The Seotistics newsletter is written by Marco Giordano, a Data/Web Analyst with the goal of combining business and web data. Tired of the usual boring Analytics content without any business impact? Seotistics teaches you how to use Analytics, web data and even content in your workflow while helping you with Strategy.
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The Seotistics Guide To Claude Code
Published 1 day agoΒ β’Β 6 min read
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Use Data Or Be Used By Data!
The March 30 issue of Seotistics is here for you!
Claude Code is the absolute GOAT and today I will show you how to actually use it.
Or well, what you need to start and avoid writing random prompts.
If you are half-serious about Web Analytics, you can NOT skip Claude Code.
AI is the divider: forget about learning GA4/GTM and call it a day.
This issue will introduce you to the key concepts that we will cover deeply in the upcoming weeks.
Please move this email to your Primary inbox or reply to it. This is to prevent Seotistics goes into spam by accident. Gmail users can read this tutorial to do it.
This will be for Analysts or everyone wanting to explore Web Data in general, not only SEO.
The course is split in 4 amazing modules: β β GA4, GSC and other data sources: how to use them β LLM Workflows, BigQuery, SQL & Python β Dataform & Pipelines β Real Use Cases at work
So yeah, the actual interface is your terminal like in those cool movies where hackers type random commands.
The thing is, this can be tough for beginners but even if you spend hours on Claude Code.
What do I say to my readers?
β Analytics is asking the right questions and what's better proof than LLMs? β You need the right direction and questions as a human being.
What you can ask isn't infinite as we will see and using LLMs consumes tokens.
Where To Run Claude Code
While the basic Terminal is powerful, the UX is terrible and you may want to use an alternative app.
One that I tested recently is cmux, only available for macOS as of writing.
It also allows you to browse the web and have multiple tabs open together or even workspaces.
For actual projects, e.g. you need to create a small app to ingest data from BigQuery and analyze it, use your IDE.
An IDE is an Integrated Development Environment, aka a set of tools and features to help you code.
Like having a code editor, features for debugging, etc.
Maybe you have heard of Cursor and Antigravity... those are IDEs!
You can run Terminal instances inside them and ask Claude Code to analyze your files.
Terminal instance inside Antigravity.
Otherwise, you can just use the dedicated Claude Code plugin:
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Real Use Cases
The most straightforward use cases involve coding and technical documentation.
What many get wrong is that they look for magic prompts... they don't exist.
The real value lies in chatting with Claude Code... so in the back and forth!
Despite the name, Claude Code isn't only good for coding and technical tasks...
in fact it's criminally undersold by Anthropic!
You can and should use it for Content Marketing as well.
My most dear readers should already know I am not fond of writing content with LLMs...
because in most cases the text feels fake and easy to detect.
It's actually good advice... then it's on me to prioritize and see what's actually worthy. But some of this stuff I already have as WIP π
Once you get some output like the picture above, you KEEP ASKING.
Ask and ask, dig deeper.
But what about content ideation, distribution and repurposing?
That's another story!
OK... But The Context?
Claude Code is nothing special WITHOUT the context of your work
Context is what Claude can see and process in a conversation. β It's a sliding window, meaning that after too much info is given, Claude will forget some information!
I also shared an advanced use case with Obsidian for personal uses.
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You can store your information inside it and ask Claude Code to retrieve the information.
This is much more efficient and practical than submitting every time the info you want to provide.
This is excellent for content and for storing your own code.
One of the best things a professional can do is documenting their own work.
It's not that common as you imagine and it's a super important activity actually. π
Obsidian is ideal for personal content, not for entire companies, though.
And The Memory...
When we say memory, we refer to 2 concepts:
CLAUDE.md, a file containing persistent instructions (you write it)
auto memory, aka Claude updating itself after each session
Every new session starts with fresh context but Claude will use these 2 above to adjust itself.
For example, I explicitly wrote in CLAUDE.md not to write with em dashes and AI syntax.
Memory is information that Claude retains across sessions.
Thinking Hard
Claude Code does support specific keywords to handle tasks differently.
Yes, you can type "think", "think hard", "think harder" and "ultrathink" to alter its behavior.
Sample prompt: ultrathink about a potential content strategy based on the content of my vault.
Your prompt should simply include those keywords, nothing fancy.
The Agents
You may have heard of this buzzword on LinkedIn... well, it's actually not!
An agent is nothing more than a parallel instance of Claude Code.
And even a simple command like the one below works:
Create 5 agents to process my content folder and then summarize your findings inside example.md. Each agent should do X, Y and Z.
The only caveat is that they are independent processes, namely they can't communicate with each other.
Still, they are great for clearing tasks faster or handling topic research.
The next step is to make them permanent, aka you create an instruction file detailing everything.
These are your custom subagents.
Type the /agents command inside Claude Code and be guided to create one.
Once again, they have their own context and memory!
So each subagent is used to protect your main conversation and runs in a silo.
MCPs
I've spent too many words on them previously π
They act as connectors between LLMs and other software, for example Obsidian.
I won't recommend them for data analysis because:
they waste tokens
the results are not reproducible from time to time
it's lazy work (why even pay you then?)
In all the other cases they do an amazing job or can save you hours of work.
In the end, they are simply connectors.
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So far my favorite MCPs are:
WordPress MCP Server (underrated as I don't know what)
Obsidian MCP
qmd MCP (essentially created it)
Skills
One of the most relevant things you can learn is Skills.
Learn is an overstatement considering you are writing a .md file, once again. π
You specify your instructions for a given task that Claude can handle.
If you want a more reliable and standardized output, you need to employ Skills.
The example below is from Claude UI:
Created one for qmd, please reference my resources at the bottom to learn more about qmd.
But you can also do it from Claude Code, uh.
The Anti-Hype Advice
This issue wasn't crafted to show you how cool you can be with Claude Code.
The important is that you solve issues and get value out of machines, no matter how.
If you feel more comfortable with the Desktop app or Cowork, go for it!
Most of the use cases you need in Web Analytics are trivial compared to real Engineering.
And yet, it doesn't matter to the business, if the results don't come.
Which is once again why you learn the basics, practice and take what you need.
You are still better off than before and Claude Code is certainly better than many of us for specific tasks!
In the next issue I will keep going down the rabbit hole with some of the topics I mentioned here.
No space left folks!
π₯ Join Our Community
Our Discord community offers a small place where we can talk business and web data.
If you hate all the noise of social media, then this place is for you.
I will start posting more there as we have a forum channel now.
This is the best way to stay updated in real time on Seotistics:
The Seotistics newsletter is written by Marco Giordano, a Data/Web Analyst with the goal of combining business and web data. Tired of the usual boring Analytics content without any business impact? Seotistics teaches you how to use Analytics, web data and even content in your workflow while helping you with Strategy.
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