SEO Plan

Example output: examples/seo-plan-wix-com-20260514/PLAN.md

SEO Plan

Produce a phased SEO roadmap for a domain. Output is a single PLAN.md plus per-phase deliverable folders, each phase scoped to a quarter (or a 90-day sprint), each with explicit goals, work items, owners, and metrics. The plan is grounded in the site's actual competitive position — not a generic checklist.

This is the "what should we work on next quarter" skill. It does not replace specialist skills — it composes them, then sequences their outputs.

Prerequisites

• SE Ranking MCP server connected.
• seo-firecrawl available for site mapping and head metadata (optional but recommended).
• User provides:
  • Target domain.
  • Optionally: target country (default us), business type (saas / ecommerce / local / publisher / agency / b2b — auto-detected from the domain if not supplied), planning horizon (default 90 days, options: 30 / 90 / 180 / 365).
  • Optionally: known constraints (engineering capacity, content budget, no JS-render changes allowed, etc.).

Process

0. Google data availability check (advisory, not blocking)

   • Run python3 scripts/google_auth.py --check --json. If tier >= 0, the downstream specialist skills (technical-audit, page, content-audit, drift) will enrich their outputs with real Google field data — and seo-plan ingests those richer outputs in step 4. The plan itself doesn't dispatch seo-google directly; it prints a one-line notice so the user knows the option is on the table:

   > Google APIs detected (tier {n}, available: {comma-list}). Downstream specialist
   > skills (seo-technical-audit, seo-page, seo-content-audit, seo-drift) will enrich
   > their outputs with real CrUX / GSC / GA4 / URL Inspection data automatically.

   • If creds are missing, the plan continues with SE Ranking-only data and prints:

   > Google APIs not configured. To enrich downstream phases with real CWV / GSC /
   > GA4 / indexation data, run `bash extensions/google/install.sh`. Plan continues
   > with SE Ranking data only.

   • This is the lightest possible auto-spawn — seo-plan doesn't run seo-google itself (transferring friction to a single command is theirs' anti-pattern we critiqued in EVAL_RESULT_v2.md); it surfaces the option so the user can opt in or out before specialist skills run. See skills/seo-google/references/cross-skill-integration.md § "seo-plan" for the full rationale.

1. Detect business type DATA_getDomainOverviewWorldwide, plus a Firecrawl scrape of the homepage if available

   • Inspect title, H1, JSON-LD types, primary nav patterns.
   • Classify as one of: saas, ecommerce, local, publisher, agency, b2b-services, marketplace. If ambiguous, ask the user once.
   • Business type drives template selection (see step 6).

2. Domain baseline DATA_getDomainOverviewWorldwide, DATA_getDomainOverviewHistory, DATA_getDomainAuthority, DATA_getBacklinksSummary

   • Capture: organic keywords, organic traffic estimate, DA, backlink profile health, top countries, traffic trend over the last 12 months.
   • This sets the "where you are now" anchor.

3. Competitive frame DATA_getDomainCompetitors

   • Pull top 5–10 organic competitors.
   • For each: organic keywords, traffic share, DA, top topical clusters they own.
   • Identifies who the user is actually competing with on the SERP (often different from who they think).

4. Pull specialist inputs — confirm-then-dispatch pattern

   • 4a. Detect existing outputs. In the current working directory, look for any folder matching the patterns below dated within the last 30 days (treat folders older than 30 days as stale and re-list them as missing):
     • seo-technical-audit-*
     • seo-content-audit-*
     • seo-competitor-gap-analysis-*
     • seo-ai-search-share-of-voice-*
     • seo-backlinks-profile-*
   • For each present folder, ingest its primary deliverable (TECH-AUDIT.md, VERDICT.md rollup, GAPS.md, REPORT.md, PROFILE.md respectively).
   • 4b. Build the missing list. For each prerequisite that did not have a fresh output, look up its credit-cost figure from the specialist's own SKILL.md (read those when forming the prompt — figures may drift):
     • seo-technical-audit → varies by page count for a fresh audit; ~6 Firecrawl credits for the modern-signals step. Cite "varies; check page count" if no recent audit cached.
     • seo-content-audit → ~10–15 SE Ranking credits + 1 Firecrawl credit per audited URL (default cap 50; for the seo-plan top-10-pages scope, expect ~10–15 SE Ranking + ~10 Firecrawl).
     • seo-competitor-gap-analysis → ~30–80 credits for 10 seeds.
     • seo-ai-search-share-of-voice → ~10–20 credits (leaderboard + ~20 prompts × N domains).
     • seo-backlinks-profile → ~25–40 SE Ranking credits.
   • 4c. Print the confirmation prompt (single block, exactly this shape, with the missing-list filtered to only what is actually missing):

   To produce a defensible plan, seo-plan needs outputs from N specialists not yet
   run for {domain}:
   - seo-technical-audit (~{N} credits)
   - seo-content-audit (~{N} credits)
   - seo-competitor-gap-analysis (~{N} credits)
   - seo-ai-search-share-of-voice (~{N} credits)
   - seo-backlinks-profile (~{N} credits)
   Total estimated cost: ~{N} credits.
   Run them now in this session? (y/N — default N preserves the existing v2.6 behavior of asking the user to run them manually first)

   • 4d. If user answers y: dispatch each missing specialist in this order, ingesting each primary deliverable as it completes:
     • Parallel batch (independent): seo-technical-audit, seo-competitor-gap-analysis, seo-ai-search-share-of-voice, seo-backlinks-profile.
     • Sequential after the batch: seo-content-audit — its top-10-pages scope depends on knowing the top traffic pages from seo-competitor-gap-analysis / DATA_getDomainKeywords, so it must run after the gap-analysis batch completes.
     • Each specialist runs its own DATA_getCreditBalance preflight and surfaces cost before proceeding (their existing behaviour — seo-plan does not bypass it). If any specialist aborts on a credit-balance check, surface that abort to the user and let them decide whether to top up or skip.
     • After every dispatch, ingest the new folder the same way step 4a does.
   • 4e. If user answers N (or anything else — default N): fall through to the existing v2.6 behaviour — the plan opens with Phase 0: Discovery, and running each missing specialist becomes the first sprint's work. This preserves the user's control over credit spend in environments where the specialists should be scheduled or batched separately.

5. Score the four pillars

   • Technical health (0–100): from seo-technical-audit severity-weighted issue count.
   • Content quality (0–100): average E-E-A-T+CITE score across audited pages.
   • Topical authority (0–100): cluster coverage relative to top 3 competitors.
   • AI Search readiness (0–100): citation share vs SoV competitors.
   • The lowest pillar becomes the lead theme for the first phase.

6. Apply business-type template (templates differ — pick one and parameterise)

   • saas → product-led pillars + integration pages + comparison/alternatives + JTBD content.
   • ecommerce → category page hygiene + product schema + faceted-nav indexation rules + review aggregation.
   • local → GBP optimisation + location pages + citation cleanup (note: we don't have a seo-local skill yet — flag this as a manual sub-step or external).
   • publisher → topical clusters + author E-E-A-T + freshness cadence + AI-Search citations.
   • agency → service pages + case studies + comparison content + lead-gen LP (use seo-agency-landing-page).
   • b2b-services → industry-specific landing pages + thought-leadership clusters + decision-stage content.
   • Template provides default work-item categories; the lowest-pillar score from step 5 weights them.

7. Phase the plan — three phases over the planning horizon, each with goals, work items, owners, metrics

   • Phase 1 (weeks 1–4 of horizon): Foundations. Technical fixes that unblock everything else, baseline drift snapshot, 1–2 quick-win content refreshes from seo-page verdicts.
   • Phase 2 (weeks 5–8): Build. Content tier from seo-keyword-cluster (1 pillar + 3–7 spokes), schema fixes from seo-schema, comparison page from seo-competitor-pages if competitive frame supports it.
   • Phase 3 (weeks 9–12): Compound + measure. AI Search readiness pass via seo-geo on top pages, backlink-gap outreach starter from seo-backlink-gap, second drift comparison via seo-drift compare, retro + adjust.
   • For longer horizons (180/365 days), repeat phases 2+3 with refreshed inputs and a quarterly retro.
   • Each work item is tagged with the skill that produces it: seo-content-brief, seo-schema, seo-page, etc.

8. Pick metrics

   • Lagging (quarterly): organic traffic, organic keywords ranking top-10, organic conversions.
   • Leading (weekly/monthly): technical-issue count, pages with E-E-A-T verdict ≥ 70, AI Search citation count, referring-domain count.
   • One leading + one lagging per phase. Tie each metric to a current value (from step 2) and a phase-end target. Targets must be defensible — call out base rates.

9. Sequencing + dependencies

   • Build a dependency map: e.g., "rewrite cluster A pillar" depends on "fix noindex on /blog templates" depends on "run seo-technical-audit."
   • Surface the critical path. Anything off the critical path is moveable; anything on it blocks the phase.

10. Synthesise PLAN.md