Which AI SEO Tools Are Worth Installing? We Reviewed Some of the Most Popular Skills and MCPs
We wanted help getting our website found in search. Claude Code skills and MCP servers looked like a good place to start, and there is no shortage of recommendations. The hard part was working out what each tool does, what access it needs, and whether we needed it at all.
The short answer. We installed six skills and no SEO MCP servers. The useful work came from checking the site directly and reading our Search Console exports, with one audit checklist to guide us. We did not need an MCP server for our first audit. Some also raised questions about permissions or dependencies.
How popular these tools are
Our shortlist includes some of the most popular projects. On 1 November 2026, marketingskills had 57,665 GitHub stars, claude-seo had 24,995 and geo-seo-claude had 11,387. Stars count interest in a whole repository. They do not count users or measure quality.
Install counts measure something else. On the same day, skills.sh reported 242.8K installs of the seo-audit skill alone.
We did not review every popular project. Three that we found later still need their own reviews: open-seo-mcp-skills with 8,346 stars, SEO Machine with 7,564 and mcp-gsc with 2,081.
Our verdicts
| Tool | Type | Verdict | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| seo-audit | Skill | Installed | The checklist to start with: crawling, indexing, titles and links |
| performance | Skill | Installed | Where to look when pages load or render slowly |
| schema | Skill | Installed | A reference for structured data |
| seo (web-quality-skills) | Skill | Installed | A technical cross-check of search settings |
| ai-seo | Skill | Installed | How AI search tools find and read content |
| free-tools | Skill | Installed | Questions to ask before building another free tool |
| claude-seo | Plugin | Not installed | Good for a deep audit, but it brings a whole plugin, a hook that runs after every file edit and unpinned Python packages |
| seo-meta-generator | Skill | Not installed | Asks for broad shell access to write meta tags |
| geo-seo-claude updater | Skill | Not installed | Replaces the files we reviewed with upstream copies |
| seo-mcp (cnych) | MCP server | Postponed | Needs a CAPTCHA-solving service and pins four packages with advisories |
| search-console-mcp | MCP server | Not yet | We have not confirmed it works with read-only access |
Skills and MCP servers are different things
The skills we installed are text: instructions and reference files that an assistant reads. An MCP server is software that gives the assistant tools to call, sometimes with access to one of your accounts.
For a first audit we already had the source code, a browser and scripts to inspect the site. We could download our search reports as CSV files. We did not need to connect another service.
The six skills we installed
Four come from Corey Haines’s marketingskills and two from Addy Osmani’s web-quality-skills. The links point to the versions we reviewed.
The six overlap. If you want fewer, start with seo-audit and performance and add a reference when the work calls for it. Installing six does not mean loading all six into every task.
Treat each suggestion in a skill as a suggestion. For Google Search, check Google’s own AI search guidance. It says Google’s generative AI features need no special structured data. Advice written for another engine may not apply to Google.
Most scanner warnings were false alarms
We reviewed the shortlist on 19 October and checked the six chosen skills again on 30 October 2026. The second check used SkillSpector 2.5.3 in static mode, with its language-model analysis off. Some warnings sounded serious until we opened the files.
| Skill | What was flagged | What it turned out to be |
|---|---|---|
| schema | A passage in the skill | A code example for adding structured data |
| seo (web-quality-skills) | HTML comments | Comments inside examples |
| ai-seo | External command-line tools | Names in a document, which run nothing when installed |
A warning may be a false alarm. Read the passage and check whether it actually supports the scanner’s claim. We did not run the external tools that ai-seo names when we installed it. A text skill can still tell an assistant to run a command. Read the command, and whatever it would download, before you follow it.
The six skills had no bundled scripts, hooks or explicit tool grants in the files we reviewed. We saved their commit identifiers and file hashes, so we can spot a change later. The hashes do not prove that the instructions are safe or correct.
Four tools we did not install
Each of these needed a closer look for a different reason: a heavy plugin, a broad permission, an updater and dependency advisories.
claude-seo
claude-seo is the most thorough pack we read. Its seo-geo skill was the most current guide to AI search we found, and seo-page scores a single page and writes JSON-LD for it. Those skills call the plugin’s Python scripts, so in practice you install the whole plugin. When we reviewed it on 19 October, that was 420 files, 137 of them Python.
Two parts gave us pause. The plugin installs a hook that runs one of its Python scripts after every file edit, in every project. Its Python requirements set minimum versions only, such as requests>=2.34.2, so a later bad release of a dependency would install itself. SkillSpector scored it 100 out of 100 for risk, but most of its high findings described a crawler fetching the URLs you give it, which is its job. For a deep audit we would install it from a release tag, read the hook first and turn off its self-updates.
seo-meta-generator
The seo-meta-generator skill declares Bash(cmd:*) beside its file-reading and editing tools. That is broad shell access for a skill about meta tags, and we would want a reason for it first. The declaration alone does not prove that the host grants that access, or that the skill misuses it.
The geo-seo-claude updater
The geo-seo-claude updater replaces installed skills, agents, scripts and schema templates with upstream versions. To its credit, it shows a summary of the changes before it copies any files. After an update, though, your assistant works from files you have not reviewed. Treat each update as a new review.
seo-mcp from cnych
The seo-mcp README describes fetching Ahrefs data through a step that uses CapSolver to solve a CAPTCHA. That adds another service and another API key. Its lockfile pins fastmcp 2.1.1, anyio 4.9.0, h11 0.14.0 and idna 3.10. Our OSV queries returned published security advisories for each of those exact versions. We did not run the server or test whether it can reach the affected code. The advisories were reason enough to wait.
None of this is evidence that any of these projects is malware.
What the audit found
The checklists told us what to inspect. They ran no checks themselves. The evidence came from the site’s own responses and from Search Console.
| Check | Finding | What we did |
|---|---|---|
| www address | Served a second copy of the site | Redirected it to the main address, keeping each path and query string |
| HSTS header | Missing | Added it, as security hardening |
| Page titles | Some were long | Left most alone, since the part to cut was our site name |
| Lighthouse, mobile | 99 on the homepage, 100 on the calorie-deficit article and BMI calculator | Nothing: a lab test of three pages |
| Search Console, 18 to 28 October | 103 impressions for the percentage calculator, 82 for the Asian BMI article | Improved both pages |
The seo-audit checklist covers www consistency and HSTS, so it gets the credit for prompting those two checks. A Lighthouse score is a lab test. It cannot tell you how every visitor’s phone and connection behave. An impression is a search appearance, not a visit. Our numbers were small, but real searches were reaching those topics.
On the percentage calculator we added stones and pounds and the 5% and 10% marks. On the BMI calculator we moved the scale choice to the top and added a link that opens it on the Asian scale. We also fixed a bug with restored inputs in pounds. Our own testing found that one, not an SEO skill.
We cannot say yet whether these changes brought more search traffic. We have a baseline to measure them against.
What we would use on a small site
If you run a small site, this is where we would start:
- One audit checklist skill, such as seo-audit.
- Direct checks of your site: its redirects, headers and titles.
- Your own Search Console exports.
- An MCP server once fetching the same reports by hand becomes a chore. First confirm that it works with Google’s read-only access. Telling an assistant not to write is not the same as withholding write access.
- Paid keyword services only when you have a question that your own data cannot answer.
Keep a skill if it helps you ask better questions and miss fewer checks. A long report without evidence or priorities still leaves the useful part to you.
When the skills update
We will review a new version before we replace any files: download it to a separate folder, scan it and read the flagged passages. We also keep three things apart: reading a server’s documentation, inspecting its code and running it. We did not install or run any of the servers on our shortlist.
Sources
- marketingskills at the reviewed commit, including seo-audit, ai-seo, schema and free-tools. The audit checklist names www consistency and HSTS. The installed files and scan findings were checked against the lab’s installation record.
- web-quality-skills at the reviewed commit, including seo and performance. The SEO skill treats title length as a rough check and separates technical checks from ranking outcomes.
- claude-seo, reviewed on 19 October 2026: its file counts, hook, Python requirements and SkillSpector findings are from the lab’s review.
- GitHub star counts from each repository’s GitHub API response, and skills.sh’s seo-audit page for installs, both checked on 1 November 2026. Stars are for a whole repository. Installs are for one skill.
- seo-meta-generator permission declaration, checked at the linked commit on 30 October 2026.
- geo-seo-claude update instructions, including the change summary before copying files. Checked on 30 October 2026.
- seo-mcp README and lockfile, checked on 30 October 2026. The README describes the CapSolver step. The lockfile supplies the dependency versions.
- OSV package-and-version queries, checked on 30 October 2026. Matching records include fastmcp, anyio, h11 and idna. We do not total the records, since different identifiers can refer to the same issue.
- NVIDIA SkillSpector, the scanner used for the recorded static checks. The scan results and our reading of them are our own, not an endorsement from NVIDIA.
- Google Search Console API authorization, which separates read-only access from read and write access.
- Google’s guidance for generative AI features in Search.
- Off the Clock Labs audit and installation records, 19 and 30 October 2026: the kept file hashes, the scan review, HTTP checks and Lighthouse 13.5.0 mobile reports. Search figures are from the lab’s Search Console export for 18 to 28 October 2026, downloaded on 30 October. They measure our site, not total keyword search volume.