Roles and permissions
Who can do what in SEO Ops: the five roles, what each one can open, and how permissions are enforced.
The five roles
SEO Ops adds four roles to WordPress and uses the Administrator role you already have. Each person has one role. Assign it under Settings › Users & roles, where the permission matrix is also shown read-only.
| Role | Meant for | What they can do |
|---|---|---|
| Administrator | The site owner or agency lead | Everything: clients, strategies, tasks, reports, users, integrations, licence and settings. |
| SEO Manager | Account managers and team leads | See every client; manage clients, strategies, tasks and reports; publish reports to the portal; see financial details and the full activity log; use AI drafting; override task dependencies. No system administration (users, integrations, settings). |
| SEO Specialist | People doing the SEO work | Work on the clients assigned to them: strategies, tasks (including technical tasks), reports and internal and client-visible comments; use AI drafting. They cannot publish reports. |
| Developer | Developers who fix technical issues | Technical tasks and the client information they need, with internal and client-visible comments. |
| Client | People at your clients | The client portal only: their own organisation’s shared information, client-visible comments, and approvals if they are marked as an approver. |
Enforced on the server
Permissions are checked on the server for every request, not only hidden in the interface. A Specialist who guesses the address of a client they are not assigned to still cannot open it. A client user can never reach another client’s data, even by editing an address.
Give someone access
- Open Settings › Users & roles.
- Add a user and choose the role. For staff roles you can limit which clients they can see.
- For a Client role, choose the client organisation the person belongs to. Portal access follows from that, and the invitation email is covered in Inviting portal users.
Who can approve work
Approvals belong to clients. Not even an Administrator approves on a client’s behalf: the decision, the name and the time are recorded against the person who made it. A client contact needs to be marked as an approver before they see the Approve choices. See Approvals.
Common questions
Can I create my own roles?
No. The five roles are fixed, which keeps what each person can see predictable. The code checks capabilities, not role names, so the matrix on the Users & roles screen is the whole truth.
Why can a Specialist not see a client?
Specialists work on the clients they are assigned to. Ask an Administrator or SEO Manager to give them access to that client.
Does a Client role count against the Free limit?
No. The Free plan limits active clients (the businesses you work for), not the number of people. See Client statuses and the Free limit.