Claude SEO Skill: The Free Ones and How to Install Them

Updated October 28, 2026, by the Rillow team. We make Rillow and its free SEO skill, which is one of the skills compared here. There are no affiliate links here.

A Claude SEO skill is a folder of instructions, a SKILL.md file and sometimes scripts, that Claude loads when your request matches it, so Claude follows the same SEO method every time you ask for an audit, a keyword plan or a post. Skills are free to install, and the popular SEO skills are free too. A skill doesn't come with data, though: to give Claude search volumes, live rankings or Search Console numbers, you pair it with an MCP server. This guide compares the free Claude SEO skills, shows how to install one in Claude Code and claude.ai, and how to write your own.

What a Claude SEO skill is

A skill is a folder with a SKILL.md file at its top. The file starts with a name and a one-line description, and Claude reads only those two lines until a request matches the description. Then it loads the rest of the file, and any other files the skill points to, such as a separate guide for each task.

This is the top of the SKILL.md in our own skill:

---
name: rillow-seo
description: SEO for a website the user runs, with Rillow's search data,
  content plan and memory. Use it to set up a new site for search, audit
  and fix an existing one, pick keywords, write or refresh posts, build
  internal links, show up in AI answers, and check whether a change worked.
---

When you ask Claude Code "why did my traffic drop?", that description matches, Claude opens the skill, and the skill sends it to its audit guide, which gathers the evidence first (Search Console numbers, positions, the site's plan) and then checks the likely causes of a drop in order, stopping at the first one it confirms. Without the skill, Claude improvises a method each time.

A skill or an MCP server: which does what

A skill tells Claude how to do the work. An MCP server gives Claude data and actions it doesn't have, through tools it can call. SEO needs both, because the method decides which numbers to look at, and the numbers decide what to do.

Take keyword research. A skill can tell Claude to check the top 10 before planning a page and to prefer searches where small sites rank. Without a data source, Claude still can't see that a search gets 480 searches a month with a difficulty of 3, or that a Reddit thread holds the first result. With an SEO MCP server connected, it can. Our list of the best SEO MCP servers compares 12 of them, and our Claude SEO guide covers which Claude plan you need.

The free Claude SEO skills, compared

We checked these skills on their own pages on October 22 and 28, 2026. Each is free to install. The data column says what a skill uses for numbers, which is where any cost comes in.

claude-seo is the most used of them, with about 19,500 stars on GitHub on October 22, and Google's AI answer for "claude seo skill" cites it first. There are also free collections: Launchcodex emails a set of 10 SEO skills (audit, page, technical, schema, content, GEO, SERP analysis, sitemap, programmatic and competitor pages), and skill directories such as mcpmarket.com list many single-purpose SEO skills.

Which SEO skill to pick

If you want to find what's broken on a site, start with claude-seo: its audit runs without any paid data and covers the most ground. If you already pay for SE Ranking, its skills use the data you have. InfraNodus' skill suits content planning, because it compares what people search for with what already ranks.

Our skill suits a different job: planning, writing and tracking pages over weeks. Its guides tell Claude to take every number from a tool, to read Google's current top 10 before planning a page, and to improve a page that already ranks before writing a new one. Rillow's MCP server keeps the plan, the posts, their daily positions and a memory of your site between sessions, so the next session starts where the last one stopped.

You can install more than one. Claude picks the skill whose description matches your request.

How to install a Claude SEO skill

In Claude Code, most SEO skills install as plugins. A plugin can bundle a skill with the MCP server it needs, so one install gets you both. For claude-seo:

/plugin marketplace add AgriciDaniel/claude-seo
/plugin install claude-seo@agricidaniel-claude-seo

Then run /seo setup, and /seo audit https://yoursite.com for a full audit. claude-seo needs Python 3.10 or newer.

For our skill, which also adds Rillow's MCP server:

/plugin marketplace add davit-khaburdzania/rillow-seo-skill
/plugin install rillow-seo@rillow

Then type /mcp and sign in to Rillow, and ask for something like "audit my site" or "find keywords my site can win".

To install a skill without a plugin, copy its folder into ~/.claude/skills/ to use it in every project, or into .claude/skills/ inside one repository. The Claude Code skills docs cover the details.

In claude.ai, turn on code execution under Settings, then Capabilities, and upload the skill as a ZIP file under Customize, then Skills. Skills built around terminal commands, like claude-seo, are made for Claude Code. If you connect Rillow as a connector in claude.ai, you get its guides without installing anything, because the MCP server serves the same guides through its get_guide tool.

How to write your own SEO skill

A skill of your own is worth it when you repeat one SEO job the same way, such as refreshing old posts or writing comparison pages in your house style. It takes four steps.

1. Make a folder in .claude/skills/, named after the job, such as refresh-post.
2. Add a SKILL.md with a name and a description. The description decides when Claude uses the skill, so say what the job is and the words you'd use to ask for it.
3. Write the steps in the order you'd do them, with the checks that matter to you. Keep each task in its own file if the skill grows past a few hundred lines.
4. Test it with a real request, and edit the description if Claude doesn't pick it up.

A small example:

---
name: refresh-post
description: Refresh an old blog post that lost rankings. Use it when the
  user asks to update, refresh or fix a post that dropped in Google.
---

1. Get the post's keyword and its Google positions for the last 90 days.
2. Read Google's current top 10 for the keyword. List what the pages that
   passed ours cover that our post doesn't.
3. Propose changes to the existing post at the same URL. Don't write a
   new post for the same keyword.
4. Update facts, prices and dates, and change the updated date only if the
   content really changed.

Rules:
- Take every number from a tool. If you don't have one, say so.
- Show the changes as a diff before saving anything.

The rules at the end matter most. Without "take every number from a tool", Claude can fill a gap in its data with a number that looks right. It is the first of the shared rules in our own skill.

Frequently asked questions