setting-up-seo-measurementlisted

# Setting Up SEO Measurement You can't optimize what you don't measure. Before `auditing-technical-seo` can find crawl issues or `finding-underserved-keywords` can mine GSC for low-CTR opportunities, the measurement stack has to be live and accumulating data. This skill is the foundation. Run it once per site. ## The three measurement stacks **Mandatory — Google Search Console (GSC).** The keystone. `gsc-mcp` reads from this. Without it, every other skill in this plugin is hand-waving. Free, ~10 minute setup, takes 3–7 days before the first useful data arrives. **Strongly recommended — GA4 or Plausible.** Tells you what users do *after* they land. Not strictly required for this plugin's skills, but invaluable for context. Plausible (or Vercel Analytics, Fathom) is the privacy-friendly default for indie founders in 2026 — no cookie banner, simpler dashboard, EU-safe. Use GA4 only if you need its conversion attribution depth. **Optional — Bing Webmaster Tools + GEO tracking.** Bing is still worth 10 minutes in 2026: it powers ChatGPT search, Copilot, and DuckDuckGo, and the GSC sitemap can be imported in one click. GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) tracking comes via the planned `geo-check` MCP — set the baseline now, the tooling lands in v2. ## Setup flow 1. **Verify the domain in GSC.** Always pick **Domain property**, never URL-prefix. Domain property covers `www`, apex, all subdomains, and both http/https in one record. It requires a DNS TXT record (no HTML-file o