How Claude Code Ranked Me FIRST on Google (It's OVER for SEO Agencies)

Everyone wants to build GPT rappers,

micro SAS. I get it. It's super super

sexy. But there's a huge opportunity

right now to be using AI for boring

businesses. I brought on the boring

marketer and he shares the story of how

in less than 24 hours, he ranked one of

his boring businesses on Google in the

top three spots for multiple target

keywords and made thousands of dollars.

and Claude Code did 100% of the work.

And this is an exact tutorial with how

to make money for boring businesses with

AI. And he shares why he thinks that's

where the money is. Enjoy the episode.

>> We got the boring marketer on the pod,

James. by the end of this podcast, what

are people going to learn?

>> So, I kind of had a a revelation that,

you know, everyone's building like

agents and workflows and rappers and SAS

tools, but I feel like everyone's

ignoring like businesses in their

backyard. So, I want to talk about what

I think is like a multi-billion dollar

arbitrage opportunity uh to build a

local service business.

>> Okay. So, boring businesses in the AJI.

>> That's right. That's right.

>> Okay. And then tactically what are

people going to learn here?

>> Yeah. So, uh, we were having a couple

discussions on X and some people chimed

in with some replies. Uh, one of the

things that I'm astounded by is people

still want to learn how to set up like

their development environment with Cloud

Code. So, we're going to briefly go

through that. Just some questions and

some things to do in terms of prompting

to make sure you're set up the right

way. Then we're going to talk about how

I was able to build this website in just

a couple hours and perfectly match up my

Figma design files. A lot of people

struggle with, you know, getting nice

designs uh with their AI tools that

don't feel like AI made it. So, we're

going to go through that process. And

then most importantly, we're going to

talk about how I optimized this website

uh for local search and actually started

generating revenue within 24 hours of

making updates to the site itself.

>> Within 24 hours, making thousands of

dollars of revenue, which is insane.

>> Yeah.

>> So, I can't wait to to just see how you

did it. Let's uh let's let's get into

it.

>> Cool. So, uh, the story here, um, I have

a lot of friends that have boring

businesses, you know, things that are

outside of tech and startups and AI and

stuff like that. And one of my friends

has a small trucking company. So, he

just ships goods from like, you know,

Charleston to Charlotte and and back and

forth and all that. And his truck uh, is

used. It was breaking down and he kept

running into these like mechanical

problems. So, he found a local mechanic,

started kind of building a relationship

with him, and he thought, "Hey, maybe we

should start a service that, you know,

helps trucks get back on the road." And,

uh, he came to me and he was like, "Hey,

like, you know, I'm really good at

operating and I've got, you know, the

mechanic and I know this business, but I

don't really know how to like get a

website going, get the marketing going

for it. Would you like to partner up on

this?" And I was like, you know, that

sounds pretty interesting. And it rang a

couple like bells in my mind for a few

reasons. One reason being all right like

this might sound a little bit crazy, but

what if like we have like an AGI takeoff

by 2030 or something like that, you

know, and digital services and SAS and

all this stuff is like super super

disrupted, you know. Um that that is a

real possibility. So I was like, okay,

there might be a barbell strategy here

to where you can kind of like hedge

against that as like a multireneur as as

you kind of coined the term, right? So

maybe on one side of the barbell, I've

got, you know, my service businesses

online, I've got my SAS tools, I've got

my community, and on the other side, I'm

a partner in some like boring businesses

that have a high degree of defensibility

against being completely disrupted by

AI. So, I don't think in the next 5

years there's going to be robots going

down major highways coming to fix like,

you know, heavy duty tractor trailers

and and stuff like that. So, I think

that has some staying power and that's

going to be a continued need for some

time. So, I got thinking about that and

I was like super interested to to get

into it.

>> Cool. Yeah. Let's let's let's let's see

what uh what you did.

>> All right. Cool. So, I'll I'll do a

quick tour around the website real quick

and just kind of show you the structure

and what I was able to do. So, you know,

you have kind of like your basic

homepage. Uh we've got some nice little

like illustrations and things like that.

We've got like, you know, a bunch of

clickable items that take you into like

individual services and all of that

stuff. Uh we've got all these different

location pages and uh you know, we have

some other like SEO optimizations on the

website. uh like all these handy

internal links and stuff like that. So,

if you look at uh some of these pages,

uh I have like a huge amount of detail

on all of these about each individual

location. I've got like landmarks and

you know, unique information about these

locations that uh we can service and and

things along those lines. Um, now an SEO

agency or a digital marketing agency

would charge you an arm and a leg to go

and like build out a website, create 50

plus pages, optimize the entire thing so

that it'll rank for uh the keywords that

are relevant to your company. Uh, using

Claude Code, I was able to do all of

this in a matter of hours. So, actually,

I did it over the weekend. It took me

around four hours or so to get the site

live, to do months worth of SEO work and

push it live. And as you mentioned at

the beginning, uh you know, this

actually started generating thousands of

dollars of revenue yesterday. This phone

started blowing up and now the mechanics

basically fully booked up for the next

few days. So that's like real vibe

marketing ROI. Uh you know, just using

Claude code, which I think is kind of

mind-blowing and Real quick, I need to

tell you about something that's helping

me sleep better at night as an

entrepreneur. I was running multiple

companies with money scattered

everywhere. Zero spending visibility and

making growth decisions pretty blind. I

knew there had to be a better way. And

my friend told me about Bracks. So, I

switched and now I have mission control

for every dollar. spend management and

visibility, virtual cards for my team,

and earning cash from the sameday

Treasury product. I was leaving so much

money on the table, but not anymore. I

have a financial operating system for

our businesses to make decisions so I

can spend smarter and move faster. And

it's been a total game changer. I'm

loving Brex so much. I reached out to

them and asked them to sponsor the pod.

If you're building something real, you

need a complete financial operating

system like Brex. It'll help you sleep

better, too. And you can't be mad at

that. The devil's advocate to that is

James, just cuz I've known you for 15

years, you are one of the best search

marketers I know. You know, you've

you've you've been there and done that.

someone who's who knows that there's

value in SEO but doesn't know how to do

that. How how can they actually

>> you know implement this and see similar

results?

>> Yeah, let's uh let's dig in. Um so I've

got like a whole process here that we

can talk about. So, um I'm going to walk

you through sort of the exact process

that I did, uh for getting your website

like discovered and then we're going to

cut back and talk about like the design

stuff and the development environment

stuff and and all of that afterwards.

All right. So, um why another reason why

I think like local is so interesting um

is because the competition is not very

sophisticated. You know, like if you

find kind of a boring niche in a local

market, you're going up against people

who haven't updated their website in 10

or 15 years, perhaps. They're still

operating off, you know, uh, notepads

and spreadsheets and stuff like that.

So, there's a real opportunity for

somebody that's AI savvy to use this

playbook to partner with other

businesses or other operators and, you

know, develop something that makes real

money pretty quickly. So the first thing

that I did was I took the diesel dude's

website and I gave it to AI and I was

like, "Hey, find me some keywords." And

keywords are just like what people are

searching for. I think everyone knows

that despite what uh you know X might

have you believe SEO is not dead by any

means on a local level. Actually, it's a

huge opportunity right now. Um, you

know, if a trucker is broken down on the

side of the highway, he's not opening up

Chat GPT and saying, "Hey, like, you

know, how do I fix my truck and like

what local mechanics should I call up?"

And sitting there and letting it do

research. He's opening up Google. He's

finding a review. He's clicking on the

call button and he's trying to get

somebody there right away so he can get

back on the road. You know,

>> James, so he's not in Cursor, you know,

tapping into the Perplexity MCP. No,

he's he doesn't have he's not popping

open his development environment uh with

cursor calling perplexity MCP and then

using cloud code to build a plan to find

the optimal mechanic for his making

model.

>> Okay, understood.

>> Yeah, just to clarify. So, but think

about it like you know if you need your

air conditioner repaired or like you

know uh you have a broken window or

something like that like you're opening

up Google you're finding someone with

good reviews and you're giving them a

call like that's how like 99.9% of this

stuff works right so um I wanted to find

like what are those search terms that

these folks are looking for so um you

know keyword research people can over

complicate it they're like do I need

this tool and that tool and like you

know what variations and volume and all

this stuff do I need to uh discover and

oftentimes to get like analysis

paralysis you know so here's a way that

you can like bypass all of that and this

is the vibe marketing way so open up

chatpt 03 or claude or whatever and just

say hey here's my website here's what

I'm trying to do give me a list of like

25 to 50 keywords that I can optimize my

website around that's all you need to do

really like you know for a local market

especially, you don't need to worry

about like all this different like

volume and uh you know keyword metrics

and competition level and and stuff like

that. I think a lot of people get hung

up on it. So just want to clarify that

all you have to do is ask AI what

keywords you should focus on for your

website. All right. So um I had to kind

of analyze the keywords for uh search

intent and buying stage. And what I mean

by that is um are these folks like

looking for repairs and service like

right now? You know, I wanted to find

out what keywords are are that type

where somebody's willing to like pick up

their phone and and give this company a

call and which ones are just kind of

like looking for information and stuff

like that. So, when you get started,

especially for like a boring business,

you want to tap into uh those search

terms where people are ready to like

pull out their credit card or ready to

have you come out to their site or or

wherever the work is happening. So,

that's what I kind of dialed in on.

Okay. So, uh you can see that here like

uh we we have a few different categories

of search terms that AI gave us. We have

emergency keywords, service keywords,

problem keywords, and local keywords. So

I found that all of these were pretty

high intent and they seem to be good

ones to focus on. Um so the other thing

that you need to think about is uh SEO

is all about really demand and supply. I

mean that's really one simple way to

think about it. Um so demand is what

people are searching for and you can

think of supply as like landing pages on

your website. All right. So for each one

of these search terms that related to a

specific service that the company can do

and any of the locationoriented terms, I

ended up building out dedicated pages

for each and every one of those. We'll

we'll talk about that in a bit when we

get into the uh the vibe coding aspect

of this. So find your keywords, map them

to the intent, and make sure that you

know they just kind of make sense and

don't overthink it. All right. Um, so

the next step is, uh, you know, I

already had this website built out.

We'll talk about how I built that. But

then, uh, I went into a SEO audit. So, I

asked Claude Code, uh, where I built the

site, hey, go through this website in

extreme detail. Ultra think about this.

You can use the ultra think command. So,

it'll spend extra time. use Opus, really

go deep and do sort of some deep

research and find all the technical and

onpage SEO issues and opportunities that

we can fix together so that I can

dominate the local market. So, it went

through it found out, hey, you don't

have these files that help Google

understand what the site is all about.

It's slow to load. uh you can optimize

the speed, you can make it snappier, you

need to include schema markup and some

of these other technical things so that

Google knows exactly what your website

does and then uh once you find them you

can just say fix them.

Um so like you know when you work with

like an agency or something like that

that can take a long time. they have to

get access to your codebase or whatever.

And now there's this beautiful sort of

like power that someone has who can

build the website uh and go and fix all

this stuff on their own uh really

quickly and and make sure it's

optimized. So we identified those

technical issues, we fixed them. So we

did like, you know, robots txt XML

sitemap URL fixes. You don't even have

to know what all of it is to be honest

with you. Just that Claude will find it

and Claude will do it. So you just have

to have that initial initial prompt. Um,

okay. So we did that and then uh we

started to dig into content. So like I

said for each of the locations and each

of the services uh I asked it to go

super super deep into mapping out how we

can outrank all the competition uh on

these individual search terms. So I

don't have a location page that's like

diesel services in Charlotte. I have a

page that goes into local landmarks,

things around Charlotte, common issues

that might affect your truck, uh,

frequently asked questions about, you

know, uh, the industry or whatever.

Like, it was able to reference like,

ooh, there's probably a lot of like

NASCAR type stuff happening in

Charlotte, uh, with trucks and and

shipping because that's where it's based

or whatever. And it included that in,

uh, in this individual location page.

So, I guess I would say like, you know,

typically um if you're in a boring

market, the competitors are not going

super deep and getting all this

information integrated into their site.

It's your opportunity to use AI to do

additional research and, you know, build

out more information that, you know,

search engines or even LLMs will prefer

uh, you know, to to crawl and to to

serve you up versus uh the other other

boring local ones. All right. So um

here's a little thing like a lot of

people you you actually posted about

this yesterday uh Greg about sub agents

in cloud code. So here's a good uh use

case for uh spinning up additional

agents. So um you know let's say that I

wanted to keep working on the website. I

wanted to you know start working on a

blog or something like that but there

was still you know some SEO or whatever

stuff to fix in the background. So I can

just tell cloud code, hey uh launch

three agents, find, you know, missing

alt text or identify pages under uh

certain amount or audit for metad

descriptions. Or you can just say, "Hey

Claude, launch uh launch three different

sub aents. One to, you know, find

content opportunities, one to analyze my

competitors, and one to identify all the

other fixes I should be doing on my

website." So it's as easy as that. And

as you are, you know, working in that

main chat window, Claude will have these

multiple other agents kind of working on

the background to identify uh the other

opportunities and things that you should

update and fix.

>> I'm with you.

>> All right. You with me?

>> I'm with you. I'm

I don't get shocked easily with

but like I'm not I I'm kind of shocked

like at at how simple you're making this

seem.

>> Yes. Yes.

>> Yeah. I mean, you know, like it what

what I've realized lately is like

it it is actually very simple. Like you

could you can just lit just type a

question, spin up a few agents. Like I

think the biggest gap that I see with AI

is people don't know the question to ask

you know that's where the vertical

expertise comes in. So that's really the

gap and it's also the opportunity you

know um so finding out what questions

you should ask is really key and people

don't really spend enough time on that I

think you know they want to get into the

the sexy stuff and start vibe coding and

building stuff but like that there is so

much alpha in just knowing the questions

to ask if I didn't know to ask claude

code about SEO or whatever I wouldn't

have gotten those jobs yesterday and

made thousands of dollars you know so

simply knowing Knowing the questions is

uh is so clutch. Um so yeah once you

know that it becomes pretty pretty

simple. Um so another thing that it

found it was like hey your mobile

website's slow. I was like okay fix

that. So it went in it compressed all

these images. It made it super snappy.

Um and right now when you like you know

search for the site and you pull it up I

mean it's it's super fast. Um so it

shrunk a bunch of files. It converted

all the images to a webp format. It did

all these technical optimizations that

you know for the most part I don't even

know what it is. I have no idea how I

would personally do it manually. And you

know I've got cloud code just you know

building a worldclass machine for me uh

on autopilot essentially. So, it did

that and uh you know after I started to

make some of these changes, I um went

over to Google Page Speed Insights and

this is a free tool anyone can use and

if you go to it um you can type in your

URL and it will give you performance

issues with your website. All right, so

I just put in Diesel Dudes right here.

Mobile still has some things I'm working

on fixing, but the desktop site has an

incredible performance score in terms of

speed uh accessibility SEO.

Basically, this just means it's super

fast. Google knows exactly what this

website does. There's minimal technical

errors, and it loads in a snap. Um, so

here's a little hack for you. Like,

everyone's done a little bit of vibe

debugging at this point. you know,

they've like built something, they found

some errors in the code, they copy and

paste it back over to their agent to go

fix it. You can do the same thing for

this. You take your URL, you plug it in,

you find an error, you go down, you find

the details, you copy and paste this

stuff into cloud code. it knows exactly

what to go fix. Work on getting those

scores up on page speed and that's some

lowhanging fruit. Um, you know, to get

some additional traffic to your website

and outrank your competition. You can

take it a step further. Um, you can get

SEM Rush or whatever. You can do an

audit there. It'll give you a bunch of

other like technical optimizations and

you don't even need to know what it

means. You can just copy and paste it to

Claude. It'll prioritize them. It'll go

into the codebase. It'll fix them. Is it

worth doing that?

>> Um, I think it is here on on this. So,

like especially for like uh for kind of

local rankings, like a lot of the

websites that I kind of looked at that I

was competing against were like old and

and slow and things. And I think that's

one of the reasons why I was able to

rank so quickly. Like this is a pretty

like targeted niche. Uh not a lot of

like, you know, fast and formative

websites. and just with like technical

optimizations,

um, I was able to to climb the rankings

pretty quick.

So, it it depends on the market you're

in. It depends on the the the

competition and the search terms that

you're going after. Like, I think again

like in a in a not very competitive

market, these types of things can make a

big difference. If you're in a very

crowded market with, you know, very

sophisticated websites, like you're in a

a hyperco competitive SAS market, just

optimizing your page speed insights

probably isn't going to, you know, shoot

you to the top.

>> Cool.

>> Yeah. All right. Um, so that was a nice

little hack uh that I that I worked on

and that I found. Um, and uh you know,

the other thing that I did uh you know,

I set up a Google business profile. I

had Claude Code uh kind of go back and

forth between uh that and between the

website to make sure it was like

consistent and there weren't any like

you know uh kind of information that

didn't match up and uh and things of

that nature. Um Cloud Code went in and

it made a bunch of like internal links

on the website. So it um

it linked up like relevant uh location

pages. linked up uh you know relevant uh

services with uh related services and

stuff like that. And these internal

links are are good for your SEO as well.

Cloud code knew what to do. It

discovered it on its own. I didn't need

to tell it to go and you know create

internal linking uh on the website. So

uh what was the result of all this? I

mean, like I said, like if you now if

you go to Google and you say mobile

diesel mechanic Charlotte and uh you

look here, like we're showing up uh in

the maps like right away and uh you

know, we're in the top three organic

results and these some of these

competitive websites and businesses have

been around for you know, 20 years or

something like that.

>> Um y

>> this is crazy, dude.

>> Yeah.

>> Like you know how crazy this is.

>> This is nuts. I mean, that typically

takes people months and months to go and

climb up the rankings and start showing

up for these like

>> high intent keywords.

>> Yeah. And this is

uh this is basically like real estate on

the internet owning owning that space,

right? Cuz you know, while you're

sleeping at night or on autopilot,

you're getting leads.

>> Yeah. Exactly. Like as I said, like my

uh business partner's phone has been,

you know, blowing up. Um

let's see. Let's just look at I don't

know. I'm just kind of seeing. Yeah,

here we are. I77 mobile diesel repair.

So, new website just getting started

already ranking for a bunch of terms and

getting getting phone calls from real

companies who, you know, want their uh

want their trucks fixed and and back on

the road.

incredible. And I know people are going

to you, you know, they're going to

comment and be like, "Yes, you know, SEO

isn't dead now, but in like a few years,

we're going to be on our AI powered

browsers and we're just, you know, just

going to be asking perplexity and chat

GPT questions." And the reality is, and

and let me know if you disagree with me,

James, but the reality is if you do good

SEO,

the LLMs are going to just take some of

the top SEO results and just plug it as

answers.

>> Yeah. Like, uh, you know, LLM or GEO or

whatever the the name of the week is.

Um, I think it is a a big opportunity.

Like I I think that we trust the

recommendations that you know these LLMs

are are giving us and I think the

traffic that people are getting from uh

those recommendations is very high

intent and and very primed to take an

action or whatever. Um but yeah like how

do you show up in in chat GPT or

whatever? The way you show up in chat

GPT is by doing good SEO. There's

there's really like I have not seen

really one uh unique strategy that is

different from just doing good

foundational SEO to go and show up in

LLMs. Um you know like you have to think

in terms of all right uh something needs

to understand what my website's all

about you know so you have to have a

clean technical foundation. uh you have

to have the right like meta tags and

descriptions and you have to have your

keywords kind of naturally uh integrated

into your pages. You have to develop you

know topical authority which is like you

know having relevant information and

signals around the topic that someone's

looking for. Um links are important. So

uh you know that's still relevant.

Google still likes links. LLMs like

links. um they trust websites that other

websites look at and link to. Um so uh

reviews also like um getting good Google

reviews if you're a local business like

that is you you can't really replace

that. There's not a hack to go and do

that's going to replace that kind of

trust signal, you know. So there are

there are small things like that you can

do and have cloud code do your website

like add LLM.txt txt or something which

is just kind of like essentially like an

allow list that's saying let chat GPT

come and and crawl this website and and

stuff like that. But there's not a huge

differentiated

uh you know strategy out there that that

some people know or whatever uh that are

that's hiding from everyone else. It's

like the Midwit meme, right? At the top

of the curve is like

>> do you know all the things, right? All

the GEO things like uh LM.txt,

but like the do just do good SEO, like

foundational SEO is the trick to being

found in LM.

>> That's the trick. And I think that, you

know, again, some people sort of like,

you know, chase a shiny object and then

they forget about what actually matters

for their own business. like for this

company here like ranking high on Google

is way more valuable than going and

showing up in chatpt you know like it it

depends on who the customer is what

they're doing how they find things and

and stuff like that so are browsers

going to change are they going to have

AI yeah for sure but again this is such

an arbitrage opportunity right now that

I think people could you know generate

tons of revenue by going and using

claude code and the latest AI tools to

outrank competitors in like boring

industries and boring markets.

>> Anything else you wanted to cover?

>> Yeah, real quick. Uh two hacks uh that I

just wanted to share. Uh one is, hey,

how were you able to get this site to

look good uh with cloud code or

whatever. So, I had a few people ask me

that on X. So, I had the Figma design

files and I had a designer uh make it

look good in there. So, I think that's

like an important distinction. Like

design and a good brand is very

valuable. Like it's worth, you say this

all the time, like it's worth getting a

designer to like make it look good and

then going and doing a lot of the vibe

coding work. You'll stand out. A lot of

sites look the same now that are vibe

coded. People can kind of tell. So, I

had a designer whip something up in

Figma for me. And then I got this plugin

called Anima. Anda allows you to convert

Figma designs into React components that

Cloud Code can use to assemble and build

your website uh and essentially get, you

know, 95% of the way there with the

design. So, it got me there. I vibed a

little bit, made a few updates and

fixes. Anima is how I did that. The

quick second thing is like, you know,

people uh still seem to wonder like how

do you set up cloud code? How do you set

up your development environment? Stuff

like that. Maybe there's some like

boring local businesses that don't have

a lot of experience in this thing that

you know watch this episode or whatever.

So, uh on your Mac, if you have a Mac,

you have a terminal. Okay? Like you can

search for terminal and then you can

Google or chatbt like you know claude

code install command or how do I install

cloud code? You'll end up getting like

cloud desktop. Um you you can get a

subscription. It's like 20 bucks a month

or something like that. And uh you know

take that command once you're

authenticated on cloud desktop uh throw

it into your terminal. Um all the

packages and the files will install for

cloud code and then you'll just like log

in. It'll open up like you know cloud or

cloud desktop and you'll authorize or

authenticate it and you're good to go.

Once you're there's a few things that

you should do foundationally. One is uh

you should set up GitHub. So, you want

to be able to uh have, you know, control

over each of the versions of of code

that you're pushing and have like a uh a

way to like roll back if you need to or

share those code files or whatever.

Create a repository on GitHub um and ask

Claude Code how you can push push the

the site there and it'll help you with

the steps. And then I use Verscell to

deploy and to host the website. So you

can go to Verscell, you can create an

account, uh you can link up Verscell

with your GitHub repository and every

time you push code updates to GitHub,

it'll automatically update your website

on Verscell for everyone to see. So

that's the process that I used to get my

environment set up as like a

non-technical person.

>> Appreciate the sauce.

>> You got it, man. Uh anytime. Uh

hopefully people find it valuable. just

uh you know uh don't sleep on boring

businesses I guess is uh is the lesson

here

>> you know. Well, one thing is uh you have

a YouTube channel, you have an X

account. We'll include that in the show

notes. Yep. Uh definitely subscribe and

follow. You're just sharing things in

real time.

>> Uh yeah, I'm at Boring Marketer on X.

You can find me on YouTube, the Boring

Marketer. Uh number two is we've got

this community called the vibearketer

community and uh the URL is right here

the vibearketer.com

and uh I wanted to show something. We we

have this new uh members hub that we

launched and uh in here we have over

2500 different inadin workflows that you

can literally plug and play if you want

to automate something in your business.

So, we give you the code, you can take

it and throw it into NAND. Uh, you know,

we've got these broken out for different

use cases. It's fully searchable. If you

want to find something for, you know,

marketing seed keywords, here's a good

example. We talked about seed keywords.

Uh, there's SEO ones, there's social

media ones, whatever, like ready to go.

Um, you can come join the community, get

access to this. We've also started

building out this partner resources uh

for our members where we've got some

awesome like deals and discounts for

people who want to use uh some of the

latest like you know AI workflow tools

and stuff like that. So really starting

to expand the community uh working on

some cool classroom updates right now

and I I really do believe it's the best

place to be for AI and marketing the

intersection of those two things.

>> Cool. Yeah, I'll include I'll include

the links to all those places. So people

can can get deeper and and it's really

just like I always say getting your

hands dirty um you know and and and

testing trying iterating and uh dude I

love having you on. You're the best.

Thanks for sharing the sauce and I'll

see you next time.

>> Thanks for having me, Greg. Talk to you

soon. Later.