Author Authority Builder
Turns authors from byline strings into entities: author page, Person schema with sameAs, byline fixes, cross-web consistency, three bio lengths. The E-E-A-T person layer.
Skill file on GitHubClaude SEO Skills: 39 free skills that turn Claude into a working SEO team
Built by the team behind 500+ client campaigns at StudioHawk. Install in about a minute. MIT licensed, no email gate, no paid tier.
Claude SEO Skills is a free, MIT-licensed library of 39 skill files that turn Claude into an SEO checker, auditor and strategist. Created by Lawrence Hitches and the StudioHawk team, each skill installs into Claude Desktop or Claude Code in about a minute. The whole library lives on GitHub.
Created by Lawrence Hitches ยท github.com/lhitches
$ claude "run the claude code seo audit" Scanning HTML files in this repo... 589 files found, 15 page sample audited Score: 90/100 A. Structural baseline 35/40 B. AI search readiness 18/20 C. Linking and structure 19/20 D. Content basics 14/15 E. Infrastructure 4/5 1 High 3 Medium 6 Low findings Report written to SEO_REPORT.md
A skill is a process. A prompt is a guess.
A prompt asks Claude to improvise. A skill hands Claude a process: the exact steps, checks and output format a senior SEO would follow, written down and installed.
Most "Claude SEO" advice is a folder of prompts. Prompts drift. Ask the same question twice and you get two different audits, neither of which you can hand to a client.
Every skill in this library encodes how StudioHawk actually runs the task across 500+ client campaigns. Same input, same process, same report format, every time.
A Claude skill is a markdown file that teaches Claude a repeatable workflow: when to trigger, which steps to follow, what to check and what to output. A prompt is a one-off instruction. A skill runs the same process every run, so your tenth audit is as rigorous as your first.
What the skills do
Six categories. Every skill is a working process, and each card below tells you what it finds.
Audit and diagnose
14 skillsThe SEO checkers. Technical audits, website scores, trust checks, schema generation and cannibalisation detection. The analysis tools that find what is broken and rank what to fix first.
Industry-specific audits
6 skillsEcommerce, B2B, SaaS, local and restaurant audits. Plus an agentic product page auditor that checks whether an AI shopping agent can actually buy from your page.
Content and topical strategy
8 skillsContent briefs, topical authority maps, keyword clustering and information gain analysis. The planning layer that runs before anyone writes a word.
AI search
5 skillsAI visibility checks, citation monitoring, Clarity bot auditing and Claude Code SEO. The skills aimed at getting you cited by ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity.
Outreach, links and reviews
2 skillsData PR pitches and Google review responses, written the way an agency writes them.
Calculators and helpers
4 skillsAd spend comparisons, calculator page specs, GBP reporting and a quick diagnostic for whether a Google update helped or hurt you.
Install a skill in about a minute
Three ways in. Clone the whole library, pull one skill with curl, or paste a skill straight into a chat.
1. The whole library (Claude Desktop, macOS/Linux)
git clone https://github.com/lhitches/claude-seo-skills.git mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills/ cp claude-seo-skills/skills/*.md ~/.claude/skills/ cp -r claude-seo-skills/skills/topical-authority-map ~/.claude/skills/
2. One skill with curl (example: Claude Code SEO)
curl -o ~/.claude/skills/claude-code-seo.md https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lhitches/claude-seo-skills/main/skills/claude-code-seo.md
3. No install at all
Open any skill file on GitHub, copy the contents, paste it into Claude as your first message. The process runs the same way.
Skills run on every Claude plan, Claude Code included. Windows commands are in the repo README.
Real output, real site, no mockup
This is genuine output from the Claude Code SEO skill run against lawrencehitches.com, my own site. No mockup. The run was not rigged to look good.
SEO Audit Report: www.lawrencehitches.com
Score: 90/100. 15 of 589 HTML files audited as a representative sample. All 15 pages have correct self-referencing canonicals, full Open Graph sets, valid JSON-LD and zero broken internal links.
- One real content bug: the Officeworks case study ships the wrong meta description. Line 7 reads "Why can't Google crawl my React website?", which describes a different article entirely, and the same wrong text repeats in og:description and twitter:description.
- Recurring drift: 5 of 15 titles exceed 60 characters (longest is 105) and 4 meta descriptions fall outside the 120 to 160 character window.
- Inconsistent state: 5 category pages are indexable but appear in none of the 4 sitemap files. Pick one: in the sitemap and indexable, or noindexed and excluded.
| # | Severity | File | Issue |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | High | case-study-officeworks/index.html | Meta, og and twitter descriptions all describe an unrelated React article |
| 2 | Medium | sitemap-core.xml | 5 indexable category pages absent from every sitemap file |
| 3 | Medium | ai-seo-tools/index.html | Title is 105 characters, well past the 60 character display limit |
| 4 | Low | answer-engine-optimization/index.html | Internal link resolves through a 301 hop; point it at the destination |
Excerpt from SEO_REPORT.md, generated 2026-07-09. Full format: score header, top 10 fix-forward table, findings by category, page rankings.
It found real issues on my own site, and that is the point. The skill does not flatter the person who wrote it, and it will not flatter your site either.
SEO, GEO and AEO: what each skill layer targets
Modern search is three layers. Google rankings, AI citations and direct answers. Most tasks touch all three, and the table maps each layer to the skills that cover it.
| Layer | Goal | Optimises for | Key signals | Skills that cover it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SEO | Rank in Google and Bing | Crawlers and ranking systems | Technical health, internal links, E-E-A-T, intent match | Technical SEO Audit, Website Score, Striking Distance Finder |
| GEO | Get cited in AI answers | Retrieval and grounding systems | Entity clarity, structured facts, provenance, consistency | AI Visibility, Entity SEO Auditor, AI Citation Monitor |
| AEO | Win the direct answer | Question and answer extraction | Answer-first passages, schema, self-contained chunks | Decision Content Builder, Schema Markup Generator, Citation Share Auditor |
All 39 skills
Filter by category. Every card links to the skill file on GitHub, and flagship skills have a full page with install commands and sample output.
Cannibalization Detector
Finds the queries where two of your own pages compete and split the signal. Picks the keeper and gives one fix: consolidate, canonical, or differentiate.
Skill file on GitHubContent Decay Detector
Finds pages quietly losing traffic, diagnoses why (freshness, displacement, intent shift, demand), and prescribes refresh, rewrite, consolidate, or leave.
Skill file on GitHubDecision Content Builder
Builds honest comparison pages and buyer guides: real criteria, admitted trade-offs, segmented verdicts. The decision content AI cites.
Skill file on GitHubEntity SEO Auditor
Audits whether Google's Knowledge Graph and AI search recognise your brand as an entity. Entity home, schema, sameAs, Wikidata presence, cross-web consistency. One fix per layer.
Skill file on GitHubGoogle Trust Check
Scores any page on the trust signals Google actually weights. Author entity, E-E-A-T, brand authority.
Skill file on GitHubGSC Quick Start
Pulls your Google Search Console data and ranks the highest-leverage pages to fix first.
Skill file on GitHubHelpful Content Audit
Grades any page against Google's 32 helpful-content self-assessment questions: evidence per verdict, YMYL-aware weighting, letter grade, prioritised fixes.
Skill file on GitHubSchema Markup Generator
Generates and validates clean JSON-LD for any page type, with required vs recommended properties and a rich-result test checklist.
Skill file on GitHubScreaming Frog Analyser
Drop your Screaming Frog export, get a StudioHawk-style audit back.
Skill file on GitHubSearch Intent Mapper
Maps keywords to intent, builds one-cluster-one-page groups, names the content type each needs, and flags pages fighting their query's intent.
Skill file on GitHubStriking Distance Finder
Surfaces the pages you rank positions 8 to 20 for. Small CTR or content gains push them onto page one.
Skill file on GitHubTechnical SEO Audit
Finds the technical issues stopping Google from reading your site. Redirect chains, duplicate titles, indexing problems, orphan pages, cannibalisation.
Skill file on GitHubWebsite Score
Free SEO score for any URL via Claude. The opening move on every StudioHawk audit.
Skill file on GitHubAgentic Product Page Auditor
Audits whether an AI shopping agent can read and buy from your product page. Scores the product graph across six layers and gives one template-level fix per problem, ranked by what blocks a sale.
Skill file on GitHubB2B SEO Audit
Long sales cycles, decision committees, and the content that actually converts the buyer.
Skill file on GitHubEcommerce SEO Audit
Product, collection, and category-page audit. The issues StudioHawk fixes on every ecommerce client.
Skill file on GitHubLocal SEO Audit
GBP, NAP citations, local landing pages, and review strategy in one skill.
Skill file on GitHubRestaurant SEO Audit
Hospitality-specific. Menu schema, opening hours, reservations, and the local intent that drives bookings.
Skill file on GitHubSaaS SEO Audit
Feature pages, comparison pages, free tools, and product-led growth content that compounds.
Skill file on GitHub3 Ranking Laws Cheat Sheet
Every Google patent and the 2024 API leak distilled into 3 laws. Audits your site against NavBoost, siteFocusScore, and information gain.
Skill file on GitHubCompetitor Gap Check
Inverse of website-gap. Identifies the topics you cover that competitors miss, so you can defend them.
Skill file on GitHubContent Brief Draft
Generates a content brief any writer can ship from. Audience, angle, structure, internal linking, distribution.
Skill file on GitHubInformation Gain
Finds the unique angle competitors are missing on a query. Use before you write.
Skill file on GitHubKeyword Clustering
Groups a raw keyword list into page-level clusters by search intent, with target pages and cannibalisation flags.
Skill file on GitHubTitle Tag Optimizer
The title-tag rewrite skill. Tested against Google's CTR signals StudioHawk monitors.
Skill file on GitHubTopical Authority Map
Builds the cluster architecture for an entire topic from a single seed keyword.
Skill file on GitHubWebsite Gap Finder
Compares your site to a competitor and tells you the keywords, topics, and pages they cover that you do not.
Skill file on GitHubAI Citation Monitor
Tracks whether ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity cite your site for the queries that matter.
Skill file on GitHubAI Visibility
Scores any page on the on-page factors most likely to win an AI citation. Run it before you publish.
Skill file on GitHubCitation Share Auditor
Reads your Bing Citation Share data and shows your slice of AI answers, the topics and intents you own, and where to grow it.
Skill file on GitHubClarity AI Bot Auditor
Paste your Microsoft Clarity AI bot data. Diagnoses every AI bot as healthy, blocked, throttled, or over-scraping, with one decisive fix per bot.
Skill file on GitHubClaude Code SEO
Plug Claude Code into your SEO workflow for code-level fixes, schema injection, and automated audits.
Skill file on GitHubData PR Outreach
The pitch process StudioHawk uses for Digital PR campaigns at scale.
Skill file on GitHubGoogle Review Handler
Drafts review responses that protect rank without sounding canned.
Skill file on GitHubAd Spend Calculator
What your Google Ads spend would have bought as SEO investment. The conversation that closes SEO deals.
Skill file on GitHubCalculator Page Builder
Builds the spec for a free calculator page on your site (a backlink magnet).
Skill file on GitHubGBP Analytics Connector
Pulls Google Business Profile insights into the StudioHawk local-SEO reporting format.
Skill file on GitHubWinner or Loser
Did the latest Google update boost or hurt you? Quick diagnostic on any GSC export.
Skill file on GitHubNo skill matches that search. Try a broader term, or browse the repo.
Questions SEOs actually ask
Is Claude actually good at SEO in 2026?
Yes, for process work. Audits, briefs, keyword clustering, schema, reporting. Claude is only as rigorous as its instructions, which is exactly why this library exists. A skill gives Claude a senior SEO's checklist, so the output holds up in front of a client instead of reading like chatbot filler.
What is the difference between a Claude skill and a prompt?
A prompt is a one-off instruction that Claude interprets fresh each time. A skill is an installed markdown file with trigger conditions, steps, checks and a fixed output format. Prompts drift between runs. Skills produce the same report structure every run, which is what makes them usable on client work.
Should I use Claude or ChatGPT for SEO?
Both handle SEO tasks. This library targets Claude because skills give it an install-once workflow layer, and Claude Code can audit an entire website codebase from the CLI. If your team runs ChatGPT, the skill files still work as structured instructions: paste the contents in and the process holds.
Which SEO tasks can I hand to Claude, and which still need a human?
Delegate the repeatable work. Crawl analysis, technical audits, content briefs, clustering, schema generation and title rewrites. Keep a human on strategy, prioritisation trade-offs and anything that ships to production. Every audit skill here outputs findings for review. None of them auto-publishes changes to your site.
Do these skills replace an SEO specialist or an agency?
No. They compress the hours a specialist spends on process work. A senior SEO runs faster with them, and a founder gets agency-grade structure without the retainer. StudioHawk still puts humans on every one of its 500+ campaigns. The skills carry the checklist, people carry the judgement.
Does Claude keep up with Google algorithm updates?
No model reads yesterday's update. Claude's training has a cutoff date, so the skills are built around durable process instead of tactics that expire: crawl logic, entity audits, intent mapping. When an update hits, the Winner or Loser skill diagnoses the impact from your own Search Console data.
Do I need a paid Claude plan to use these?
No. Anthropic makes skills available on every Claude plan, Free included, as long as code execution is enabled in your settings. Skills also run in Claude Code. If you would rather not install anything, paste a skill file straight into a chat and the same process runs manually.
Created by Lawrence Hitches
I am Chief of Staff at StudioHawk, Australia's largest dedicated SEO agency, where I have worked across 2,000+ SEO campaigns with a 120-person team. These skills are our internal processes, open-sourced. More than 6,000 students have taken the free Hawk Academy course they grew out of.
The library is MIT licensed and stays free. No email gate, no premium tier, no upsell.