Cline SEO: Plan the Fix Before Touching a File

Cline shows its plan and asks before it acts, which suits SEO work well: you see the evidence, the files it wants to touch and the fix, before anything changes.

An example on the Acme Plumbing demo site. You ask Cline:

“Clicks dropped last week. Plan what to fix before you change any files.”

Cline calls SEOmatic:

• gsc_performance: Oct 3 to Oct 9 vs Sep 26 to Oct 2 (7 days each)
• gsc_indexing: URL Inspection for the top loser
• site_pages: analyze /emergency-plumber

Cline answers:

Clicks fell from 412 to 297 (Oct 3 to Oct 9 vs Sep 26 to Oct 2, 7 days each). One page explains most of it:

• /emergency-plumber went from 131 clicks to 38. URL Inspection shows Google now indexes /emergency-plumber/ (trailing slash), and the old URL returns a 308 redirect.
• The redirect comes from trailingSlash: true added to next.config.js in last week's commit.

Plan:

1. Revert trailingSlash or add a canonical that matches the redirect target.
2. Update the 14 internal links that still point to the old form.
3. Re-check index status in 3 days.

Shall I switch to Act mode and start with step 1?

Also try:

• “Plan fixes for our lowest-CTR pages”
• “Which pages have a noindex they should not?”
• “Explain the exclusions in our sitemap”
• “Audit the live site, plan only”

Try these with SEOmatic enabled in Cline:

• “Audit our live site with SEOmatic and plan the fixes before changing any files.”
• “Which pages have the highest impressions and lowest CTR, and what should their titles say?”
• “Find the pages with a noindex that should be indexed.”
• “Check index status for the URLs in our sitemap and explain the exclusions.”
• “Our clicks dropped last week. Which page lost them, and did a commit cause it?”
• “Before we change the homepage title, show me the queries it ranks for today.”

1. You add SEOmatic to Cline's MCP settings with your API key.
2. You ask Cline an SEO question; in Plan mode it lays out which SEOmatic tools it will call and why.
3. It calls SEOmatic for the audit, Search Console data or index status, with the exact date range behind every number.
4. It proposes the file changes, and you approve each step as Cline normally asks.
5. It re-checks the live pages after you deploy.

Cline connects with an API key. Add the settings block by hand, or let Cline do it.

1. Create an API key. Sign up for SEOmatic (free, no card), then create a key in Settings, AI Agents, API Keys.
2. Add SEOmatic to Cline's MCP settings. Add a seomatic server with the URL https://app.seomatic.ai/api/mcp, type streamableHttp and an Authorization header of Bearer followed by your key, as in the snippet below.
3. Or let Cline install it. Point Cline at github.com/Minh42/seomatic-mcp and ask it to set up the SEOmatic server for you, then add your key to the settings.
4. Ask your first question. Try “Audit our live site with SEOmatic and plan the fixes.”

A key from a free workspace covers every read and analysis tool. A key from a paid workspace can also stage fixes. Keep the key out of version control.

Pick the settings block. It takes a minute, the key stays in your local settings rather than in a chat, and Cline lists every SEOmatic tool the moment it saves.

Both run inside VS Code, and both can use SEOmatic. This page is about Cline, the open-source agent extension with Plan and Act modes, which connects with an API key.

• GitHub Copilot connects through a .vscode/mcp.json file and an OAuth sign-in, and calls tools in Agent mode: GitHub Copilot SEO.
• Cursor and Zed are separate editors with their own setup: Cursor SEO and Zed SEO.

They all reach the same SEOmatic server, so you can run Cline and Copilot side by side on one workspace.

Connecting is free, and so is the SEOmatic account behind it: no card. Free covers the diagnosis with no limit: Search Console reports and insights, site audits of up to 30 pages, live page analysis, and your AI visibility results.

Live market data, like keyword volumes, backlink profiles and competitor domains, uses free questions: 5 a month, plus a one-time 10 bonus questions when you connect Google Search Console. One question covers up to 5 lookups.

Paid plans remove the question limit and add the treatment: agents stage fixes on your site (titles, descriptions, content updates, technical fixes, internal links) and run campaigns and fresh AI visibility scans. Every paid plan starts with a 14-day free trial. See pricing.

Cline's Plan mode shows which tools it will call before it calls them, so you can see how many free questions a request will use.

Cline asks before it edits files, and SEOmatic asks before it changes your live site: anything it would change through a connected CMS is staged, never pushed. A staged change is a proposal: it says what will change and why, and nothing touches your site until you approve it. The assistant records your decision, and it is told never to approve anything on its own judgment. Approved fixes start within seconds, the page's previous state is stored, and any applied change can be rolled back. Changes that could take a page out of Google, like a noindex, need an extra explicit confirmation.

Other coding agents: Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Zed and Claude Code. Explore the site audit, the Google Search Console integration and meta tags. Key scopes and autonomy modes: agents in the developer docs. All assistants: AI assistants. Full reference: MCP docs.

Using another agent? See GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Zed, or every AI agent.