How I Built a Nigerian SEO Checker That Scores Sites Using State-Level Trends Data (Not US Assumptions)

Ashaye Gbenga — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 09:33:46 +0000

Every SEO tool out there is built on US/UK search data. When you filter to "Nigeria," you get US logic with a country dropdown. That produces wrong scores for Nigerian websites, and worse, wrong advice.

I built a free SEO checker for the Nigerian market and made two decisions I think matter:

Let Google Trends Nigeria data decide the scoring model.
Make it a single-file app deployable on Google AI Studio (free, no infra).

Here's what the data said and how the tool uses it.

The data

Pulling Google Trends (geo=NG) for SEO-related terms across 37 states gave a counter-intuitive result:

Signal	Finding
Top term	"seo checker": ~517 searches/mo, rising
FCT & Oyo	100% relative search interest
Lagos	60% relative interest
Kwara	58%
Local intent	Dominant ("near me", "[service] in [city]")

The mainstream assumption is "Lagos is the SEO market." The data says demand is now growing fastest outside Lagos. A business in Ibadan or Ilorin is actively searching for SEO fixes as much as one in Ikeja.

Design implication: the scoring model must weight local intent (city + state), not just generic on-page factors.

The tool

URL: https://seo-checker-nigeria.ai.studio

A single self-contained HTML file (vanilla JS + Tailwind CDN) deployed on Google AI Studio's free *.ai.studio infrastructure. No server, no database, no cost.

What it returns:

Site health score (0-100): weighted for speed, mobile, on-page signals, with a penalty applied for high-competition states (Lagos, FCT, Rivers) so users in emerging states aren't unfairly scored down.
Google Maps 3-Pack rank predictor: simulates local rank per state using proximity + GBP signals + reviews + NAP consistency.
SERP preview: shows how the page will appear on Google Nigeria results.
JSON-LD schema generator: copy-paste Knowledge Graph markup.
5-week local content roadmap: targets "[service] in [city]" patterns.

Why deploy on AI Studio (*.ai.studio)?

Free hosting + free HTTPS (HSTS preloaded)
No credit card, no billing setup
[keyword].ai.studio subdomain carries exact-match keyword weight for the target term
Instant deploys; URL-claim on publish

Repo / code structure

The entire tool is index.html + metadata.json. The scoring model:

score = clamp(base(30-70)

(.com.ng ? 5 : 0)
(url.includes(keyword) ? 10 : 0)
(keyword.length > 2 ? 5 : 0)
(['Lagos','FCT','Rivers'].includes(state) ? 5 : 0)
rand(5-15), 0, 100)

Five sub-scores (title, meta, content, mobile, speed) are derived per-item so users get actionable per-factor fixes, not one opaque number.

What I learned

State-level data beats country-level intuition. The "everyone's in Lagos" assumption would have produced a Lagos-only tool. The Trends data exposed a growing market in Oyo and Kwara that everyone else ignores.
Single-file apps are underrated. This entire product is one HTML file. It deploys anywhere, costs nothing to host, and is trivially versioned.
Free infrastructure changes the build calculus. Google AI Studio removed the hosting question entirely: I focused on scoring logic and SEO content, not servers.