A Claude SEO skill is a markdown recipe file that sits in your Claude Code skills folder and turns one keyword into a finished, published, indexed article by telling Claude exactly how to research, write, link, deploy and track, and it is the single file behind my daily SEO pipeline. One file, one keyword in, one ranked-ready article out. That is the whole idea.
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Most people treat Claude Code like a chat window. They type a prompt, get a draft, copy it somewhere, fix the formatting, then forget to add internal links. A skill removes all of that guesswork. It is the difference between asking a junior writer for "an article" and handing them a written process they follow every single time. If you want the exact SEO skill for Claude Code that I run every day, plus the prompts and deploy scripts, it lives inside the AI Profit Boardroom with 3,000+ members building the same systems.
What a Claude Code Skill Actually Is
Per Anthropic's docs, a Claude Code skill is a folder that contains a file called SKILL.md. That file opens with a short frontmatter block holding two things: a name and a description. Below that sits the body, which is plain markdown instructions telling Claude how to do the job.
Skills can live in two places. Personal skills go in ~/.claude/skills/, which is the skills folder inside the .claude directory in your home folder. Those are available in every project you open. Project skills go in a .claude/skills folder inside a specific project, so they travel with that codebase and anyone working in it gets them too.
There are two ways a skill gets used. Claude loads it automatically when the task you give it matches the description in the frontmatter. Or you invoke it directly by typing a slash followed by the skill name. That is why the description matters so much, and I will come back to that.
A skill folder is not limited to one file either. It can hold supporting files such as reference docs, templates and scripts, and the instructions in SKILL.md point Claude to them when needed. For an SEO skill, that is where your article template, your deploy script and your list of site paths belong.
Claude SEO Skill: Anatomy of My Own
My Claude SEO skill is a markdown file in ~/.claude/skills/ that defines five things: the article-writing rules, the site folder paths, the deploy commands, the indexing flow and the tracking-sheet update. That is it. No magic, no secret model. Just a very clear recipe.
I trigger it with a keyword plus a video transcript or my topic notes. That source material is the source of truth. The skill does not make stuff up, it works from real source material. That single rule is what keeps the articles accurate and in my voice, because the facts come from things I have actually said and tested.
Once it is triggered, Claude Code follows the skill like a recipe, working through each step in order.
| Part of the skill | What it tells Claude |
|---|---|
| Writing rules | Voice, structure, keyword placement, FAQs, CTAs |
| Site folder paths | Where each site's articles are saved |
| Deploy commands | How to build and push each site live |
| Indexing flow | How to submit new URLs for indexing |
| Tracking update | Which row to add to the tracking sheet |
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The 8 Steps the SEO Skill Drives
Here is the short version of what the skill makes Claude Code do for each keyword. The full walkthrough, with the daily routine around it, is on my Claude Code SEO agent page.
- Keyword input. I give it the keyword.
- Research from the transcript. It pulls facts from the video transcript or notes, nothing else.
- Slug and frontmatter. Titles under 60 characters, descriptions under 155.
- Five articles. Five genuinely different articles for five sites, not spun copies.
- Internal links. Two to four relevant prior posts plus a Related reading block.
- Save, build and deploy. Pushed live through the Netlify API.
- Indexing. URLs submitted to an indexing API, at one credit per URL.
- Tracking. A new row written to the tracking sheet.
If you want a second pair of eyes on how that SEO pipeline would fit your own sites, Book a free SEO strategy session and we will map it out.
The Quality Rules Encoded in the Skill
The quality rules are the part of the skill most people skip, and it is the part that makes the output rankable. Every SEO article the skill produces has to pass these before it deploys:
- The keyword appears in the very first line and the very last line.
- Four to six FAQs.
- Two to four internal links to relevant posts.
- Multiple personalised CTAs, not one generic button at the bottom.
- A personal, first-person voice.
- No fluff. Every paragraph earns its place.
The skill checks the article against these rules first, then deploys. A skill that writes without checking is just a longer prompt.
I also baked in fixes for the two failure modes I kept hitting. Deploy timeouts get retried with a longer timeout. Indexer rate limits get handled instead of crashing the run. Every time something breaks, the fix goes into the skill, so it never breaks the same way twice.
If you want ready-made prompts to feed a skill like this, grab my 200+ AI SEO Prompts.
📺 Watch: 11 Claude Skills to 10X Your Marketing
How to Install and Trigger an SEO Skill for Claude Code
Installing an SEO skill for Claude Code is simpler than most people expect. Create a folder for the skill inside ~/.claude/skills/ if you want it everywhere, or inside the project's .claude/skills folder if it only belongs to one set of sites. Put the SKILL.md file in that folder, with the name and description at the top and the instructions underneath. Drop any templates or scripts it references into the same folder.
Then trigger it. You can type a slash followed by the skill name, or you can just describe the job, something like writing an SEO article for a keyword from a transcript, and Claude will pick the skill up because the task matches the description. Give it the keyword and the source material, and let it run.
If you are brand new to the tool, start with my guide to learn Claude Code first. For how skills sit inside a bigger agent setup, the Agent OS guide shows the full system, and if you run Hermes instead, the Hermes SEO agent page covers that side.
Build Your Own Claude SEO Skill: Six Rules
You do not need my exact file to get started. Here is how I would build an SEO skill from scratch.
Start with one skill per job. One skill for writing articles. A separate one for keyword research if you need it. When one skill tries to do everything, Claude gets confused about which instructions apply.
Write the description so Claude knows when to use it. The description is the trigger. Say plainly what the skill does and the kinds of requests it should respond to. A vague description means the skill never fires on its own.
Put hard rules as a checklist. Keyword placement, FAQ count, link count, title length. Checklists are easy for Claude to verify line by line. Paragraphs of advice are not.
Point to a source of truth. A transcript, your notes, a product page. The skill should tell Claude to write only from that material. This is what stops invented facts.
Add a verification step before publish. Make the skill re-read the article against the checklist and fix anything that fails before it goes live.
Keep secrets out of the skill file. API keys and passwords belong in environment variables, never pasted into the markdown. Skill files get shared and copied. Keys should not travel with them.
One tip that saves hours: ask your agent to draft the skill for you. Describe your own SEO process to Claude Code step by step, have it write the first version of the skill, then tighten it yourself. You know your process. Claude is fast at turning it into structure. If you want to compare how different models handle this kind of work, check Goldie Bench, and for more on the tools side see my breakdown of the Claude SEO tool options and the wider Claude Code AI SEO approach.
Want help designing the rules for your niche? Book a free SEO strategy session and I will look at your setup with you.
Results and Time Saved With the Skill
Here is my own time claim. Manual SEO used to take me about 25 hours per keyword across five articles. The skill-driven agent does the same job in under 30 minutes. That gap is the reason I stopped writing by hand.
I have also published my runs using Claude SEO skills on YouTube. Two of them are titled "Claude AI SEO Skill: 0 to 325 Clicks a Day" and "Claude AI SEO: 0 to 450 Clicks a Day". Those are my own results on my own sites, and the skill file is the common thread in both.
Rankings still need authority behind them, so if links are your weak spot, read my free link building book. And if you want the actual skill, prompts and deploy scripts rather than rebuilding them, they are all in the AI Profit Boardroom, which is $69 a month locked in, normally $110.
FAQ
Where do Claude Code skills go?
Personal skills go in ~/.claude/skills/, so they work in every project. Project skills go in a .claude/skills folder inside the project. Each skill is its own folder with a SKILL.md file inside.
Can a Claude SEO skill publish automatically?
Yes, if you write the deploy step into it. Mine saves the article, builds the site, deploys through the Netlify API, submits the URL for indexing and updates the tracking sheet, all after the quality checks pass. Without a deploy step, the skill just writes drafts.
Where can I get Julian's SEO skill?
My exact skill, along with the prompts and deploy scripts, is inside the AI Profit Boardroom. If you would rather talk through your own SEO first, Book a free SEO strategy session.
Start With One File
You do not need a complex stack to automate SEO content. You need one clear recipe, a real source of truth, a checklist, and a verification step before anything goes live. Write it once, fix it every time something breaks, and let it run every day. That is how one markdown file became my entire content engine, and it is exactly why a Claude SEO skill is worth building this week.
