Research and audit search work with ak:seo

Use ak:seo to audit a page or domain, check GEO and AI discoverability, research and cluster keywords, or design programmatic SEO templates. The Skill also packages scripts for Search Console, Core Web Vitals, sitemaps, schema, and bulk page generation. Those scripts have different network, credential, file, and account effects and are not one automatic workflow.

Choose ak:seo for evidence and implementation artifacts

Use ak:seo when

• You need a technical or on-page audit of a public URL or local content.
• You need keyword ideas, intent clusters, difficulty data, or competitor gaps with the source and freshness recorded.
• You need a pSEO template, data schema, internal-linking plan, and sample pages.
• You need a reviewed sitemap or JSON-LD artifact before implementation.
• You need a GEO and AI-discoverability contract or audit: robots.txt, sitemap.xml, llms.txt, llms-full.txt, per-page .md variants, social metadata and cards, and Copy, Share, or Open in AI page actions.

Choose another workflow when

• You need broader content strategy without search evidence. Use ak:content-marketing.
• You need final copy from an approved search brief. Use ak:write after the keyword and claim inputs are accepted.
• You need to implement those GEO surfaces in a framework. Implementation belongs to that framework's Skill; for Next.js, use the Engineer Kit ak:web-frameworks SEO and GEO reference when that Kit is installed.
• You want guaranteed rankings, traffic, rich results, indexing, or revenue. No Skill or provider output can establish those outcomes.

Prepare data, access, and mutation boundaries

Confirm Marketing Kit is installed for the current runtime and scope. Provide the target URL, domain, topic, country or market, audience, business relevance, current analytics, competitor set, and output boundary. Identify which data may be sent to external services.

ReviewWeb-backed keyword and audit data requires REVIEWWEB_API_KEY. Core Web Vitals requests use Google PageSpeed Insights and can use PAGESPEED_API_KEY. Google Search Console requires a verified property, Google Cloud OAuth client, the Search Console API, googleapis, and .claude/secrets/google_client_secret.json or the corresponding user-level secret path. OAuth tokens are saved locally; protect them as credentials.

Run a routed SEO task

/ak:seo audit https://example.com/pricing "Use public page evidence, disclose every provider request, write a report only, and make no site or Search Console changes"

/ak:seo keywords "privacy-first analytics" "Cluster by intent for the US market, distinguish measured API data from estimates, and cite the source date"

$ak:seo pseo comparison "Design one template, its data schema, and three sample pages from the supplied approved dataset. Do not publish or bulk-generate production pages"

The canonical argument hint lists [audit|geo|keywords|pseo|optimize|schema] [target]. In this release, only audit, geo, keywords, and pseo have routed reference workflows, and a full-site audit also runs the geo checklist. Treat optimize and schema as unproven direct routes; use a clearly scoped request or the bundled schema tools only after inspecting their effect.

Audit AI discoverability with geo

The geo route treats search crawlers, AI answer engines, and people who paste pages into chat assistants as one contract. It checks only what the site's framework and hosting can serve and reports missing surfaces as gaps.

Blocking AI crawlers is never a default. The robots reference separates training, search, and user-initiated fetch agents per operator, notes that retired names such as anthropic-ai and Claude-Web are unused, and asks you to confirm current agent names with each operator before shipping a policy. The audit reports each item as pass, fail, or not applicable with the observed URL and response.

Understand the stages

1. Confirm the question and data source. Define URL, topic, market, timeframe, evidence source, and whether the task is analysis or mutation.
2. Collect evidence. Read local content or fetch public pages. With approval, query ReviewWeb, PageSpeed Insights, or Search Console and record the source.
3. Analyze the evidence. Audit technical and on-page elements, classify intent and clusters, or design a pSEO data and template architecture.
4. Create artifacts. Produce reports, templates, schema, sitemaps, sample pages, or implementation recommendations inside the approved output boundary.
5. Validate locally. Check generated JSON-LD structure, sitemap content, template escaping, duplicates, claims, canonical intent, and sample quality. The bundled sitemap generator XML-escapes each URL and omits lastmod for a page without a supplied date instead of stamping today's date.
6. Review before live action. A person approves code changes, bulk files, deployment, indexing controls, sitemap submission or deletion, outreach, and any provider account mutation.

Separate queries, file generation, and account changes

Review URLs and customer data before sending them to ReviewWeb, Google, browser tools, or other providers. Do not place API keys or OAuth tokens in arguments, reports, or commits. Link building and outreach remain separate human-approved work; avoid spam, deceptive placements, and fabricated relationships.

Verify outputs and evidence

The top-level Skill summary names report paths under assets/reports/seo/, while routed audit and keywords references name assets/seo/audits/ and assets/seo/keywords/. Confirm the actual path returned by the run before building automation. The pSEO route writes under assets/attraction/pseo-templates/; schema output is described under assets/seo/schemas/.

Require the report to identify URLs, query dates, country or market, provider and endpoint, measured fields versus estimates, missing data, issues by priority, and recommended next checks. For generated files, inspect the exact file list and diff. A local schema validation pass does not guarantee a search engine rich result, and a submitted sitemap does not guarantee indexing.

Troubleshoot and know the limits

Search data, provider APIs, platform rules, and ranking systems change. The Skill cannot guarantee data completeness, ranking, indexing, traffic, rich results, conversions, or revenue. Continue with the Marketing Kit overview and keep every live mutation separately approved.