How to Install SEOmator: The Free SEO Audit That Gives You a Score and a Fix List

Paid SEO audits love a 40-page PDF. Pie charts. A cover page with your logo on it. And somehow you still don't know what to fix first.

SEOmator skips the theater. You type one command, it checks your page in 13 groups, and it hands you a score out of 100 plus a plain list of what failed and how to fix it.

We installed it on Nov 1, 2026 and pointed it at a live small-business homepage. It found a missing H1 in the first run. Here's the whole setup.

Quick words (one line each):

• CLI: a tool you run by typing commands in a terminal window instead of clicking buttons.

• Claude skill: a set of instructions Claude Code loads so it knows how to run a tool for you.

• H1: the main heading of a page. Every page gets exactly one.

• Structured data (JSON-LD): hidden code that tells Google and AI what the page is (business, product, article).

• Core Web Vitals: Google's speed and stability scores for a page.

Step 1: Do a 60-second safety check

Never install a GitHub tool blind. Here's what SEOmator (the repo is called seo-audit-skill) looked like when we checked it on Nov 1, 2026:

1. Licence: MIT. Free to use, including for client work.

2. Last commit: Oct 15, 2026 (the v7.0.0 release). Active project.

3. Stars: 658 (as of Nov 1, 2026).

4. Account or key: none. The CLI and the Claude skill run without a login.

5. Telemetry: we read the built npm files. The only web addresses in it besides your own site are documentation links (w3.org, schema.org, Google docs).

Step 2: Install it

You need Node.js 20.3 or newer. Then pick one:

1. Terminal: npm install -g @seomator/seo-audit

2. Claude Code skill: npx skills add seo-skills/seo-audit-skill

Gotcha we hit: npm 11 skips install scripts by default, so the SQLite part (better-sqlite3) didn't build. The audit still ran fine with --no-save, which just turns off the saved history. On a normal computer npm asks you to allow the script. Say yes if you want history.

Step 3: Run your first audit

seomator audit https://yoursite.com --no-cwv

1. --no-cwv skips the speed test. That test uses Chrome, Chromium or Edge already on your computer, so leave the flag off if you have one installed.

2. One page took us about 2.5 minutes.

3. Ask for the report in Markdown so you (or Claude) can read it and paste it into a client note.

Step 4: Read the score, then ignore it

The live homepage we tested on Nov 1, 2026 scored 86/100 ("Good"). Sounds great. Here's what was hiding under that 86:

1. No H1 at all. We confirmed it in the page code.

2. No structured data. Zero JSON-LD blocks.

3. A template title and a template meta description of about 232 characters, which gets cut off in search results.

4. A dead internal link to a page that returns 404, linked 3 times from the homepage.

5. Social icons pointing at bare instagram.com, linkedin.com and twitter.com. Template placeholders.

6. Contact form fields all named "Name", including the email and message boxes.

That's the lesson: the score is the tool's own number. The list is the gold. Never sell anyone on "86/100." Fix the list.

Step 5: Fix in this order

1. One H1 per page that says what the page is.

2. A real title tag. The Website Specification (Joost de Valk's free rulebook, checked Nov 1, 2026) says: one per page, unique, page-specific words first, then the site name, 50-60 characters.

3. A real meta description that fits without getting cut off.

4. Dead links: fix or remove every one.

5. Placeholder links: point social icons at your real profiles, or delete them.

6. Structured data: add a basic Organization block with your real business facts.

7. Form fields: give each field its own name, then send yourself one real test lead.

Step 6: Know what to skip

1. llms.txt. SEOmator suggests adding one. Skip it. Google said on Oct 1, 2026 that it doesn't use llms.txt, and the Website Specification itself calls it "not a ratified standard."

2. Page weight warnings on Framer, Wix or Webflow sites. Our test page had 1.05 MB of HTML and 4,395 elements. Much of that comes from the site builder, not from you.

3. URL structure. Ours scored 100, and Google's Gary Illyes (Oct 14, 2026) called keywords in URLs "an incredibly small signal." Don't rename working URLs.

Step 7: Make it a habit

1. Run it on every client page before launch.

2. Run it again on the first of each month.

3. Paste the Markdown report into the client's notes and tick off fixes.

What it costs

Nothing. MIT licence, no account, no key. SEOmator also has a website it promotes. You don't need it for anything in this post.

Do this today

1. Run npm install -g @seomator/seo-audit.

2. Run seomator audit https://yoursite.com --no-cwv.

3. Check for a missing H1 first.

4. Fix the title and meta description next.

5. Click every link it flags as broken, then fix them.

Related reading

• Install seo-audit: rank your SEO problems by the clicks they cost

• The 14-point on-page SEO checklist

• Install seo-monster for free schema and AI quote checks

Sources

• GitHub: seo-skills/seo-audit-skill

• GitHub: jdevalk/specification.website

• Google Search Central (Martin Splitt and John Mueller) - Do sitemaps still matter? (2026-10-01)

• Google Search Central - What can you actually put in a URL (2026-10-14)

Don't worry if this seems like it's a pain in the ass for someone who doesn't build websites. That's because it is. The good news: just click the link below, pull the trigger, and we'll take care of the rest.