SEO

• IS: one entry point for search visibility: evidence-led audits, implementation, demand research, writer briefs, and performance measurement across search engines and AI search (AEO for AI answers inside search, GEO for standalone assistants; see references/answer-engines.md).
• IS NOT: writing the article or standalone marketing copy (ghostwriter), visual redesign (ui-design), tenant infrastructure (multi-tenant-architecture), or implementing AFDocs / Is Agentic / Is It Agent Ready scorecards (agent-ready). Fix SEO copy and markup when they are part of the requested implementation.

Route the task

Request	Load	Deliverable
Audit a site, diagnose indexing, review a migration	references/audit.md and references/validation-evidence.md	Prioritized findings with URLs, observed evidence, impact, and correction
Fix or implement SEO	Audit references, then applicable implementation references below	Code changes, scoped checks, and served-page evidence for the changed behavior
Research demand, choose a target, brief a page	references/research-protocol.md; references/brief-template.md for a brief	Sourced demand table and decision, or a durable writer brief
Explain traffic movement, measure AI visibility, monitor SEO	references/monitoring.md	Property-scoped diagnosis or configured monitoring with explicit data gaps

For a combined request, reuse one property and URL inventory across modes. An audit request produces findings; a request to fix them proceeds through implementation and verification within the user's authorized scope. A research-only request does not require crawling every URL or changing code.

Establish the evidence boundary

Identify the exact public host, URL-prefix or domain property, production environment, project/subpath, audience, and business outcome. On a shared domain, filter each project's path separately. In analytics, verify hostname, path, conversion event and attribution window before interpreting a number.

Discover connected tools and existing project bindings first. Prefer the established reporting source, then an available equivalent, then a signed-in browser. No vendor is required. Ownership verification, API consent and a successful scoped query are separate states. An export for a neighboring property is not a fallback.

Use No data with its reason for inaccessible, missing, unsupported or unmeasured metrics; distinguish these from a measured zero. Label historical exports by their actual dates. Do useful public checks while an authenticated metric is unavailable.

Working sequence

For substantial mixed work, track only the applicable steps:

• Confirm property, scope, baseline and intended outcome.
• Inspect live evidence and map affected route patterns or research questions.
• Prioritize blocking defects and high-value opportunities; separate observations from hypotheses.
• Implement authorized corrections or deliver the requested research/brief.
• Recheck the changed behavior, identify the tested environment, and report remaining gaps.

Prioritize crawl/index defects before cosmetic metadata changes. Page titles, headings and content structure follow the page's purpose and reader intent. Descriptive non-brand terms help category discovery; brand-led portfolio and product pages can be appropriate. Neither a fixed title character count nor question-shaped headings are ranking requirements.

For AI visibility, the owner builds crawl access, content and extractable structure; independent reviews, comparisons and coverage are earned, and they supply most of what answers say about a brand. Fix the owned layers first, then say where the remaining leverage sits instead of padding the site. Original evidence, useful comparisons and honest product limitations earn their place ahead of manufactured keyword permutations. Research likely reader questions; do not present invented query fan-outs as engine telemetry or create a page for every variation.

References

File	Read when
references/audit.md	Crawling, diagnosing or prioritizing a site audit; canonicals, redirects, exclusions and programmatic pages; hreflang; CDN, response headers or preview environments affecting discovery
references/nextjs-implementation.md	Implementing App Router metadata, sitemaps, rendering, status codes, Markdown twins, or schema; verify APIs against the installed Next.js docs
references/answer-engines.md	SEO, AEO and GEO terms, AI visibility, crawler policies, owned versus earned coverage, Markdown alternatives or llms.txt
references/validation-evidence.md	Verifying findings, a built page or a deployed correction
references/research-protocol.md	Keyword/prompt metrics, opportunity selection and question maps
references/brief-template.md	Producing a writer brief
references/monitoring.md	Search/AI performance, attribution, anomalies or recurring work
references/sources.md	A claim depends on current engine behavior, supported reports, or vendor research

Delivery

Findings go in chat unless a file is requested. Writer briefs go to the requested project destination; retain prior dated briefs when producing a new revision. Keep scratch crawls and exports out of the repository. No em dashes in authored reports or briefs.

Report what changed, why, exact verification evidence, and what remains unmeasured. A successful local build, ready deployment, public URL probe, Google index record and measured conversion are different evidence. Name the strongest state actually verified.

Sending recaps to others, scheduling recurring work, spending on tools and production deployment follow the user's authorization and host rules. Reuse an existing matching monitor rather than creating another owner or schedule.

Gotchas

• A sitemap can parse while listing /studio that intentionally returns 404. Check its URLs, not just XML validity.
• A canvas gated on mounted state can leave the homepage and category hubs with only navigation in initial HTML. Inspect those hubs as well as deep pages; use client alone does not imply missing server-rendered content.
• lastModified: new Date() or a build timestamp describes generation, not necessarily a significant page update. Use content dates or omit the field.
• A canonical tag on each URL does not resolve two copies that both self-canonicalize. Compare content and choose the preferred URL.
• Two consistent JSON-LD scripts are not an error. Verify entity identity, eligible properties and visible supporting content instead of script count.
• DNS verification needs no invented meta token. Confirm scoped data access separately.
• A crawler user-agent probe does not authenticate a bot IP or establish index inclusion. Treat CDN logs and engine inspection as separate evidence.
• Prompt demand, measured citations, mentions, AI impressions and referral sessions are different quantities. Preserve engine, source, match type, scope and window.
• One prompt run, or one score averaged across engines, is not a visibility measurement. Repeat each prompt, report per engine, and keep recall separate from citations.
• Schema, llms.txt and fixed answer-block lengths are not measured citation levers. Keep them for their real consumers; do not sell them as AI visibility.
• A vendor Search Console connector may under-report. Reconcile property, filters and aggregation against native Search Console before diagnosing a drop.

Maintenance only: evals/evals.json holds behavioral scenarios and routing prompts. It is loaded when changing the skill, not during ordinary SEO work.