Purpose
rankcli-mcp-server is a free, locally running MCP (Model Context Protocol) server for RankCLI's SEO and GEO (generative engine optimization / AI search citation) analysis. It requires no registration and no API Key, and it does not send any content to RankCLI's servers—the analysis runs entirely within your own MCP host (such as Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, etc.), against HTML you already have or HTML fetched on your behalf by the host.
Main capabilities
The server provides checks covering multiple SEO/GEO dimensions: Core Web Vitals, structured data, security response headers, mobile SEO, image auditing, internal links, and AI crawler access permissions. It is driven by HTML and robots.txt, which are provided by you or your MCP host.
The repository also provides the same functionality as the above checks in the form of "skills," for coding agents to load on demand. The repository includes two built-in skills:
- seo-audit: run an audit, read the JSON results, and fix the highest-impact issues in the codebase.
- seo-ci-gate: fail the build due to an SEO regression in GitHub Actions or any CI.
How to use
Installation and integration differ by host:
- Claude Desktop: download the latest .mcpb file from Releases and double-click it—no configuration file, no terminal.
- Claude Code: a single command does it, with no configuration file (see the repository documentation for the specific command).
- Other hosts (Claude Desktop, Codex, Windsurf, etc.): use the standard configuration block. The configuration path for Claude Desktop is ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json.
- Any agent (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Copilot, Windsurf, etc.): integrate via the skills CLI.
- Claude Code plugin: a single install gives you two skills plus MCP server; you can also run in the shell: claude plugin marketplace add integrallis/rankcli-mcp-server, then claude plugin install rankcli@rankcli . After installation, the skills are /rankcli:seo-audit and /rankcli:seo-ci-gate.
When using it, you can ask Claude directly, for example: "Run an SEO audit on https://example.com”。你的 The MCP host will fetch the page, and Claude calls these tools directly; the whole process does not round-trip through RankCLI.
Suitable scenarios
Suitable for developers and teams who want to perform SEO and AI search citation (GEO) checks on web pages locally without sending data externally; also suitable for integrating SEO audits and SEO regression gates into coding agent workflows or CI/CD processes (such as GitHub Actions).
Limitations
This local server relies on the HTML/robots.txt provided by you or the MCP host. If you need tools that can fetch and crawl on your behalf from just a URL (seo_audit, seo_geo_check, seo_robots_check, seo_compare), as well as newer features such as Cloudflare AI-crawler-gating compliance checks, CI/CD scheduling, and automated fix PRs, you will need to use the hosted endpoint and paid tiers; a free API Key is available at rankcli.dev/dashboard. Related resources include the main package @rankcli/cli, the documentation rankcli.dev/docs, and the dashboard rankcli.dev/dashboard.
Other notes
Details such as pricing and specific feature boundaries are subject to the official materials; information not provided in this introduction (such as specific pricing and details of the complete tool list) is not yet available.
