SEO Audit Skill for Claude

/seo-audit

> If you see unfamiliar placeholders or need to check which tools are connected, see CONNECTORS.md.

Audit a website's SEO health, research keyword opportunities, identify content gaps, and benchmark against competitors. Produces a prioritized action plan a marketer can execute immediately.

Trigger

User runs /seo-audit or asks for an SEO audit, keyword research, content gap analysis, technical SEO check, or competitor SEO comparison.

Inputs

Gather the following from the user. If not provided, ask before proceeding:

• URL or domain — the site to audit, or a topic/keyword if running in keyword research mode

• Audit type — one of:
• Full site audit — end-to-end SEO review covering all sections below
• Keyword research — identify keyword opportunities for a topic or domain
• Content gap analysis — find topics competitors rank for that you don't
• Technical SEO check — crawlability, speed, structured data, and infrastructure issues
• Competitor SEO comparison — head-to-head SEO benchmarking against specific competitors

If not specified, default to full site audit.

• Target keywords or topics (optional) — specific keywords the user is already targeting or wants to rank for

• Competitors (optional) — domains or companies to compare against. If not provided and the audit type requires competitor data, use web search to identify 2-3 likely competitors based on the user's domain and keyword space.

Process

1. Keyword Research

Research keywords related to the user's domain, topic, or target keywords.

If ~~SEO tools are connected:

• Pull keyword data, search volume, keyword difficulty scores, and ranking positions automatically
• Identify keywords the site currently ranks for and where it's gaining or losing ground

If ~~product analytics are connected:

• Cross-reference keyword targets with actual organic traffic data to validate which keywords are driving visits and conversions

If tools are not connected:

• Use web search to research the keyword landscape
• Note: "For more precise volume and difficulty data, connect an SEO tool like Ahrefs or Semrush via MCP. The audit will auto-populate with ranking data."

For each keyword opportunity, assess:

• Primary keywords — high-intent terms directly tied to the user's product or service
• Secondary keywords — supporting terms and variations
• Search volume signals — relative demand (high, medium, low) based on available data
• Keyword difficulty — how competitive the term is (easy, moderate, hard)
• Long-tail opportunities — specific, lower-competition phrases with clear intent
• Question-based keywords — "how to", "what is", "why does" queries that mirror People Also Ask results
• Intent classification — informational, navigational, commercial, or transactional

2. On-Page SEO Audit

For each key page (homepage, top landing pages, recent blog posts), evaluate:

• Title tags — present, unique, within 50-60 characters, includes target keyword
• Meta descriptions — present, compelling, within 150-160 characters, includes a call to action
• H1 tags — exactly one per page, includes primary keyword
• H2/H3 structure — logical hierarchy, uses secondary keywords where natural
• Keyword usage — primary keyword appears in the first 100 words, used naturally throughout, not over-stuffed
• Internal linking — pages link to related content, orphan pages identified, anchor text is descriptive
• Image alt text — all images have descriptive alt attributes, keywords included where relevant
• URL structure — clean, readable, includes keywords, no excessive parameters or depth

3. Content Gap Analysis

Identify what's missing from the user's content strategy:

• Competitor topic coverage — topics and keywords competitors rank for that the user's site does not cover
• Content freshness — pages that haven't been updated in 12+ months and may be losing rankings
• Thin content — pages with insufficient depth to rank (under 300 words for informational queries, lacking substance)
• Missing content types — formats competitors use that the user doesn't (guides, comparison pages, glossaries, tools, templates)
• Funnel gaps — missing content at specific buyer journey stages (awareness, consideration, decision)
• Topic clusters — opportunities to build pillar pages with supporting content

4. Technical SEO Checklist

Evaluate technical foundations that affect crawlability and rankings:

• Page speed — identify slow-loading pages and likely causes (large images, render-blocking scripts, excessive redirects)
• Mobile-friendliness — responsive design, tap targets, font sizes, viewport configuration
• Structured data — opportunities for schema markup (FAQ, HowTo, Product, Article, Organization, Breadcrumb)
• Crawlability — robots.txt configuration, XML sitemap presence and accuracy, canonical tags, noindex/nofollow usage
• Broken links — internal and external 404s, redirect chains
• HTTPS — secure connection, mixed content issues
• Core Web Vitals signals — LCP, FID/INP, CLS indicators based on observable page behavior
• Indexation — pages that should be indexed but may not be, duplicate content risks

5. Competitor SEO Comparison

For each competitor, compare:

• Keyword overlap — keywords both sites rank for, and where each site ranks higher
• Keyword gaps — terms the competitor ranks for that the user does not
• Domain authority signals — relative site strength based on backlink profiles, referring domains, and content depth
• Content depth — average content length, topic coverage breadth, publishing frequency
• Backlink profile observations — types of sites linking to competitors, link-worthy content they've produced
• SERP feature ownership — which competitor appears in featured snippets, People Also Ask, image packs, or knowledge panels
• Technical advantages — site speed differences, mobile experience, structured data usage

Output

Executive Summary

Open with a 3-5 sentence summary of overall SEO health. Highlight:

• The site's biggest strength
• The top 3 priorities that will have the most impact
• An overall assessment: strong foundation, needs work, or critical issues

Keyword Opportunity Table

| Keyword | Est. Difficulty | Opportunity Score | Current Ranking | Intent | Recommended Content Type |

|---------|----------------|-------------------|-----------------|--------|--------------------------|

Opportunity score: high, medium, or low — based on the combination of search demand, difficulty, and relevance to the user's business.

Include 15-25 keyword opportunities, sorted by opportunity score.

On-Page Issues Table

| Page | Issue | Severity | Recommended Fix |

|------|-------|----------|-----------------|

Severity levels:

• Critical — directly hurting rankings or preventing indexation
• High — significant impact on SEO performance
• Medium — best practice violation, moderate impact
• Low — minor optimization opportunity

Content Gap Recommendations

For each content gap identified, provide:

• Topic or keyword to target
• Why it matters — search demand, competitor coverage, funnel stage
• Recommended format — blog post, landing page, guide, comparison page, etc.
• Priority — high, medium, or low
• Estimated effort — quick win (1-2 hours), moderate (half day), substantial (multi-day)

Technical SEO Checklist

| Check | Status | Details |

|-------|--------|---------|

Status: Pass, Fail, or Warning.

Competitor Comparison Summary

| Dimension | Your Site | Competitor A | Competitor B | Winner |

|-----------|-----------|--------------|--------------|--------|

Include rows for: keyword count, content depth, publishing frequency, backlink signals, technical score, SERP feature presence.

Prioritized Action Plan

Split recommendations into two categories:

Quick Wins (do this week):

• Actions that take under 2 hours and have immediate impact
• Examples: fix title tags, add meta descriptions, fix broken links, add alt text

Strategic Investments (plan for this quarter):

• Actions that require more effort but drive long-term growth
• Examples: build a topic cluster, create a pillar page, launch a link-building campaign, overhaul site structure

For each action item, include:

• What to do (specific and concrete)
• Expected impact (high, medium, low)
• Effort estimate
• Dependencies (if any)

Follow-Up

After presenting the audit, ask:

"Would you like me to:

• Draft content briefs for the top keyword opportunities?
• Create optimized title tags and meta descriptions for your key pages?
• Build a content calendar based on the gap analysis?
• Dive deeper into any specific section of the audit?
• Run this same analysis for a different competitor or domain?"