The RankThat connector lets Claude read your SEO data and act on it. It uses the Model Context Protocol (MCP), the standard way Claude connects to outside tools, so once it is added you can ask Claude about any site you manage in RankThat and get answers built from your real audits, rankings, Search Console numbers and reports, rather than from whatever Claude happens to know about SEO in general.
This article explains how to set it up, what Claude can read and change, the safety model behind it, and the kinds of questions that work well. It is written for agency SEOs and site owners who already use Claude and want it working from their own numbers.
Setting it up in five minutes
You need a RankThat account and a Claude app that supports custom connectors: Claude on the web (claude.ai), Claude Desktop or Cowork.
- In RankThat, open Settings › Connected apps. It shows the connector address,
https://rankthatseo.com/mcp, with a Copy button. - In Claude, go to Settings › Connectors › Add custom connector.
- Name it RankThat, paste the address, and leave the OAuth fields empty. RankThat registers Claude automatically.
- Click Connect. Claude opens RankThat’s sign-in. After you sign in, a page titled “Connect to RankThat” explains what Claude will be able to do. Click Allow.
- In a chat, turn RankThat on in the tools menu.
You never paste a password or an API key into Claude. The connection uses OAuth: Claude gets a token that expires after a day and renews itself, renewal tokens rotate and expire after 90 days, and RankThat stores them only in hashed form. Settings › Connected apps lists each connection with when it was made and last used, and Disconnect cuts it off immediately.
What Claude can see
Claude sees exactly the sites you can open in RankThat, and nothing else. If you are a client with view-only access to one site, Claude sees that one site, read-only. If you are an agency admin, Claude sees your whole portfolio.
The connector offers more than 30 tools. You don’t call them yourself; Claude picks the right ones from your question. Grouped by job:
| Job | What Claude can do |
|---|---|
| Portfolio | List your sites with your role on each; give a one-page status of any site |
| Rankings | Read tracked keywords, filtered to top 3, top 10, improved, declined, not ranking or close to page one |
| Search Console | Compare a month with the previous month and the same month last year |
| Site audit | Read the score and issues, including which can be fixed automatically |
| Index coverage | Which pages Google has indexed, and why others aren’t |
| Opportunities | What to do next, with estimated extra visits and measured results of earlier changes |
| Leads | Enquiries from search, by source and page |
| Backlinks | Link profile and the toxic link audit |
| Local | Local Rank Grid results and the citation audit |
| AI visibility | Google AI Overviews and ChatGPT mentions and citations |
| Research | Look up any domain, its keywords, keyword and backlink gaps, keyword overviews, Keyword Magic ideas, topic research |
| Planning | Read keyword lists, strategies and the monthly blog plan; save keywords to lists; start a Strategy Builder run; create topic ideas |
| Content | Read the site’s articles |
| Live pages | Check any page’s title, description and on-page basics live |
| Reports | Read a monthly report; create a draft report |
| Alerts | Read alerts for one site or all of them |
What Claude can change
Claude’s tools fall into three levels, and it helps to know which is which.
- Reading. Most tools only read. They can’t change anything anywhere.
- Changing RankThat data. A few tools add things inside RankThat: saving keywords to a list, creating topic ideas, starting an audit, tracking keywords, choosing which keywords show in a client report’s keyword table, and drafting a monthly report. They don’t touch the website, and a drafted report is never emailed from Claude.
- Changing the website. Two tools change a live WordPress site: one applies audit fixes (titles and meta descriptions, Organization schema, llms.txt, AI crawler rules in robots.txt) and one updates the title and meta description of specific pages, up to 50 at a time.
Website-changing tools are marked as such, so Claude asks you before each change and shows you what it is about to do. RankThat also instructs Claude to show the exact change and wait for your approval, and to prefer drafting a fix (which changes nothing) over applying one. Changes go through the same code as the app: the WordPress connection, or the Bridge plugin when a firewall blocks outside connections.
Some things Claude can’t do at all through the connector: send reports to clients, change billing, or delete anything. Write tools also need Editor access or above on that site; a view-only user’s Claude can only read.
A worked example: an agency’s Monday morning
An account manager opens Claude with the RankThat connector on and asks:
“Which of my sites lost the most Google clicks last month compared with last year, and why?”
Claude lists the portfolio, reads Search Console for each site, and comes back with three sites. For Coastline Plumbing, it notes clicks are down 14% year on year, reads the rankings, and points out that “water heater repair austin” dropped from position 4 to 11 three weeks ago. It checks the audit and finds the water heater page’s title was changed by hand to “Services” during a site redesign.
She asks Claude to draft a better title and description for that page. Claude uses the draft tool, which changes nothing, and shows her: “Water Heater Repair in Austin | Same-Day Service | Coastline Plumbing” with a matching description. She asks for one tweak, then says to apply it. Claude asks her to confirm the change to the live site; she approves; the title is updated through Bridge.
That change is recorded as made through Claude. It appears in the next monthly report under work completed and is measured in Opportunities under “Results of changes” from day 14, like any change made in the app.
Questions that work well
The connector is strongest when the question needs several data sources at once:
- “Give me a status update on Brightside Dental I can paste into an email.”
- “Which tracked keywords are close to page one across all my sites? Group them by site.”
- “Run a keyword gap for Bean & Barrel against these two competitors and save the best 30 missing keywords to a list called Q1 ideas.”
- “What did the last site audit find on Coastline Plumbing that can be fixed automatically? Draft the fixes but don’t apply anything.”
- “Which pages on this site aren’t in Google, and what’s the reason for each?”
- “Turn the five best missing keywords from that gap into topic ideas, with a reason for each.”
Questions that work less well are ones the data can’t answer: “Why did Google change its algorithm?” or “What will our rankings be in March?”. Claude will tell you what the data shows, not invent a forecast.
Tips for better answers
Name the site the way it appears in RankThat, by name or domain, so Claude matches the right project. Say which month or period you mean. Ask for the evidence (“show me the numbers you used”) when an answer will go to a client. And keep one task per message when the task changes the website, so each approval covers one clear change.
What the connector doesn’t do
- No website changes outside WordPress. On other platforms Claude can draft fixes for you to copy.
- No sending. Reports are drafted, never emailed, from Claude.
- Not every RankThat feature has a tool. Reviews, social publishing and article writing stay in the app, and citation audits are started from the app (Claude can read the results).
- AI visibility through Claude covers Google AI Overviews and ChatGPT. The live Perplexity, Gemini and Claude scans are read in the app.
- It doesn’t make Claude an SEO. It gives Claude your data. Judgment about what the business should do is still yours.
- Approval prompts come from Claude. Website changes are marked so Claude asks first; read what it proposes before you approve.
A quick setup checklist
| Step | Done |
|---|---|
| Copy the connector address from Settings › Connected apps | |
| Add a custom connector in Claude, OAuth fields empty | |
| Sign in and click Allow | |
| Turn RankThat on in the chat’s tools menu | |
| Ask “list my projects” to confirm it works | |
| For website changes, check the site has the Bridge plugin connected |
The connector reads the same data as the Site Audit, Rank Tracker and Search Console pages, so anything you see there, Claude can see too. Agencies managing many sites will get the most from portfolio questions; see the agencies page for how RankThat organizes them.
Tip: ask Claude to “draft, don’t apply” the first few times. Reading its proposals is the fastest way to learn how it reasons about your sites.