Run SEO from Claude Code

The Hiveku plugin for Claude Code turns Claude Code into the SEO department for the account your folder is bound to. Every command reads the account’s context before doing anything, spends metered research only after naming a count and getting a yes, and gates every site and platform write behind an explicit confirm. Most commands read Search Console, so connect it first.

Before you start

Install the plugin and bind a folder

Follow the install guide, then open the account’s folder. Run /hiveku:status to confirm the folder is bound to the right account.

Turn on tool search

One-time setup, and the single biggest cost and speed lever - see Turn on tool search.

Connect Google Search Console

Most SEO commands read it. Follow /how-tos/connect-gsc.

Optional: connect Google Business Profile

The local pair - /hiveku:local and /hiveku:seo-citations - needs a GBP connection. See /how-tos/connect-gbp.

The command map

Every command below runs against the bound account. One row per command: what to reach for it for, and the line it never crosses.

Start of an engagement

Command	Reach for it when	What it never does
`/hiveku:seo-onboard`	”We just signed a new SEO client” - month-1 onboarding: connections, the Search Console capture, the first crawl, vitals, authority, the competitor set, one baseline deliverable	Nothing on the site changes; no crawl is bought and no competitor is added without a named count and a yes
`/hiveku:seo-keywords`	”What keywords should we go after?” - the research funnel: seed set, one batched expansion, bulk qualification, clustering, a SERP teardown on the top clusters	Never spends without the request count confirmed first; never quotes a model-recalled volume or difficulty
`/hiveku:seo-strategy`	”What should our SEO plan be?” / “what can we expect?” - clusters, the priority matrix, a banded forecast, the roadmap, sign-off, then the tracking list	Never quotes a point forecast; never plans a second page on an intent a URL already covers

The cadence

Command	Reach for it when	What it never does
`/hiveku:weekly`	”How are our rankings this week?” - rank movements on every lane, the 7-vs-7 Search Console comparison, lost links, the audit delta, the anomaly rule	Never ships a change from inside the pass; never names an algorithm update before ruling out measurement artifacts
`/hiveku:report`	”The client’s monthly report is due” - the monthly client-grade deliverable plus the branded report page the client actually opens	Never sends without a confirm; regenerates fresh numbers first rather than reusing last month’s

Content

Command	Reach for it when	What it never does
`/hiveku:seo-brief`	”Write a brief for a post about X” - the SERP-evidenced content brief: intent, the outline benchmark, entity and question coverage, internal-link targets	Never publishes anything; the brief is the deliverable
`/hiveku:seo-decay`	”Our old posts don’t get traffic anymore” / “two pages are fighting for the same search” - the decay and cannibalization sweep, five dispositions per page	Never deletes a page without a redirect; a consolidation’s 301s ship only on a confirmed list

Page and site work

Command	Reach for it when	What it never does
`/hiveku:seo-onpage`	”Optimize this page” / “why isn’t this page ranking?” - the 12-step on-page protocol on exactly one URL	Never runs across a URL list; never reports shipped without the live-URL check
`/hiveku:seo-technical`	”Is the site technically healthy?” / “why aren’t our pages getting indexed?” - the technical pass, ending in a coverage statement of what was examined	Deploys, submits and deletes nothing; every fix routes to `/hiveku:seo-fix` or a task
`/hiveku:seo-fix`	”The audit found problems, ship the fixes” - the audit-to-fix loop: one write path per fix, verified on the live URL afterward	Never bulk-applies an audit list; never approves its own staged deploy

Authority and competitors

Command	Reach for it when	What it never does
`/hiveku:seo-links`	”We need more backlinks” / “did we lose any links?” - the authority baseline, lost-link recovery, the link gap, a scored prospect list handed to Outbound	Nothing sends, nothing is bought, nothing is disavowed
`/hiveku:seo-competitors`	”Why does that competitor outrank us?” - the SERP-overlap set, keyword and link gaps, their money pages and tech stack	Never sums a vendor traffic estimate with real analytics; never presents an estimate as the rival’s number

Local

Command	Reach for it when	What it never does
`/hiveku:local`	”How do we look on Google?” - the local/GBP baseline: listing score, insights, attributes, photos, services, citations, local organic	Changes nothing on the listing; each fix is filed as a task
`/hiveku:seo-citations`	”Our phone number is wrong on Yelp” - the stored citation snapshot first, the paid audit only on a confirmed spend	No directory write exists anywhere in Hiveku: nothing is submitted, edited or claimed

AI search

Command	Reach for it when	What it never does
`/hiveku:aeo`	”ChatGPT never mentions us” / “are we in Google’s AI Overviews?” - the free gates first (AI-crawler readiness, the Knowledge Graph entity), then the paid citation audit	Never runs the paid audit before the free gates pass; never publishes a page

Migrations

Command	Reach for it when	What it never does
`/hiveku:seo-migration`	”We’re redesigning” / “we’re moving to a new domain” / “the URLs are changing” - freeze, map, redirects, launch, watch	Never a blanket redirect to home; never a production deploy without the staging fetch evidence

A month in commands

A typical retainer month, as the commands run:

Week 1: baseline and plan

/hiveku:seo-onboard captures the baseline, /hiveku:seo-keywords builds the qualified keyword universe, and /hiveku:seo-strategy turns it into a roadmap the client signs off on.

Every week: the pass

/hiveku:weekly reads rank movements, the Search Console comparison, lost links, and the audit delta, and queues what needs doing. It diagnoses; it does not ship.

Content sprint

/hiveku:seo-decay finds the pages worth refreshing or consolidating, and /hiveku:seo-brief produces the brief for each survivor and each new page.

Fix cycle

/hiveku:seo-technical finds the issues and routes them; /hiveku:seo-fix ships each fix through its one correct write path and verifies it on the live URL.

Month end: the deliverable

/hiveku:report regenerates the numbers and produces the client-grade report - the send is confirm-gated.

What no command does without you

Metered DataForSEO spends are announced with a count and wait for a yes before anything is bought.
Every write to the site or a connected platform (Google, GBP, the deployed site, an ad or search account) is preview-then-confirm.
Commands like /hiveku:weekly, /hiveku:seo-technical, /hiveku:local and /hiveku:seo-competitors change nothing on the site or any platform. They do persist their findings inside Hiveku - memory notes, PM tasks, deliverables - which is how the next session picks up where they left off.
Nothing deploys itself.

The robots.txt lane. A robots change ships through the project’s code - write public/robots.txt, deploy, then verify on the live URL. A robots file in the code always wins over the project’s stored robots_txt_content, and the stored value applies only at deploy time, only on a project that ships no robots file of its own. See the SEO delivery tools page for the full lane.

Troubleshooting

dataforseo_unconfigured (503)

The platform’s DataForSEO integration is not configured on the server this account runs on. It is not a clean site, and it is not anything in the account’s settings - there is no account-level credential to set. If you see it on app.hiveku.com, report it. The account-level limit looks different: see the 402 below.

402 on a research call

This account’s monthly SEO research cap, or the DataForSEO balance behind it, is exhausted. This is the account-level failure; the 503 above is a server one.

Tools are missing

The folder is not bound to an account. Run /hiveku:bind there, or /hiveku:status to see what Claude thinks is going on.

gbp_quota_exceeded vs gbp_quota_not_approved

Two different problems. gbp_quota_exceeded is a per-minute rate limit - wait a minute and retry. gbp_quota_not_approved means the Google Cloud project behind the connection never passed Google’s Business Profile API review - retrying will not help; the connection’s Cloud project needs approval.

What’s Next?

Claude Code Plugin

Install, connect accounts, tool search, permissions, and updates

SEO Delivery Tools

The tool surface these commands drive: rank tracking, audits, Search Console, GTM

Run an SEO Audit

The dashboard side of the same site audit

Connect Google Search Console

The data source most of these commands read

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Before you start

The command map

Start of an engagement

The cadence

Content

Page and site work

Authority and competitors

Local

AI search

Migrations

A month in commands

What no command does without you

Troubleshooting

What’s Next?

Claude Code Plugin

SEO Delivery Tools

Run an SEO Audit

Connect Google Search Console

​Before you start

​The command map

​Start of an engagement

​The cadence

​Content

​Page and site work

​Authority and competitors

​Local

​AI search

​Migrations

​A month in commands

​What no command does without you

​Troubleshooting

​What’s Next?

Claude Code Plugin

SEO Delivery Tools

Run an SEO Audit

Connect Google Search Console

Before you start

The command map

Start of an engagement

The cadence

Content

Page and site work

Authority and competitors

Local

AI search

Migrations

A month in commands

What no command does without you

Troubleshooting

What’s Next?