Every SEO question starts here. This playbook does three things: makes sure the right accounts are connected, routes you to the focused playbook for the job, and sets the evidence rules that every SEO answer from Sequel follows.
Connect first
SEO work runs on the user's own accounts, not on generic advice. The apps list in this tool result says which are connected.
- Google Search Console is required for nearly everything. It is the only measured source of the site's own queries, clicks, impressions and positions.
- Google Analytics 4 turns traffic into outcomes: engagement, conversions, revenue. Needed for any question about whether the traffic matters.
- Ahrefs adds competitors, backlinks and keyword estimates. Optional. Without it, skip the competitor playbooks rather than guessing.
If a required app shows connected: false, call sequel_manage_connections with action: "connect" and that app_id, then give the user the link it returns. Never ask for credentials, tokens, property IDs or site URLs in chat; the hosted flow collects everything. Do not stop the investigation while waiting: run every step the connected sources support and say plainly which steps were skipped and why. After the user reports they have connected, call sequel_manage_connections with action: "list" to confirm before continuing. There is no automatic notification.
Each Search Console connection is pinned to one property. If the org has several, ask which site before running anything.
If the user names a tool Sequel does not connect to (Semrush, Moz, Bing Webmaster Tools, Screaming Frog, Google Ads and others), say so in one sentence before doing anything else, then offer the same question answered from the sources Sequel does have. Do not substitute silently, and do not present Search Console or Ahrefs numbers as if they came from the tool the user asked about.
Route to the right playbook
Read the matching playbook with sequel_read_skill, passing its slug, then follow it. Run one playbook at a time; its output usually names the next.
| The user wants to know | Read |
|---|---|
| Something feels off, not sure what is wrong | traffic-drop-investigation |
| Why organic traffic or clicks dropped, and when | traffic-drop-investigation |
| Which queries fell off page one | page-one-losses |
| Which queries are new, and which disappeared | new-and-lost-queries |
| Which keywords are close to page one and worth pushing | find-striking-distance-keywords |
| Which page-one rankings get too few clicks | ctr-underperformers |
| Which pages are slowly losing traffic and need a refresh | content-decay-audit |
| Whether two pages compete for the same query | keyword-cannibalization-check |
| Which pages win in search, and what they rank for | analyze-high-ranking-landing-pages |
| How much traffic is brand vs non-brand | brand-vs-nonbrand-split |
| What to write next, based on real demand | query-clusters-to-content-plan |
| Which keywords competitors rank for that we do not | competitor-keyword-gap |
| Which competitor pages earn the most, and why | competitor-top-pages-teardown |
| Whether the backlink profile is healthy | backlink-profile-health-check |
| Which referring domains are worth anything | referring-domain-quality-audit |
| Which backlinks were lost and can be recovered | lost-backlink-recovery |
| Which sites are linking to competitors right now, and how they earn links | competitor-new-backlinks |
| Whether organic traffic converts, page by page | organic-landing-page-conversion |
| Which organic pages and queries produce revenue or pipeline | organic-traffic-to-revenue |
| How SEO is going overall, for a leadership or board update | organic-traffic-to-revenue, then brand-vs-nonbrand-split for the trend |
| Whether paid search is buying clicks that organic already earns | paid-and-organic-overlap |
| Why a specific page is not indexed | page-not-indexed-debug |
| Whether the pages that matter are actually indexed | index-coverage-review |
| Whether the sitemaps are healthy and complete | sitemap-health |
| Whether the site has technical problems (status, canonicals, noindex) | technical-crawl-audit |
| Whether redirects chain, loop or leak traffic | redirect-chain-audit |
| Whether titles and descriptions match what pages rank for | metadata-audit |
| Whether important pages get enough internal links | internal-link-audit |
| Whether AI crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot) can reach the site | ai-crawler-access-check |
| Whether the site has a useful llms.txt, or needs one drafted | llms-txt-audit-and-draft |
| How much traffic AI assistants send, and to which pages | ai-referral-traffic |
A broad request like "audit our SEO" has no natural stopping point. Start with traffic-drop-investigation if performance is the concern, or technical-crawl-audit if the site itself is, then let that result narrow the next call. Do not run every playbook.
Evidence rules
These apply to every playbook. State them in the answer where they bound a conclusion.
- Search Console lags two to three days. Never end a date window at today. End it three days back, and say so, or the last days will read as a fake cliff.
- Search Console truncates and anonymises. Rows are capped, low-volume queries are omitted for privacy, and grouped totals undercount. Per-query rows never sum to the page total. Do not present the gap as missing traffic.
- Position is an average across impressions. A page "at 8.4" may rank third for its main term and fortieth for a long tail. Look at per-query rows before acting on it.
- Join Search Console to GA4 on the URL path. Search Console returns absolute URLs; GA4's
landingPageis a path. Strip the origin, trailing slash and query string from both before joining. - Measured beats modelled. Search Console and GA4 are measured. Ahrefs volume, difficulty, traffic and value are estimates. Quote measured numbers for the site's own performance, use estimates for competitors and market size, and never average the two.
- Strip brand queries before ranking opportunities. They already convert and cannot be improved much. Ask for the brand terms if they are not obvious.
- Missing is not zero. A skipped step, an unconnected source or a capped result bounds the conclusion; it does not fill the gap.
- Page content comes from your own browsing. Sequel supplies account data. When a playbook needs a live page, robots.txt or a sitemap, fetch it with your own web tools. If you cannot browse, run the account-data steps and say which checks you skipped.
- Never promise rankings, clicks, indexing or AI citations. Report what the evidence supports and what to verify after a change.