SEO (Site Audit + Content Writer + Competitor Analysis)

All persistent data (site profiles, config, audit history, keyword tracking) lives in ~/Clawic/data/seo/. If you have data at an old location (~/seo/ or ~/clawic/seo/), move it to ~/Clawic/data/seo/. Read setup.md on first use; memory-template.md holds the file format.

When To Use

• Auditing a site: indexing, technical health, on-page, content, links, structure
• Diagnosing a ranking or organic traffic drop, a deindexed page, or a core-update hit
• Writing, refreshing, or consolidating content to rank for a target query
• Keyword research, opportunity sizing, competitor gap analysis, cannibalization
• Shipping structural changes safely: migrations, redesigns, hreflang, faceted navigation, programmatic pages
• Earning visibility in the surfaces above the ten blue links: snippets, packs, AI Overviews
• Not for paid search ads (PPC, Google Ads bidding, quality score) or for content planning with no search target — route to content-marketing

Quick Reference

Core Rules

1. Audit before prescribing. Fixed order: manual actions → indexing → intent match → technical → content → links. Diagnosing content quality on a page Google never indexed wastes the engagement; every layer above depends on the one before it.
2. The SERP is the spec. Before writing or prescribing format, search the exact query in the target market. Page 1 defines format, depth, and freshness. If page 1 is all product grids, a 3,000-word guide will not rank there at any quality level.
3. Improve before you create. Pages at position 4-15 in Search Console with impressions at or above min_impressions (Configuration; default 100/month) are the highest-ROI work: better snippet, filled content gaps, internal links. Write a new page only when no existing URL targets the intent. Example: a page at position 8 with 1,000 monthly impressions needs a title rewrite and two internal links — not a competing new article, which triggers rule 4.
4. One intent per page. Two URLs alternating in Search Console for the same query = cannibalization: Google splits signals and both underperform. Fix: 301 the weaker into the stronger, merge unique content. Map keywords by intent, not by string — Google clusters variants onto one page.
5. Technical floor. Core Web Vitals "good" thresholds (Google, field data at p75): LCP < 2.5s, INP < 200ms, CLS < 0.1. HTTPS, mobile-first, self-referencing canonicals, clean sitemap. Technical debt caps everything content can earn.
6. E-E-A-T is signals, not a score. No E-E-A-T meter exists — demonstrate it: author bios with verifiable credentials, first-hand evidence (photos, data, tests), citations, contact and about pages. Decisive for YMYL topics (health, finance, legal, safety).
7. Links: earn, never buy. Bought links risk manual actions that take months to recover from after cleanup. Internal links are the lever you fully control — spend them before any outreach.
8. Iterate from Search Console, not assumptions. Each symptom has a different fix: CTR far below the position curve → rewrite the snippet. Impressions but no clicks → intent or SERP-feature problem. No impressions → indexing or relevance problem. GSC tells you which; guessing does not.
9. Size the prize before doing the work. expected monthly clicks = volume × CTR at the realistic position × (1 − feature discount). Worked: 2,000 searches/mo, realistic landing spot position 5 (~5-10% CTR), an AI Overview and an ads block above → 2,000 × 0.07 × 0.6 ≈ 84 clicks/mo. If that number does not justify the build, say so before writing.

Ranking Drop Triage

In order — stop at the first confirmed cause:

1. GSC → Manual Actions + Security Issues. If flagged, that IS the diagnosis (recovery.md).
2. URL Inspection on hit pages: still indexed? Google-selected canonical changed to another URL?
3. Recent deploys: robots.txt edits, stray noindex, redirect changes, template changes shipped near the drop date.
4. Drop date vs Google's announced update dates. Aligned = sitewide quality reassessment, not a page bug — fix the weakest content across the site.
5. Search the lost queries: did the SERP change format or gain features (AI Overview, more ads, a pack) that push you down visually at the same rank?
6. Backlinks: links lost on your side, or a competitor gained them.
7. Seasonality and tracking: compare year-over-year, and confirm the drop is not analytics (broken tag, bot filter, property change) before treating it as SEO.
8. None conclusive → gap-compare the pages that replaced you (keywords.md).

SEO Audit Checklist

Indexing:

• Important pages indexed — verify with URL Inspection and the Page indexing report, not the site: operator
• No important pages blocked in robots.txt
• XML sitemap submitted to Search Console, only canonical 200-status URLs in it
• No stray noindex on pages that should rank
• No page both robots.txt-blocked AND noindexed — blocked crawl means Google never sees the noindex, so the page can stay indexed

Technical:

• Core Web Vitals passing (thresholds in rule 5)
• Mobile-friendly, HTTPS with no mixed content
• No crawl errors, no soft 404s, no server errors in Search Console
• Redirect chains ≤3 hops
• Rendered HTML contains the main content (JavaScript sites)

On-Page:

• Unique title tags (50-60 chars), meta descriptions (150-160 chars)
• One H1 per page with the target term; proper heading hierarchy
• Images with alt text; internal links to and from the page

Content:

• Search intent matched (rule 2)
• No cannibalization (rule 4)
• No thin or duplicate content; dead pages improved, consolidated, or removed

Off-Page and Entity:

• Google Business Profile complete (local businesses)
• Backlink profile checked for toxic patterns
• Brand queries return the right result, sitelinks, and knowledge panel where applicable

Content Writing Process

1. Keyword research — target keyword, volume, SERP reality check (keywords.md)
2. Intent analysis — search the query in the target market; page 1 is the format spec
3. Gap + gain — cover what ranking pages cover, then add what none of them have
4. Write — answer the query in the first ~100 words, then structure per content.md
5. Optimize — title, meta, headers, internal links from strong pages, schema
6. Publish — request indexing once, log in ~/Clawic/data/seo/memory.md, review GSC after a few weeks

What Takes How Long

Honest ranges beat invented dates; every one of these is mechanism, not promise.

Output Gates

Before delivering recommendations or content:

• Did I search the actual query in the target market, or am I prescribing format from memory?
• Did I check for an existing page targeting this intent before recommending a new one?
• Is every number I cite from this skill's files or the user's own data, not improvised?
• Does each recommendation name the exact URL and the exact change ("rewrite /pricing title to lead with X"), not "improve content"?
• Did I size the prize (rule 9) so the user can refuse the work?
• Am I promising a date? State the mechanism and a range from What Takes How Long, never a deadline.

Configuration

User-dependent variables. Defaults apply until the user states a preference; store them in ~/Clawic/data/seo/config.yaml.

Preference areas — customizable dimensions; a stated preference gets recorded in config.yaml and applied:

• Reporting: audit depth (one-page priorities vs full report), technical vs business language, which KPI leads (clicks, conversions, revenue)
• Conventions: URL and slug style, title formula (brand position and separator), heading patterns, internal anchor style
• Scope boundaries: sections that are off-limits (legal, careers, docs), staging hosts, URLs never to touch
• Implementation: whether the agent edits files and writes patches or hands over specs and tickets
• Measurement: reporting property, comparison window, whether branded queries are excluded from "SEO traffic"
• Thresholds: floors that gate what gets worked on — impressions (min_impressions), traffic at stake for a finding to make the Top 5, minimum sample before a test is called
• Cadence: rank and GSC review frequency, content refresh schedule, reporting date

Traps

Where Experts Disagree

• Word count. Studies show correlation between length and ranking; nobody serious claims causation. Cover the intent fully, then stop — padding is a negative.
• Disavow. Google says it is unnecessary without a manual action; some practitioners still disavow after obvious spam attacks. Default: don't, unless a manual action names links.
• Exact-match anchors. They move rankings in tests AND they are the first pattern link-spam systems check. The disagreement is the safe ratio, not the risk — keep exact match a small minority of external anchors.
• Subdomain vs subfolder. Google states both can rank; migration case studies keep showing subfolder gains. Unresolved: whether the gains come from the structure or from the consolidation and relaunch links that accompany the move. Default subfolder for new builds; do not migrate a working subdomain for this reason alone.
• Optimizing for AI Overviews. One camp treats citation as the new goal; the other says citations that suppress clicks are a bad trade and defends click-worthy queries instead. Both are right per query type — decide per page with the click data, not sitewide.

Related Skills

More Clawic skills, get them at https://clawic.com/skills/seo (install if the user confirms):

• content-marketing — Content strategy
• analytics — Traffic analysis
• market-research — Competitive analysis
• html — HTML optimization
• web — Web development

Feedback

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