After working on my hreflang XML sitemap project with Gemini, my company decided to invest in paid Claude accounts. I took the opportunity to see what else Claude could do through its desktop app and found some great uses for it.
Here are five ways I’ve been using it in my everyday SEO work.
1. Implement a daily briefing
The first thing I set up was a daily intelligence brief. Using lessons learned from other AI tools, I crafted a detailed outline of the types of news I wanted to see, including industry updates, competitor news, mergers, and acquisitions.
The key to getting more useful information and less fluff is to be specific and use the output as a guide for improvement. Don’t accept schlock — you’re paying for the tool, so teach it to do what you need.
For instance, I have Gemini checking atmospheric conditions for radio wave propagation in my amateur radio hobby, and it took several adjustments to get useful output.
Dig deeper: How to turn Claude Code into your SEO command center
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2. Connect to data sources for faster analysis
Yes, I can dig into Google Analytics and analyze the data, but how much faster would it be if I could just ask Claude to look at the data and answer questions for me? It turns out it’s much faster.
The folks at Rank Math shared instructions on how to make a direct connection without using third-party middleware. This tip has saved me a lot of time by allowing me to ask for what I need and quickly get an answer.
3. Create a better and faster hreflang XML sitemap
I decided to see how Claude would tackle the hreflang XML sitemap project. Like I did in my Gemini example, I told it what I wanted, fed it the latest versions of the sitemaps, and asked how it would approach the problem.
Claude surprised me by asking only for links to XML sitemaps as input. Using its own resources, Claude gathered all the pages and built the sitemap for me without any further intervention.
I double-checked the output and found it to be excellent on the first go, avoiding the need for the back and forth I experienced with Gemini — a huge time saver.
4. Generate, translate, and localize content
Our team supports three main businesses across several regions. This requires content updates to be replicated across websites, translated, and localized as appropriate. We need to track this work as it goes through the pipeline so nothing falls through the cracks.
This is where Claude has been a tremendous benefit. I took an example of content that had been generated, vetted, and approved by one of our in-house experts and decided to see if Claude could handle automating some of the international SEO process. The results were far beyond my expectations.
As usual, beginning with the end in mind, I uploaded examples of previous translation and localization work to show what I needed done. Next, I uploaded a new item and gave it specific instructions:
- Look at the content and identify the page on the main .com website to understand the service and its context.
- Check the regional websites and determine if that same service is offered.
- If it is, create a translated/regionalized version using our standard template.
- Create tasks in our workflow tracker (we use Asana) and space out due dates according to a standard formula.
- Upload the content docs to the created task.
I was pleasantly surprised by how quickly Claude was able to do this. It accomplished everything I needed except uploading the document to the ticket. The translations were on par with what we were getting with Google Translate, as verified by our in-country experts.
Strike another blow against inefficiency.
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5. Replace an outdated WordPress plugin
While setting up a new WordPress website for one of our businesses, I found that one of the plugins we were using hadn’t been updated in several years and had known security issues. Thankfully, other security measures in place significantly mitigated the risk, but it’s always better to fix the problem than rely on other means.
I found a suitable substitute and thought about how long it would take my team and me to go through the 20+ websites we support and update the plugins. Even if it only took an hour per website, that’s more than 20 hours of dedicated, hands-on, fingers-to-keys work.
Before starting the process, I asked Claude if it could do it for me. Again, I was pleasantly surprised.
Using Claude’s Chrome extension, I logged into a staging environment for one of our smaller websites and told Claude what to do. It found all the places the plugin was being used, swapped it out with the new plugin, and did a quick visual check. There was one small discrepancy with the first attempt, which was quickly fixed when I pointed out the problem to Claude.
“Would you like me to check the other plugins for any security issues?” it asked when completed. Of course I would. It found an additional plugin that was unused and no longer supported. That was quickly deactivated and deleted.
My only time requirement was about five minutes per site of hands-on work as I:
- Pulled a copy of each production website from staging.
- Turned Claude loose.
- Visually checked URLs that were updated.
- Pushed the newly updated staging version to production.
Everything went on in the background as I worked on other tasks, and I didn’t have to get anyone else from my team involved.
I bet you’d be willing to trade getting the same result from five minutes of work vs. an hour any day of the week.
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How to work effectively with AI
AI tools can feel overwhelming, but they’re an incredibly useful asset when used properly. Follow these practical guidelines when implementing AI, and you’ll be blazing through those tedious SEO tasks in no time.
Be the strategist and let AI be the doer
Don’t just demand a final product. Discuss the architecture, the edge cases, and the logic first, and be specific. Treat the AI like an intern by showing examples of final products when possible.
Use the proper tool for the proper job
Not all AIs are alike, and some are better at some tasks than others. Read, learn, and experiment. There are a lot of us out there using AI tools, and people have found some amazing results using one platform that completely failed on another.
Check, double-check, and correct when needed
Much like embracing the iterative process I referred to in my last article about using AI tools, don’t be afraid to check thoroughly and correct when needed.
The reality that AI is really still in its infancy becomes readily apparent when it fails. You may have to spoon-feed information at first to get the result you want. Remember, you don’t have to be polite — be direct and clear for faster results.