync: move your SEO between AISA and your SEO plugin
Migrate SEO between plugins
Export and import settings
Repair invisible SEO and database maintenance