Optimize Local SEO Titles and Meta Descriptions with a Claude Skill

A plumbing, landscaping or repair page needs to tell a searcher what the business does and where it actually works. A reusable skill helps you make that decision consistently. This guide takes you from a downloaded folder to a title and description you can review, with the business facts and unresolved questions beside the copy.

The Local Title and Meta Optimizer works on existing local service pages and approved drafts. Download the ZIP using the name-and-email form above. It includes the skill, facts worksheet, fictional example, change-sheet template, two optional Python helpers and tests. The material is MIT-licensed, so you can use and adapt it for your business.

What this skill does

• Reads the page and its title/description evidence, then checks page intent and service coverage.
• Proposes a clear title and useful description, or recommends keeping suitable existing copy.
• Separates a real physical branch from an area the business serves.
• Flags missing evidence, duplicate tags, template overrides and unsupported claims.
• Returns exact fields, sources, counts and a change sheet for an authorized CMS workflow.

The skill prepares recommendations. You or your existing publishing workflow apply the approved fields. A broader SEO audit still handles crawlability, links, content gaps and conversions. A page architect still decides whether to build or consolidate city pages. This focused scope makes the skill usable on one page without taking over your website.

Understand the title and snippet rules

Google advises descriptive, concise titles, but gives no fixed title or meta-description character limit. Display width varies. The counts in this skill are review aids. They are not pass/fail ranking rules. Keep important intent readable near the beginning and review the whole string.

Google can choose a different displayed title and can build a snippet from page content for a particular query. A meta description is a useful summary Google may use, not a direct ranking signal. Writing a description does not guarantee that searchers will see it.

There is practitioner evidence for testing longer relevant titles, but it does not establish a universal length formula. Appending an invisible list of services and cities is not a reliable shortcut. This skill also avoids promises that a longer description, a statistic or a brand/service/city pattern will produce AI citations or a Knowledge Graph entry.

Install the complete skill folder

Unzip the download. In the project where you will work on your website, create .claude/skills/ and put the entire local-title-meta-optimizer folder inside it. The final path should be .claude/skills/local-title-meta-optimizer/SKILL.md. Keep assets, references, scripts and tests with that file.

.claude/
  skills/
    local-title-meta-optimizer/
      SKILL.md
      README.md
      LICENSE
      assets/
      references/
      scripts/
      tests/

On Windows you can create those folders in File Explorer; on macOS or Linux use your file manager. Launch Claude Code from the project. Type /local-title-meta-optimizer to invoke the skill. If it is missing, check for an extra nested ZIP folder and confirm SKILL.md is in the path shown above. The current official installation documentation is linked below.

For a personal skill available across projects, use your home folder's .claude/skills/ instead. Other Agent Skill hosts may import the same folder using their own documented mechanism. This release provides portable instructions; it does not claim verified installation on every host.

Prepare facts before asking for copy

Copy assets/business-facts-template.json into your working files and fill in the brand, services, real offices, served areas, page role and primary intent. Each fact needs an identifier, source, observed date, scope and a verified flag. Mark owner-confirmed facts as owner-confirmed rather than implying an independent investigation.

• Storefront home: principal service and real city when useful.
• Service-area home: truthful coverage, without inventing an office.
• Multi-location home: corporate scope, with branch intent distinguished.
• Physical branch: verified branch and services available there.
• Service hub: one service's intent and useful geography.
• Served-city page: service coverage, without claiming a local office.

If you cannot substantiate 24/7 availability, same-day service, top-rated, review counts, licenses, prices or a guarantee, leave them out. Give the agent the current page content and saved HTML or a URL it can inspect. Search Console and crawl exports can improve prioritization, but a small recommendation can start from owner-verified facts and a draft.

Run a first recommendation on one page

A useful answer explains the intent, shows the exact current and proposed fields, cites the facts used, and names the evidence it could not inspect. It should keep suitable copy and omit unverified extras. A confident sentence without a source is a reason to revise the recommendation.

Read the fictional example

The included Cedarline Plumbing example is fictional. It assumes drain cleaning coverage in Aurora, Illinois, with no Aurora office. Its title is 49 characters and its description is 128 characters. Those counts describe the example; they are not a target all your pages must meet.

Title:
Drain Cleaning in Aurora, IL | Cedarline Plumbing

Meta description:
Cedarline Plumbing serves Aurora with drain cleaning. Learn about service coverage and request an appointment for your property.

The description says serves Aurora. It does not invent a branch, rating, response time or price. The example's current metadata is unknown because it is a supplied draft. Unknown is different from an absent tag and different from an empty field. A publishing workflow needs a verified preimage before applying changes.

Check the HTML and change sheet

The optional helpers require Python 3.10 or newer and no third-party packages. Run them from the installed skill folder. Adjust python to python3 or py -3 if that is the interpreter on your computer. These helpers read local files; they do not fetch or publish a website.

The HTML helper reports head tags, decoded strings, counts, duplicates, unresolved tokens and basic robots/canonical observations. The change-sheet helper checks structure, verified reference availability and HTML escaping. A valid result means those checks passed. It cannot prove a business fact, inspect the rendered browser head or guarantee that every claim in the copy maps to evidence. Review those manually.

For CMS fields, use plain text. For an HTML template, escape entities and attribute quotes. Do not add a second title or description source when an SEO plugin already controls the head. Ampersands and quotes are included in the helper tests to catch serialization mistakes.

Apply approved fields through your CMS

1. Confirm the intended URL and the SEO field or template that actually controls its head.
2. Save the exact current values, including whether each key is absent or empty.
3. Review factual claims and approve the final plain-text strings.
4. Hold if the saved values have changed since review; resolve that drift first.
5. Apply through your authorized CMS workflow, handle relevant caches and inspect the normal live URL.
6. Confirm the effective HTML has one intended title and description, and preserve a rollback record.

A plugin's saved field, server HTML, browser-rendered head and Google result are different layers. Record each one you actually observed. A CMS success message proves only that step. If the controller is unclear or two templates emit descriptions, resolve the publishing issue before declaring the page verified.

Measure results without promising an uplift

Record baseline dates, queries, clicks, impressions, CTR, position, device and country where available. Include leads or bookings if you can connect them responsibly. After recrawl and enough complete data days, compare the same cohorts and note query mix, seasonality and concurrent changes. A before/after chart alone cannot establish causation.

If you test a longer title, set the hypothesis and decision rule before editing, use comparison pages where feasible, and hold the description, body, schema and links stable. If you test a description, hold the title stable. Low traffic may leave the result inconclusive. A 28-day window is a possible starting point, not a promise of sufficient evidence.

Use the skill across a small batch

Once one page passes review, provide a crawl export and URL-to-intent map for a small batch. Prioritize misleading, missing, duplicated or stale metadata and pages with useful impressions. Ask the skill to preserve exact URL identity, compare duplicate candidates and hold ambiguous geography. Keep architecture changes in the separate page-planning process.