# GEO technical SEO audit Human Guide

## What This Is For
Technical SEO audit with GEO-specific checks — crawlability, indexability, security, performance, SSR, and AI crawler access It gives the agent a clearer input/output frame for search and SEO workflows: what context to ask for, what decisions to make, and what usable artifact to return.

Use this as a human-readable version of the GEO technical SEO audit agent skill. It is meant for marketers, operators, founders, and other non-coders who want the workflow without reading agent-specific implementation instructions.

## When To Use This
- Use this when you need a repeatable process for GEO technical SEO audit.
- Use this when the task needs judgment, examples, constraints, or a clear output format rather than a one-off prompt.
- Use this when you want to hand an AI assistant enough context to produce a usable marketing artifact.

## When Not To Use This
- Do not use this when you only need a quick factual answer.
- Do not use this when the work depends on private data you cannot share with the assistant.
- Do not use this as a replacement for legal, compliance, financial, or medical review.

## What You Need Before Starting
- The goal or business outcome you want.
- The audience, customer segment, or market context.
- Any source material the assistant should respect, such as notes, briefs, examples, URLs, or brand guidance.
- Constraints such as tone, length, channel, deadline, region, or approval requirements.
- A clear definition of what a good final answer should look like.

## Step-By-Step Workflow
1. State the job clearly: "Use the GEO technical SEO audit guide to help me with..."
2. Add context: audience, goal, offer, channel, source material, and constraints.
3. Ask the assistant to identify missing inputs before producing the final output.
4. Have the assistant follow the skill-specific guidance below.
5. Review the result against the final checklist and ask for revisions where needed.

## Skill-Specific Guidance
- Collect the target URL (homepage + 2-3 key inner pages)
- Fetch each page using curl/WebFetch to get raw HTML and HTTP headers
- Run through each of the 8 audit categories below
- Score each category using the rubric
- Generate GEO-TECHNICAL-AUDIT.md with results
- Fetch `https://[domain]/robots.txt`
- Check for syntactic validity: proper `User-agent`, `Allow`, `Disallow` directives
- Check for common errors: missing User-agent, wildcards blocking important paths, Disallow: / blocking entire site
- Verify XML sitemap is referenced: `Sitemap: https://[domain]/sitemap.xml`
- All major AI crawlers allowed: 5 points
- Some blocked but Googlebot + Bingbot allowed: 3 points
- GPTBot or PerplexityBot blocked: 1 point (significant GEO impact)

## Decision Points And Nuance
The original skill emphasizes: Purpose, How to Use This Skill, Category 1: Crawlability (15 points), 1.1 robots.txt Validity, 1.2 AI Crawler Access (CRITICAL for GEO), 1.3 XML Sitemaps, 1.4 Crawl Depth, 1.5 Noindex Management, Category 2: Indexability (12 points), 2.1 Canonical Tags.

Use these questions to steer the work:
- What is the intended audience or buyer?
- What source material must be preserved?
- What should the assistant optimize for: clarity, persuasion, accuracy, speed, creativity, or conversion?
- What examples represent the desired quality bar?
- What should the assistant avoid?

## Common Mistakes
- Check for common errors: missing User-agent, wildcards blocking important paths, Disallow: / blocking entire site
- Homepage = depth 0. Check that all important pages are reachable within **3 clicks** (depth 3)
- Every indexable page must have a `<link rel="canonical" href="...">` tag
- Canonical must point to itself (self-referencing) for the authoritative version
- Validate: reciprocal hreflang (if page A points to page B, B must point back to A)
- Site must load over HTTPS
- HTTP must redirect to HTTPS (301 redirect)
- No mixed content warnings (HTTP resources on HTTPS pages)

## Copy-And-Paste Prompt
```text
Use the GEO technical SEO audit human guide.

My goal:
[Describe the business outcome]

Audience:
[Describe who this is for]

Context and source material:
[Paste notes, examples, links, or existing copy]

Constraints:
[Tone, length, channel, timeline, must-include items, must-avoid items]

Before producing the final output, ask me for any missing information that would materially improve the result.
```

## Final Checklist
- [ ] The output matches the original goal.
- [ ] The audience and context are reflected in the answer.
- [ ] Important constraints and source material were preserved.
- [ ] The assistant made the relevant decisions explicit.
- [ ] The final artifact is ready to use, review, or hand to the next person.

## Source
This guide was generated from the zubair-trabzada/geo-seo-claude skill entry for `geo-technical`.

## Source Skill Notes
These notes preserve the nuance from the original skill. Use them as supporting reference when the workflow above feels too generic.

# GEO Technical SEO Audit

## Purpose

Technical SEO forms the foundation of both traditional search visibility and AI search citation. A technically broken site cannot be crawled, indexed, or cited by any platform. This skill audits 8 categories of technical health with specific attention to GEO requirements — most critically, **server-side rendering** (AI crawlers do not execute JavaScript) and **AI crawler access** (many sites inadvertently block AI crawlers in robots.txt).

## How to Use This Skill

1. Collect the target URL (homepage + 2-3 key inner pages)
2. Fetch each page using curl/WebFetch to get raw HTML and HTTP headers
3. Run through each of the 8 audit categories below
4. Score each category using the rubric
5. Generate GEO-TECHNICAL-AUDIT.md with results

---

## Category 1: Crawlability (15 points)

### 1.1 robots.txt Validity
- Fetch `https://[domain]/robots.txt`
- Check for syntactic validity: proper `User-agent`, `Allow`, `Disallow` directives
- Check for common errors: missing User-agent, wildcards blocking important paths, Disallow: / blocking entire site
- Verify XML sitemap is referenced: `Sitemap: https://[domain]/sitemap.xml`

### 1.2 AI Crawler Access (CRITICAL for GEO)
Check robots.txt for directives targeting these AI crawlers:

| Crawler | User-Agent | Platform |
|---|---|---|
| GPTBot | GPTBot | ChatGPT / OpenAI |
| Google-Extended | Google-Extended | Gemini / Google AI training |
| Googlebot | Googlebot | Google Search + AI Overviews |
| Bingbot | bingbot | Bing Copilot + ChatGPT (via Bing) |
| PerplexityBot | PerplexityBot | Perplexity AI |
| ClaudeBot | ClaudeBot | Anthropic Claude |
| Amazonbot | Amazonbot | Alexa / Amazon AI |
| CCBot | CCBot | Common Crawl (used by many AI models) |
| FacebookBot | FacebookExternalHit | Meta AI |
| Bytespider | Bytespider | TikTok / ByteDance AI |
| Applebot-Extended | Applebot-Extended | Apple Intelligence |

**Scoring for AI crawler access:**
- All major AI crawlers allowed: 5 points
- Some blocked but Googlebot + Bingbot allowed: 3 points
- GPTBot or PerplexityBot blocked: 1 point (significant GEO impact)
- Googlebot blocked: 0 points (fatal)

**Important nuance**: Blocking Google-Extended does NOT block Googlebot. Google-Extended only controls AI training data usage, not search indexing. However, blocking Google-Extended may reduce presence in AI Overviews. Recommend allowing Google-Extended unless there is a specific data licensing concern.

### 1.3 XML Sitemaps
- Fetch sitemap (check robots.txt for location, or try `/sitemap.xml`, `/sitemap_index.xml`)
- Validate XML syntax
- Check for `<lastmod>` dates (should be present and accurate)
- Count URLs — compare to expected number of indexable pages
- Check for sitemap index if large site (50,000+ URLs per sitemap max)
- Verify all sitemap URLs return 200 status codes (sample check)

### 1.4 Crawl Depth
- Homepage = depth 0. Check that all important pages are reachable within **3 clicks** (depth 3)
- Pages at depth 4+ receive significantly less crawl budget and are less likely to be cited by AI
- Check internal linking: are key content pages linked from the homepage or main navigation?

### 1.5 Noindex Management
- Check for `<meta name="robots" content="noindex">` on pages that SHOULD be indexed
- Check for `X-Robots-Tag: noindex` HTTP headers
- Common mistakes: noindex on paginated pages, category pages, or key landing pages

**Category Scoring:**
| Check | Points |
|---|---|
| robots.txt valid and complete | 3 |
| AI crawlers allowed | 5 |
| XML sitemap present and valid | 3 |
| Crawl depth within 3 clicks | 2 |
| No erroneous noindex directives | 2 |

---

## Category 2: Indexability (12 points)