Blog · 28 October 2026 · 9 min read

Claude SEO skills: 12 free Agent Skills, how to install

Claude SEO skills explained: the 12 free SEO Sauna Agent Skills, how to install them in Claude Code and Claude Desktop, example prompts and their limits.

Ask Claude to "do keyword research" twice and you get two different methods. One run checks the search results, the next does not. The model is capable, but nothing tells it how you want the job done.

That is the problem Claude Agent Skills solve. A skill is a written method for one job that Claude loads when the job comes up. For SEO, that means keyword research, audits or competitor analysis run the same careful way every time.

This guide covers what Claude skills are, the 12 SEO skills SEO Sauna publishes, how to install them in Claude Code and Claude Desktop, a prompt to try with each one, and where skills stop being useful. If you are new to using Claude for SEO in general, start with Claude SEO: how to do real SEO work inside Claude.

What Claude Agent Skills are

An Agent Skill is a folder with a SKILL.md file in it, plus any supporting files the skill needs. The file starts with a short header:

---
name: keyword-research
description: "Discover keyword opportunities, evaluate metrics and SERPs, and save/tag promising terms."
---

Below the header are the instructions: the goal, the steps, which tools to call, what to check before spending money, and what the output should look like.

Claude does not read every skill in full at the start of a session. It sees each skill's name and description and loads the full instructions only when a request matches, so a dozen installed skills cost almost nothing until one is used.

You can run a skill two ways. Name it directly, as /keyword-research in Claude Code, or describe the job in plain words ("find keywords worth targeting for our invoicing app") and let Claude pick the matching skill from its description.

Skills are plain text. You can open any SKILL.md, read exactly what it tells Claude to do, and edit it if your agency works differently.

Skills vs MCP: method vs data

A keyword research skill without data access can only tell Claude to "check search volume", and Claude will guess. Data without a skill gives Claude the numbers but no consistent way to use them.

SEO Sauna provides both. The MCP server at https://app.seosauna.com/mcp gives Claude live keyword, SERP, domain, backlink, rank tracking, Search Console and AI visibility data. The skills tell it what to do with that data. For the connection itself, see Claude MCP server for SEO.

The 12 SEO Sauna skills

These are all the skills SEO Sauna publishes. Each has a docs page with what it does, when to use it and what it returns.

Start here

SEO Project Setup asks about your site, goals, positioning, competitors and key pages once, then saves the answers to your project's context in SEO Sauna. Every other skill reads that context, and it carries across sessions, machines and agents. The two context tools it uses are free.

Set up SEO Sauna for example.com. Interview me about the business and competitors, then save the project context.

SEO Coach is for when you are not sure what to run. It reads your project context, asks about your experience level and recommends one next step. Coach answers spend no credits unless you ask for research.

Use SEO Coach. I'm new to SEO and run a small bakery site. What should I do first?

Audit

SEO Audit crawls the site, checks backlinks and search visibility, verifies ranking assumptions against live results, and writes a short report on the few changes most likely to grow traffic that converts. It explains every technical term the first time it appears, and separates confirmed findings from hypotheses.

/seo-audit for example.com. The report is for the owner, who has never done SEO.

Research

Keyword Research pulls keyword ideas, checks volume, difficulty, CPC and intent, inspects the search results for ambiguous terms and filters out off-strategy ones. It asks before saving keywords back to your project.

Find keyword opportunities for project management software for agencies in the US. Keep difficulty under 25 and tell me which three deserve a page first.

Keyword Clustering turns a keyword list into a page plan: which terms belong on one page, which need separate pages, which existing URLs fit, and where two pages may compete for the same search.

Cluster my saved keywords by intent and map each cluster to an existing page or a new one. Flag any cannibalization.

Competitive Landscape maps who wins search in a market. It separates direct competitors from publishers, directories and forums, which matters because your business competitors are often not your search competitors.

Map the competitive landscape for "standing desks" in the UK. Label each domain type and tell me where the opening is.

Competitor Analysis studies one competitor: its ranking keywords, strongest pages, content themes and backlinks, with evidence kept apart from inference.

Analyze competitor.com against our site. Where does their traffic come from, and where can we beat them?

Local SEO audits a Google Business Profile, compares it with the local competitors that outrank it, reads the review gap and runs a rank grid to show where Maps visibility drops off around the location.

Run a local SEO check for Northside Coffee in Tampere for "coffee shop" and "cafe". Ask me before running anything bigger than a 3x3 grid.

AI visibility

AI Visibility Audit finds out why ChatGPT, Gemini or Google's AI answers recommend competitors instead of you. It reads your AI visibility results, follows the pages those answers cite, checks your own site and recommends one to three changes.

Why does ChatGPT recommend our competitors for accounting software for freelancers, and what should we change?

AI Prompt Research finds the questions people ask about your market, groups them by what the person wants, and shows which sites the answers cite. It ends with 10 to 20 exact prompts worth tracking. It is research only; it does not start tracking.

What do people ask ChatGPT about invoicing for freelancers, and which sites get cited?

Promotion

Link Prospecting finds sites with a real reason to link to a page you already have, using search results, competitor backlink patterns and web research. It drafts outreach tied to each prospect and is told not to invent contact details.

Find link prospects for our free invoice template at example.com/invoice-template. Prioritize relevance over volume.

Reports

SEO Report is the one you do not run directly. Every workflow above uses it to write its result as one self-contained HTML page and save it to your project's Reports page, where your team can open it, read it on a phone or export it as a PDF. If Claude corrects its own run, it updates the existing report instead of saving a near-copy.

How to install the skills

First connect Claude to SEO Sauna, so the skills have data to work with. The MCP setup guide covers each client. In Claude Code it is one command:

claude mcp add --transport http --scope user seosauna https://app.seosauna.com/mcp

Then download the skills: all 12 in one zip, or a single skill at https://seosauna.com/skills/<skill-name>.zip, for example seo-audit.zip.

Claude Code

Unzip into ~/.claude/skills/, so each skill gets its own folder, such as ~/.claude/skills/seo-coach/SKILL.md:

mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills
unzip seo-sauna-skills.zip -d ~/.claude/skills/

Start a new session so Claude loads them. Type / and the skill name to run one, or just describe the job.

Claude Desktop and Cowork

Open Customize → Skills and upload a skill zip. Upload each skill you want separately, using the single-skill zips.

Codex and other agents

The same files work outside Claude. For Codex, unzip into ~/.codex/skills/ and run a skill with $. Other agents take them in their own skills folder or skill manager. Full instructions are on the Agent Skills docs page.

Check it worked

Use SEO Sauna to check my connection and list my projects. Then list the SEO Sauna skills you can see.

The connection check uses no credits. If Claude does not see the skills, start a new session and check that unzipping did not add an extra folder level, such as ~/.claude/skills/seo-sauna-skills/seo-coach/.

Updating

Reconnecting MCP does not update skill files. When improved skills are released, download the latest zip, back up any edits you made, and replace each skill folder completely. See Update your skills.

A good first session

Run the skills in this order on a real site:

1. SEO Project Setup. Answer the questions once; every later skill reuses them.
2. SEO Audit, or Competitive Landscape if the site is new and has little to audit.
3. Keyword Research on the opportunity the first report points to.
4. Keyword Clustering to turn the keywords into pages.

Each step ends with a saved report, so the next session, or a colleague's agent, can pick up from it. Skills that spend credits also check the project's research log first and reuse a result from the last 30 days instead of buying the same data again.

Limits worth knowing

• Skills do not add data. Without the SEO Sauna connection, a skill can describe the method but cannot get the numbers. Data lookups use credits on your SEO Sauna plan; Search Console reads, project context and saved reports use none.
• ChatGPT does not load skill files. A ChatGPT custom connection gets the SEO Sauna tools but not the skills. You can still ask for the same workflows in plain words. See Use SEO Sauna with ChatGPT.
• Some data has narrow coverage. AI Prompt Research uses a dataset built mostly from Google "People also ask" questions, covers US English only and shows no AI search volume, because no one can see how often a question is asked in AI.
• Costs scale with some workflows. A local rank grid is one paid search per grid point, so the Local SEO skill tells Claude to ask before running large grids.
• No guarantees. An AI visibility recommendation is grounded in the answers and pages the audit read, but no change guarantees a mention in a future answer.
• You still review. Skills make the method consistent. They do not replace your judgment on what matters for the business.

What it costs

The skills are free to download and use. The data they run on comes with the SEO Sauna plan: 59 € a month excluding VAT, with 17,000 usage credits each month. New accounts get 1,000 trial credits with no card needed, enough to try Project Setup and SEO Coach and run a first small piece of research.

If you would rather not install anything, SAM, the assistant built into SEO Sauna, uses the same tools from inside the app.

FAQ

What is a Claude SEO skill?

A Claude Agent Skill for SEO is a SKILL.md file that tells Claude how to run one SEO job, such as keyword research or a site audit, step by step. Claude loads it when a request matches, so the job follows the same method every time.

Which SEO skills does SEO Sauna offer?

Twelve: SEO Project Setup, SEO Coach, SEO Audit, Keyword Research, Keyword Clustering, Competitive Landscape, Competitor Analysis, Local SEO, AI Visibility Audit, AI Prompt Research, Link Prospecting and SEO Report, which the others use to save their results.

How do I install SEO skills in Claude Code?

Download seo-sauna-skills.zip, unzip it into ~/.claude/skills/ so each skill has its own folder, and start a new session. Run a skill by typing / and its name, or describe the job in plain words.

What is the difference between a skill and an MCP server?

A skill is the method: written steps, checks and output format. An MCP server is the data: live tools Claude can call. SEO skills need an SEO data connection to work with real numbers, so you use both.

Are the skills free?

Yes. The skill files are free to download, read and edit. The SEO data they use comes from your SEO Sauna plan, and lookups such as keyword metrics or rank checks use credits.