# SEO Audit > Perform a thorough, professional end-to-end SEO audit of any website — covering technical SEO, on-page, structured data, performance/Core Web Vitals, multilingual & non-Latin discoverability, and Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO / being found via AI assistants like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini). Runs a CORE six-pillar audit by default with optional DEEP LENSES (Local, E-commerce, Content/Publisher, SaaS/B2B, Off-page, International). Produces a severity-tiered report with RAG status and an impact×effort action plan. Use whenever the user wants to audit, diagnose, or improve a site's search visibility — "audit my SEO", "why isn't my site ranking", "is my site indexed", "technical SEO check", "get found in ChatGPT/AI search", or "my non-English / bilingual site isn't showing up". Also trigger when the user shares a URL and asks about discoverability, indexing, crawlability, schema, sitemaps, robots.txt, or hreflang — even without saying "SEO", and even for "is my robots.txt blocking Google?". - Skill: `kaustavr19/seo-audit` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 13 files) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add kaustavr19/seo-audit` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/kaustavr19/seo-audit/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Marketing & Growth - Author: kaustavr19 (https://skillmd.com/u/kaustavr19) - Updated: 2026-09-17 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/kaustavr19/seo-audit --- # SEO Audit A complete, professional SEO audit engine. It diagnoses why a site is or isn't discoverable across search engines (Google, Bing, and others) **and** across AI assistants (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Google AI Overviews), then hands back a prioritised, dev-ready remediation plan. This skill is built to **degrade gracefully**. It works whether you have a live browser, only `web_fetch`, or nothing but a screenshot and a pasted `robots.txt`. Never block on a tool you don't have — gather what you can, state what you couldn't verify, and audit the rest. --- ## How to run this: a conversation, not a form A good audit needs a little from the user — but **most of what a naive tool would ask, this skill detects instead.** Asking for things you could crawl yourself (language, platform, rendering, competitors) is fake-collaborative and signals a dumb tool. The guiding rule: > **Detect first. Surface what you found. Ask only the genuine unknowns.** The interaction has a natural **three-beat rhythm**. Adapt it — never run it as a rigid script. ### Beat 1 — Scope (one short exchange, before crawling) Establish only what you cannot detect. Bundle into one brief message: - **Depth:** "I'll run the **CORE audit** by default — Crawlability, On-page, Structured Data, Performance, Multilingual (only if the site isn't plain English), and GEO/AI. Want any **deep lenses**? Local · E-commerce · Content/ Publisher · SaaS/B2B · Off-page & Authority · International." - **Private data:** "Do you have Google Search Console / analytics access I can use, or should I treat this as an on-page/technical audit?" (Changes whether findings can include traffic/ranking data.) - **Intent (light touch):** "Anything specific prompting this — a market you're targeting, a drop you noticed, a goal like AI visibility?" One line; don't interrogate. Then **go.** Don't hold a long Q&A before any work — one scope exchange, then crawl. (If the user already specified scope, skip straight to crawling.) ### Beat 2 — Recon recap (mid-audit, after crawling) This is where it feels collaborative. Show you did the work, then ask only the **consequential judgment calls** the crawl surfaced but shouldn't be decided unilaterally. For example: - "Your site renders real Bengali text (great) but declares `lang=\"en\"` — I'll flag that. Two things I want **your** call on first:" - **GEO values call** (only if AI crawlers are blocked): "Your robots.txt blocks AI crawlers. Do you actually *want* to be discoverable in ChatGPT/Perplexity, or is keeping your content out of AI deliberate?" This is a values decision, not a technical default — never reverse it silently. - **Strategic forks** the audit reveals (e.g. native-script vs romanized URL strategy, a positioning gap). Offer the tradeoff; let the user choose. If the crawl surfaces no real judgment calls, skip Beat 2 — don't manufacture questions. ### Beat 3 — Deliver Confirm format (Markdown default; offer Word doc for client-ready) and produce the report. ### When to skip the conversation entirely If the request is **fully specified** ("full audit of x.com, I have GSC, US market, give me a Word doc") → skip Beats 1–2, just work. If it's a **fast single-issue question** ("is my robots.txt blocking Google?") → answer it directly, no ceremony. **Judgment over ritual.** ### Choosing the question format Pick by context. For a few crisp either/or choices where interactive option controls are available, use them — they're faster for the user. For open intent ("what market are you targeting?") or a nuanced tradeoff that needs explanation, use a short numbered list in prose. Never force buttons onto a genuinely open-ended question, and never spread questions across many turns when one bundled message would do. ### What you detect vs. what you ask — quick reference | Detect (never ask) | Ask (genuine unknowns) | |---|---| | Language / script (Unicode test) | Depth / which deep lenses | | SSR vs CSR (fetch vs render) | GSC / analytics access | | Platform / CMS (DOM signals) | Business intent / target market | | Schema, robots, sitemap state | GEO opt-in (the values call) | | Competitors (SERP sampling) | Strategic forks the audit surfaces | | Index status (`site:` checks) | Deliverable format | Do not run deep lenses unless asked. Do not pad the report with "N/A" sections. --- ## Step 1 — Recon: gather what the environment allows Audit quality depends on what you can observe. Get the richest data the environment permits, then proceed with whatever you have. The full data-gathering playbook — browser-based live crawl, `web_fetch` fallback, the rendered-DOM-vs-raw-HTML test, the Bing-index check that routes around CAPTCHA, schema/robots/sitemap inspection, and how to detect client-side-rendering blindness — lives in **`references/live-recon-appendix.md`**. Read it whenever you have *any* live access (browser or fetch). If you have neither, work from user-supplied material (screenshots, pasted source, exported data) and clearly mark anything unverifiable. **The one recon check that changes everything:** does the page's *rendered* content exist in the *raw server HTML*, or only after JavaScript runs? A raw fetch that returns an empty shell while the live page shows content means the site is client-side-rendered and search/AI crawlers may see nothing. This single test reframes the whole audit — run it first when you can. --- ## Step 2 — Run the CORE pillars (always) For each pillar: diagnose against the checks below, assign a **RAG status** (🔴 Red / 🟡 Amber / 🟢 Green), and capture specific, evidenced findings — quote the actual tag, score, or value you observed, not a generality. ### Pillar 1 — Crawlability & Indexing The foundation. If crawlers can't reach or render it, nothing else matters. - `robots.txt`: present, well-formed, not accidentally blocking key paths or `Googlebot`/`bingbot`. Note any AI-crawler directives (these matter for Pillar 6). - XML sitemap(s): present, declared in robots, fresh `lastmod`, accurate URL set. **Watch for orphaned content** — sections that are indexed but missing from the sitemap (a common, costly miss). - Rendering: SSR/SSG vs client-side-only (see the critical recon test above). - Canonicalisation: self-referential canonicals, no duplicate-content sprawl, no parameter/session-ID chaos. - Index status: spot-check `site:` on Google **and** Bing — they often differ. A stale cache on one engine is a crawl-freshness issue, not a content issue. - IndexNow (Bing/Yandex instant indexing): is it enabled? On Cloudflare/CDN hosts it's often a one-click toggle and a big quick win for frequently-updated sites. ### Pillar 2 — On-page SEO - Title tags: unique, descriptive, keyword-bearing, not truncated/duplicated. - Headings: exactly one meaningful `H1` per page, logical `H2`/`H3` hierarchy. - Meta descriptions: written (not auto-truncated), compelling, unique. Flag generic boilerplate that could belong to any site — it wastes the highest- value pages. - Image `alt` text: present and descriptive (accessibility + image-search win). - Internal linking: real `` links (not JS-onclick traps), descriptive anchors, healthy distribution of link equity. ### Pillar 3 — Structured Data (Schema) - What schema types are emitted, and where. Map coverage by page type. - **Coverage gaps are the usual finding**: rich schema on detail pages but bare hubs/category pages — the pages most likely to rank are the least decorated. - Rich-result eligibility: does the markup unlock stars, prices, breadcrumbs, FAQ, etc.? Flag missing `aggregateRating`/`Review` when a reviews UI exists. - Validity: required properties present; types appropriate to content. ### Pillar 4 — Performance & Core Web Vitals - Pull field data when possible (PageSpeed Insights / CrUX). State clearly when you only have lab/structural signals, not field data. - LCP, INP, CLS — the three that matter. Identify the likely LCP element. - Structural signals you *can* check without field data: CDN presence, image delivery/optimisation, lazy-loading below the fold, render-blocking resources, excessive DOM/image counts. ### Pillar 5 — Multilingual & Non-Latin Discoverability *(conditional)* **Run this pillar only if the site is not plain monolingual English.** Detect first; if English-only, skip silently — no "N/A" noise. **Detection:** scan the rendered content for non-Latin Unicode ranges and/or multiple languages. (Bengali `\u0980–\u09FF`, Devanagari `\u0900–\u097F`, Arabic `\u0600–\u06FF`, CJK `\u4E00–\u9FFF`, Cyrillic `\u0400–\u04FF`, etc.) If found, run this pillar parameterised to whatever language(s) you detected. This pillar exists because mainstream SEO advice is English-blind, and the failure modes below silently destroy discoverability for billions of non-English searchers. Full guidance — including per-script notes and the phonetic-search strategy — is in **`references/multilingual-discoverability.md`**. The universal checks: - **Text-as-image trap** *(the #1 killer)*: is non-Latin text real, selectable Unicode, or baked into images? If it's images, crawlers and LLMs read nothing. This single issue sinks more non-Latin sites than all others combined. - **Language-signal vs content mismatch**: does `` match the actual page language? Is `inLanguage` set in schema? Is `hreflang` present? A page that is visibly Bengali but declares `lang="en"` with no `inLanguage` tells search engines the wrong thing — they won't serve it to native-script searchers. This is extremely common and extremely fixable. - **Phonetic / romanized search**: every non-Latin language has a diaspora pattern where readers type the language on a QWERTY keyboard (Banglish for Bengali, Pinyin for Chinese, Romaji for Japanese, franco-arabe for Arabic). Sites that only carry native script miss this entirely. The fix: a visible romanized/transliterated line for titles and names. - **Three-mode coverage**: for full findability a key term should appear in native script, English/translated form, AND romanized transliteration. - **RTL correctness** (Arabic, Hebrew, Urdu, Farsi): `dir="rtl"`, mirrored layout, correct bidi handling. ### Pillar 6 — GEO / AI Discoverability (Generative Engine Optimisation) Being cited and recommended inside AI assistants is now its own discipline. Full playbook — including the crawler opt-in table — is in **`references/geo-playbook.md`**. The core checks: - **AI crawler policy**: does `robots.txt` block AI crawlers? Distinguish *training* crawlers (e.g. `GPTBot`, `Google-Extended`) from *answer/search* crawlers (e.g. `OAI-SearchBot`, `ChatGPT-User`, `PerplexityBot`). Blocking the search/answer bots opts the site out of AI **citations**, not just training — often unintentionally. Recommend the surgical split if the user wants AI visibility while withholding training. - **AI Overviews**: powered by ordinary `Googlebot` — so strong classic SEO *is* the AI-Overviews strategy. No unblocking needed there. - **Answer-shaped content**: pages that directly answer a question are far more citable than bare grids/listings. - **Entity clarity**: `Organization`/`Person`/`Product` schema + `sameAs` links build the entity graph LLMs reason over. - **`llms.txt`**: an emerging convention — a curated markdown map of key content. Cheap to add, increasingly recognised. --- ## Step 3 — Deep lenses (only if requested in Beat 1) Each lens has its own reference file — read it only when that lens is selected. Match the lens to the site type you detected: a store ⇒ E-commerce; a blog/news/ publisher ⇒ Content; a B2B product ⇒ SaaS; a local business ⇒ Local. Suggest the fitting lens during Beat 1 rather than waiting to be asked. - **Local SEO** → `references/deep-lens-local.md` (Google Business Profile, NAP consistency, local pack, reviews, local schema) - **E-commerce SEO** → `references/deep-lens-ecommerce.md` (product feeds / Merchant Center, faceted-nav crawl traps, pagination, product schema depth) - **Content / Publisher SEO** → `references/deep-lens-content.md` (topical authority, content clusters & pillar pages, freshness/decay, author E-E-A-T, internal linking as topic modelling) - **SaaS / B2B SEO** → `references/deep-lens-saas.md` (programmatic SEO, comparison/alternative pages, docs/KB indexing, bottom-of-funnel intent, product-led content) - **Off-page & Authority** → `references/deep-lens-offpage.md` (backlink profile, E-E-A-T, brand signals, digital PR angles) - **International SEO** → `references/deep-lens-international.md` (hreflang at scale, ccTLD vs subdomain vs subfolder, geotargeting, currency/locale). *Distinct from Pillar 5:* Pillar 5 is content discoverability in any script; this lens is the geo/locale-targeting machinery for multi-region sites. --- ## Step 4 — Synthesise and produce the report Use the structure in **`assets/report-template.md`**. Core requirements: - **Lead with an executive summary** + a scorecard table (pillar → RAG/score → one-line read). Give a single honest composite verdict. - **Severity tiers** for every finding: 🔴 Critical · 🟠 High · 🟡 Medium · 🟢 Low. Tie severity to *visibility impact*, not effort. - **Evidence over assertion**: cite the actual observed tag/score/value. "The homepage declares `lang=\"en\"` while its H1 and body are Bengali" beats "i18n could be improved." - **Prioritised action table**: impact × effort, with an Owner column (Dev / Content / Strategy) and an Effort estimate (S/M/L). Order by impact ÷ effort so the 80/20 is obvious. - **Be honest about scope**: if you had no Search Console / analytics / field data, say so and frame findings as on-page/technical/structural — never fabricate traffic or ranking numbers. - **Default to Markdown.** Offer a polished Word document (.docx) if the user wants a client-ready deliverable; if so and a `docx` skill is available, use it. For non-Latin content in a generated doc, ensure a font that covers the script is embedded (e.g. Noto Sans for the relevant language) or the text will render as boxes. --- ## Self-contained but aware: handoffs This skill is fully self-contained — it never *requires* another skill. But if the user has these installed and the audit would benefit, hand off rather than reinvent: - Deep **visual/aesthetic** critique requested → `visual-aesthetics-audit`. - **Competitor comparison / benchmark** requested → `competitive-benchmark`. - **Market positioning / pricing strategy** → `market-intelligence`. - Full **WCAG accessibility** audit → `audit` (a11y), though on-page `alt`/lang checks remain in scope here. If those skills aren't present, do a lightweight inline version and note that a deeper dedicated pass is available. --- ## Operating principles - **Graceful degradation is the whole game.** Some data beats no audit. State confidence levels; never stall on a missing tool. - **Believe the evidence, even when it's surprising** (a stale cache, an unexpected block). But re-check conspiracy-adjacent or high-stakes claims. - **Specific and kind.** This is often someone's project or livelihood. Lead with what's working, be precise about what isn't, and make every problem actionable. The goal is a fixed site, not a impressive-looking teardown. - **Don't boil the ocean.** The depth gate exists for a reason. Respect it.