Content and On-Page SEO skills
Content and On-Page SEO Skills-md for SEOs, Writers, Claude & Codex
Content and on-page SEO skills are SKILL.md files that turn Claude, Codex and other AI agents into careful content strategists and editors. They research what people search for, read the live results before anything is written, brief and write pages with real evidence, and decide which existing pages to improve, merge or remove. All 13 are below: copy one, download it, or take the set.
13 skills, 15,687 words, version 1.0.0.
Content SEO Audit
Run a complete content and on-page SEO audit of a site or section: inventory every indexable page, join Search Console, analytics and crawl data, score each page on intent match, quality, E-E-A-T, on-page elements and performance, and decide keep, improve, merge, redirect or remove, with a prioritised action plan.
Keyword Research
Find, size, group and prioritise the searches a business should target: seed lists from customers and products, expansion with Search Console, Google suggestions and third-party tools, labelled volume and difficulty estimates, intent and funnel stage, business value scoring, clustering by shared results, and a target list mapped to existing or new pages.
Search Intent and SERP Analysis
Work out what a searcher wants from a query by reading the live results: dominant and mixed intent, content type and format, angle, depth, freshness, SERP features (AI Overviews, featured snippets, People also ask, video, local pack, shopping), who ranks and why, and what a page must offer to compete, turned into a clear page recommendation.
Topical Maps and Content Clusters
Plan a topic the way search engines and readers understand it: define the core entity and audience, break the topic into pillars, clusters and supporting pages with one intent each, map existing pages, find gaps, set hub-and-spoke internal links, and sequence publishing so authority builds where the business needs it.
SEO Content Briefs
Write SEO content briefs a writer can follow without guessing: the reader and their goal, main and supporting queries, intent and format from the live results, a heading outline, the questions to answer, the original evidence and expertise to include, internal links, title and meta options, word range, and acceptance checks before publishing.
SEO Content Writing
Write and edit search-led pages that people want to read and search engines can understand: answer-first introductions, clear structure, plain language, first-hand evidence, sourced statistics, examples, internal links and natural keyword use, with no padding, no invented facts and no AI-sounding filler, checked against the brief before handover.
Title Tags and Meta Descriptions
Write, audit and test title tags and meta descriptions that match intent, earn clicks and survive Google rewrites: length by pixels not characters, query and brand placement, templates for large sites, duplicates and missing tags, title-to-H1 alignment, CTR analysis from Search Console, and before-and-after tests.
On-Page SEO Optimisation
Optimise a single page for its target query and intent: title, H1 and heading structure, introduction, topic and entity coverage against the ranking pages, answer blocks for snippets and AI answers, internal links in and out, URL, images, structured data, freshness signals and page experience, returned as a scored checklist and exact edits.
Image SEO
Make images findable, accessible and fast: original over stock, descriptive file names, useful alt text, captions and surrounding text, modern formats and responsive sizes, lazy loading below the fold only, image sitemaps and structured data, preferred images for results and social previews, and audits of missing alt text, oversized files and broken images.
E-E-A-T and Content Quality
Assess and improve content quality and E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust) the way Google describes it: people-first purpose, first-hand experience and original evidence, author and reviewer credentials, sourcing, accuracy and freshness, About and contact transparency, YMYL care, and patterns that look like scaled or low-value content.
Content Refresh and Decay Recovery
Find pages losing organic traffic, diagnose why (outdated information, intent shift, new competitors, lost links, cannibalisation, technical or seasonal causes), and refresh them with real updates: current facts, new sections, better answers, evidence, internal links and honest dated changes, then measure recovery against a baseline.
Keyword Cannibalisation
Find and fix pages on the same site that compete for the same searches: detect overlap from Search Console page and query data, separate real cannibalisation from healthy double listings, then merge, redirect, re-target, canonicalise or re-link so each intent has one clear page.
Content Pruning and Consolidation
Decide which low-value pages to remove, merge, redirect or noindex, and do it without losing traffic, links or conversions: build the candidate list from data, protect pages with value, choose the right action and status code, update links and sitemaps, and measure the effect on the rest of the site.
No skill matches that search. Clear it or choose All.
What content SEO skills do for an AI agent
Ask a general AI model to “write an SEO article” and you usually get a long, tidy, forgettable page: a definition, a history, a list of tips and a conclusion that says nothing. It looks like every other result because it was built from them. It often contains a statistic nobody can source, and it was written without checking what Google actually shows for the query.
These skills change the order of work. The agent researches demand and reads the live results first, decides the page type from evidence, writes a brief that names the angle and the proof only your business can supply, and refuses to invent facts. For existing content, it works from Search Console and analytics data, not opinions, and gives every page one outcome: keep, improve, merge, redirect or remove.
Each skill follows Google’s own guidance on helpful, people-first content, labels third-party volumes as estimates, and ends with a self-check so you can see what the agent verified.
Where to start: audit what you already have
If your site already has content, start with the content-seo-audit skill. It joins Search Console, analytics, crawl and backlink data for every indexable page, scores each one on demand, performance, intent match, quality and business value, and hands each finding to the right specialist: decaying pages to content-refresh, overlapping pages to keyword-cannibalisation and pages without a future to content-pruning.
For a new site or section, start with keyword-research and topical-map, then use search-intent-serp-analysis and content-brief for each page before anything is written.
Which skill fixes which problem
Use this table to go straight to the right skill when you already know the symptom.
| Symptom or task | Likely cause | Skill to use |
|---|---|---|
| Traffic is falling across many pages | Decay, overlap and thin pages building up | content-seo-audit |
| You need to know what to target | No research, or research that ignores intent and value | keyword-research |
| A good page won’t rank | The page type doesn’t match what Google shows | search-intent-serp-analysis |
| The blog has no structure | Posts written one by one without a plan | topical-map |
| Writers keep missing the point | Briefs list keywords but not reader, angle or evidence | content-brief |
| Drafts read as generic or AI-written | No first-hand detail, padding, invented facts | seo-content-writing |
| High impressions, low clicks | Weak or rewritten titles and descriptions | title-tags-meta-descriptions |
| A page is stuck on page two | Coverage, structure or internal link gaps | on-page-seo |
| Images are slow or invisible to search | Huge files, missing alt text, CSS backgrounds | image-seo |
| Rankings fell after a core update | Weak experience, sourcing or trust signals | eeat-content-quality |
| Old posts that used to rank are slipping | Outdated facts or a shift in intent | content-refresh |
| Rankings swap between two of your URLs | Two pages serve the same intent | keyword-cannibalisation |
| Hundreds of pages get no clicks | Thin, outdated or duplicate pages | content-pruning |
Example prompts for each skill
Each skill triggers on everyday wording. These prompts are good starting points:
- Audit: “Audit our blog. Search Console and GA4 exports are attached. Tell me what to keep, update, merge or delete.”
- Research: “Find the keywords a UK payroll software company should target first, with estimated volumes labelled.”
- Intent: “What does Google want for gantt chart template in the UK? Should our feature page target it?”
- Topical map: “Build a topical map for international money transfers, mapped to our existing pages.”
- Brief: “Write a brief for how to write an incident response plan that a freelance writer can follow.”
- Writing: “Edit this AI draft so it answers first, cites sources and sounds like our team.”
- Titles: “Rewrite titles and descriptions for our 50 pages with the lowest CTR at positions 3 to 8.”
- On-page: “This page is stuck at position 11. Compare it with the top five and give me exact edits.”
- Images: “Audit image alt text and file sizes on our product pages.”
- Quality: “We dropped after the core update. Review these 30 pages for E-E-A-T and helpfulness.”
- Refresh: “Which posts lost the most clicks year on year, and why?”
- Cannibalisation: “Find queries where two of our URLs compete and tell me which to merge.”
- Pruning: “540 posts got no clicks this year. Which can we safely remove?”
What the agent needs from you
Content skills work best with evidence. The most useful inputs are:
- Google Search Console exports: Performance by page, and by page plus query, for 12 to 16 months.
- Analytics: organic landing pages with engagement, conversions and revenue.
- A crawl: titles, H1s, meta descriptions, word counts, dates, authors, canonicals and inlinks.
- Backlink data by URL, so pages with links are protected.
- Customer language: sales notes, support tickets, reviews and community questions.
- Your experts and evidence: who can review content, and what data, screenshots and examples you can share.
If something is missing, the skill works with what is public and says which findings would change with more data.
What an agent cannot do in content SEO
An agent with these skills researches, plans, briefs, drafts and edits; it cannot supply experience your business doesn’t have. First-hand evidence, real customer stories, expert judgement and original data still come from your team, and the skills ask for them rather than inventing them. The agent can’t see your Search Console or analytics unless you export or connect them, and it can’t promise rankings: it says what a change improves and which metric to watch. Decisions with business risk, such as deleting or merging pages, stay with you.
Frequently asked questions
What is a content SEO skill?
A SKILL.md file that gives an AI agent a tested workflow for one content task, such as keyword research, a brief or a refresh. The agent loads it when your request matches, then follows its inputs, steps, rules and output format.
Will these skills write content that ranks?
They make ranking more likely by matching intent, covering what readers need and requiring real evidence. No skill can guarantee rankings, and each one says so. Quality, links and competition still decide results.
Do they work with AI-written content?
Yes. The writing and brief skills tell the agent not to invent facts, quotes or statistics, to mark what it couldn’t verify and to use your expert’s material. A human editor should still check facts and add first-hand detail.
Which keyword tools do they support?
Any. They work with Search Console, Google Keyword Planner, Semrush, Ahrefs or exports from other tools, and label third-party volumes and difficulty as estimates.
Can I use them for a site in another language?
Yes. The workflows apply to any language and market. Ask the agent to research and check results in the target country and language.
How do content and technical SEO skills work together?
Content skills decide what each page should say and do; the Technical SEO skills make sure search engines can crawl, render and index it. The audit skills in each set hand findings to the other where needed.
Sources and more marketing skills
- Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content, Google Search Central
- SEO Starter Guide, Google Search Central
- Influencing your title links, Google Search Central
- Search Quality Rater Guidelines, Google
- Agent Skills specification
Checked on 10 October 2026. For crawling, indexing and site speed, use the Technical SEO skills; for visibility in ChatGPT, Perplexity and AI Overviews, use the AEO & GEO skills. See every subcategory on the Marketing Skills-md page, or read how I approach this work on my SEO content strategy page and on-page SEO page.
