seo-survival-kit

SEO Survival Kit for Claude Code

Recovery-first decision support for ecommerce/D2C SEO. Claude Code skills for Core Update recovery diagnosis, prioritized action plans, weekly monitoring, and a Change Governor / Settlement Gate that prevents over-optimizing during recovery windows. Built and validated during real ecommerce Core-Update recovery in spring 2026. Open-source, MIT, zero runtime dependencies.

v0.5.4 shipped. Public beta. Breaking changes possible before v1.0. Pin to a tag for reproducible installs. See CHANGELOG.md.

Start here

Three common entry points. Pick the one that matches your situation:

1. Traffic dropped after a Google Core Update

/seo-rescue:post-core-update-recovery example.com

Diagnosis tree + phased Authority-First recovery plan (6–12 month horizon, no 4-week magic promises).

2. Free technical health check before deciding on paid tools

/seo-rescue:seo-audit-free example.com

Free-tier check using only Google's surfaces (GSC + PSI + Lighthouse + curl). No API keys required.

3. Weekly recovery review using your Sistrix CSV exports

/seo-rescue:sistrix-monday-recovery-check current.csv previous.csv example.com

17-section structured report. CSV-first, no Sistrix API key required.

Typical sequence: diagnose → recovery plan → weekly monitoring. Every step ends with an operator-reviewable artifact. No autonomous live changes are made by any skill or command.

Positioning

Recovery-first decision intelligence for ecommerce and D2C. Most SEO tools answer what is technically wrong. This framework answers given everything I know, what should I do next, what should I leave alone right now, and what should wait. It complements technical-audit suites (claude-seo and similar); it does not replace them.

What this helps you decide

• Should this URL be protected or changed right now?
• Is this recovery signal real, or is the visibility index lagging real ranking gains?
• Are winners being offset by a few large losers, masking aggregate movement?
• Which keywords are commercially important enough to protect at all costs?
• Is now the wrong time for URL consolidation, title rewrites, or template changes?
• Should we increase paid spend, or fix margin / tracking / landing pages first?
• Which channel is profitable, which is bleeding, which to wind down?
• Which AI surfaces (AI Overview, ChatGPT, Perplexity) are currently citing the site — as a supporting signal, not a primary metric.

What this is NOT

• Not an autonomous SEO system. Every recommendation is reviewed by the operator.
• Not a full-service marketing agency. Execution belongs to the operator's team, agency, or contractors.
• Not a generic AI growth platform. The focus is recovery-first decision support for ecommerce/D2C, not breadth across all marketing surfaces.
• Not automatic ad optimization. No write actions to any ad account. No automatic budget changes.
• Not a guarantee. Every output carries calibrated confidence; the framework refuses to promise rankings, revenue, or timelines.

Safety: Change Governor and Settlement Gate

The kit is not designed to execute SEO changes autonomously. Two safety layers sit between the operator and any live modification:

Change Governor. Every session starts in audit_only mode with zero change budget. Mode escalation requires explicit operator instruction. Each proposed change is rated on risk, evidence quality, rollback readiness, and approval state — actions without a clear data basis can never be classified as green risk.

Settlement Gate. After a Major Batch of live changes, the gate hard-blocks new optimization waves until enough data has accumulated to attribute cause and effect. The most dangerous moment in recovery is not the first mistake — it is the impulse to keep optimizing immediately afterwards. The gate enforces a waiting period during which only monitoring, QA, rollback prep, and verified emergencies are allowed.

Goal. Don't change too much at once. Protect winners. Keep cause-and-effect measurable. No live SEO change without operator review.

Canonical references:

• plugins/seo-rescue/references/SEO_CHANGE_GOVERNOR.md — modes, budgets, escalation rules
• plugins/seo-rescue/references/SEO_SETTLEMENT_GATE.md — hard-block definition, exceptions, unlock criteria
• plugins/seo-rescue/references/SAFE_LIVE_CHANGE_RULES.md — pre/post-crawl rules, batch limits, user-pressure responses
• plugins/seo-rescue/docs/LIVE_CHANGE_QA.md — live-change QA workflow
• plugins/seo-rescue/commands/recovery-audit.md — change-budget audit command

Naming at a glance

Refers to	Name
Repository / marketplace	seo-survival-kit
Plugin (technical)	seo-rescue
Slash commands	/seo-rescue:rescue, /seo-rescue:seo-audit-free, …

The split is intentional (marketplace is the brand, plugin is the technical handle).

What's in the kit

The orchestrator (/seo-rescue:rescue) routes to the right skill or command; each can also be called directly. Detailed skill registry: ARCHITECTURE.md section 4.

Core recovery workflow

Command	What it does	Cost
/seo-rescue:post-core-update-recovery <domain>	Core-Update diagnose tree + 4-phase Authority-First recovery plan	free
/seo-rescue:recovery-diagnose <domain>	Diagnosis with capability-based provider fallbacks (Sistrix + DataForSEO + GSC, with CSV fallbacks)	~$0.05–$0.50
/seo-rescue:recovery-crawl <domain>	Crawl + severity-classified issues (Screaming Frog MCP or CSV-import fallback)	free
/seo-rescue:recovery-audit <domain> [--days 14]	Read-only change audit: Settlement-Gate-State + hypothesis registry	free
/seo-rescue:recovery-plan <domain>	Prioritized 30/60/90-day plan with Do-Not-Touch + human approval gate	free
/seo-rescue:recovery-monitor <domain>	Weekly tracking with deterministic 0-100 recovery score (null when data is insufficient)	free
/seo-rescue:recovery-full <domain>	Full sequence: diagnose → crawl → audit → plan → monitor	~$0.05–$0.50
/seo-rescue:sistrix-monday-recovery-check <current.csv> <previous.csv> [domain?]	CSV-first weekly review, 17-section structured report	free

Diagnostic and analysis

Command	What it does	Cost
/seo-rescue:seo-audit-free <domain>	Free-tier health check (GSC + PSI + Lighthouse + curl)	free
/seo-rescue:gsc-deep-dive <domain> [days?]	One-call Google Search Console snapshot	free
/seo-rescue:competitor-deep-audit <domain>	DataForSEO SERP-overlap + keyword-gap analysis	~$0.10–$0.50
/seo-rescue:psi-weekly-cron-baseline	Automated weekly PSI tracking with regression alerts	free

Reporting and economics

Command	What it does	Cost
/seo-rescue:seo-outreach-report <domain>	10-chapter A4 PDF for non-technical decision-makers	~$0.05–$0.50
/seo-rescue:channel-economics-analyzer	Per-channel P&L from your marketplace CSVs (Amazon, OTTO, eBay, Zalando, …)	free (your CSVs)
/seo-rescue:subscription-monetization-audit [domain | --csv]	5-lever recurring-revenue playbook; optional Stripe/Chargebee/Recurly CSV import for MRR / ARPU / churn / cohort analysis	free (your CSVs)

AI surface (experimental visibility layer)

Command	What it does	Cost
/seo-rescue:ai-search-rescue <domain>	Diagnosis + framework for AI Overview / ChatGPT / Perplexity citation patterns	free
/seo-rescue:ai-citations-tracker	Weekly tracker for brand citations in ChatGPT + Perplexity (NDJSON history)	~$0.10/year

AI surfaces are an experimental visibility layer. Citation tracking and diagnosis only — not a guarantee of AI search traffic. Use as a supporting signal alongside classical search data, not as the sole basis for decisions.

Architecture and documentation

Doc	Purpose
ARCHITECTURE.md	Canonical source of truth: vision, positioning, system shape, modules, governance, privacy, adaptive onboarding, knowledge layer, what is NOT implemented
RECOVERY_SYSTEM.md	Six-stage recovery framework, Recovery Risk Engine, Money Keyword Protection, Winner/Loser Neutralization, URL Recovery Analysis, Recovery Signal Score, five-phase sequencing, Settlement Gate. Canonical copy lives in the plugin (plugins/seo-rescue/references/); the root RECOVERY_SYSTEM.md is a pointer stub
DECISION_ENGINE.md	Decision rules catalog, evidence weighting, data quality, profitability signals, prioritization, sequencing, cross-channel signals. Canonical copy lives in the plugin (plugins/seo-rescue/references/); the root DECISION_ENGINE.md is a pointer stub
SISTRIX_MONDAY_RECOVERY_CHECK.md	Weekly CSV-first workflow specification (canonical copy; the root file is a pointer stub) — runnable skill at plugins/seo-rescue/skills/sistrix-monday-recovery-check/ (v0.5.4) with synthetic example at examples/synthetic-sistrix-monday-check/
ROADMAP.md	Version-by-version product plan
ROADMAP-2026.md	Google search future-watch (separate from product roadmap)

Installation

Pinned to a tag (reproducible, survives upstream changes):

/plugin marketplace add maxschottke-spec/seo-survival-kit#v0.5.4
/plugin install seo-rescue@seo-survival-kit
/reload-plugins

Always-latest (less safe — a maintainer-account compromise would propagate on next reload):

/plugin marketplace add maxschottke-spec/seo-survival-kit
/plugin install seo-rescue@seo-survival-kit
/reload-plugins

See SECURITY.md → How to verify before trusting.

Outside Claude Code

The three pure-Markdown framework skills (post-core-update-recovery, ai-search-rescue, and the orchestrator overview seo-rescue-overview) are available as platform-agnostic Markdown in exports/ with install snippets for Cursor, OpenAI Custom GPT, Gemini CLI, Aider, Continue.dev, and Codex. Script-backed skills remain Claude-Code-specific; MCP wrapper planned for v1.0+.

Before you run anything

File	Why
COSTS.md	seo-outreach-report uses three paid APIs. ~$0.05–$0.50 per domain typical.
SECURITY.md	What the scripts access, what they don't, how to verify.
MATURITY.md	Honest comparison with mature alternatives.
ONBOARDING.md	Install to first PDF in 15 minutes.

post-core-update-recovery is free. seo-outreach-report requires API credentials for Sistrix + DataForSEO + Google PSI — full walkthrough in ONBOARDING.md.

Sample output

Same layout you get for a real domain — 10 chapters, ~1 MB PDF, plain language for non-technical decision-makers: