The Rise of DIY SEO: How AI Makes Building Your Own SEO Tools Easier Than Ever

The Rise of DIY SEO: How AI Makes Building Your Own Tools Easier Than Ever

Tired of expensive SEO tools that don’t quite fit your needs?

In this talk, Hans van Gent shows how AI and no-code platforms are changing the game for SEO professionals.

Learn how to build your own lightweight, customized SEO tools without being a developer — and without breaking the bank.

You'll discover:

✅ Why traditional SEO tools fall short for many in-house needs
✅ How AI-powered coding assistants (like Cursor and Windsurf) make “vibe coding” possible
✅ How to automate repetitive SEO tasks with n8n and NocoDB
✅ How side-project tools can help you attract backlinks and grow your brand
✅ Real-world example, like the Sprout SEO extension, built from a weekend idea to a production-ready tool
✅ “14 things you can do in under 3 seconds (and save HOURS a week)”

Whether you're a technical SEO, content strategist, or just curious about AI’s potential in search, this talk will inspire you to start building your own tools — no permission required.

Transcript

1. The Rise of DIY SEO : How AI Makes Building Your Own Tools Easier Than Ever By Hans van Gent
3. Big SEO tools are great… until they aren ’ t.
4. SEO tools are expensive and don ’ t always do exactly what we need.
5. But what if I told you… you can build your own?
6. Two big reasons to start building your own SEO tools
7. Automate repetitive SEO tasks ✅ If you do something multiple times per week or month, automate it. ✅ Stop wasting time on manual internal linking, data extraction, and reporting. ✅ AI + no-code tools (like n8n & NocoDB) make automation stupidly easy. #1
8. Automate repetitive SEO tasks ✅ If you do something multiple times per week or month, automate it. ✅ Stop wasting time on manual internal linking, data extraction, and reporting. ✅ AI + no-code tools (like n8n & NocoDB) make automation stupidly easy. #1
9. Build tools for marketing & backlinks ✅ Tools = content + backlinks. ✅ Create something useful → People link to it, share it, and talk about it. #2
10. It turns out 95 percent of people don't like being interrupted and the other 5 percent hate it. "We hate advertising so much, we've trained ourselves not to look at the top or right sidebar on most sites," Jeffrey put it recently. "Of course, people have been blocking ads forever. By ignoring them," added Godin, suggesting once again that the best way to contact your users is by Source: https://medium.com/swlh/side-product-marketing-is-the-new-king-a75c4ed0c0c5
11. "Give something valuable away in order to sell something related."
12. Build tools for marketing & backlinks ✅ Tools = content + backlinks. ✅ Create something useful → People link to it, share it, and talk about it. #2
13. Automate repetitive SEO tasks #1
14. What ’ s one (small) SEO task you wish could be automated?
15. Automate & optimize: n8n and NocoDB in action
16. ✅ Keyword research using DataForSEO ✅ Content creation ✅ Research ✅ Social media content There’s nothing you can’t automate with n8n. What to use N8N for? Source: https://n8n.io/workflows/
17. If you do something more than once per week….automate it
19. You can run N8N for free on Google Cloud, or on your NAS, together with other tools like NocoDB (database), Crawl4AI, etc. You can host it yourself!
20. I ’ m running it on my Synology at home
21. Build tools for marketing & backlinks #2
22. Who has ever thought, ‘I wish this SEO tool did X ’ ?
24. Common pain points SEO pros face with existing tools ✅ Too expensive.
25. Common pain points SEO pros face with existing tools ✅ Too expensive. ✅ Missing specific features.
26. Common pain points SEO pros face with existing tools ✅ Too expensive. ✅ Missing specific features. ✅ No customization for niche needs.
27. Using keyword research to find tool ideas
28. Example: High search volume for “AI SEO tools" → Build an automation for that. Tie this back to side-product marketing: "If a lot of people search for a solution, why not build it yourself?" Look for recurring pain points in keyword research.
29. It used to be that you need a computer science degree or a developer…
30. …the shift: AI & vibe coding are changing the game
31. The shift: AI & vibe coding are changing the game Source: https://x.com/karpathy/status/1886192184808149383
32. The shift: AI & vibe coding are changing the game Source: https://x.com/deedydas/status/1895511784792203667
33. The shift: AI & vibe coding are changing the game Source: https://www.404media.co/this-game-created-by-ai-vibe-coding-makes-50-000-a-month-yours-probably-wont/
34. The problem? Garbage in, garbage out
35. So how to “vibe code ” ?
36. For example, you might say, “Create a simple Chrome Extension that allows me to open my current page in the Rich Result tester.” This description (called a prompt) is given to an AI coding assistant. You describe what you want Link: https://www.codeguide.dev/
37. The AI, which has been trained in vast amounts of programming knowledge, will attempt to produce code that fulfills your request. Essentially, the AI acts like an autocomplete on steroids, predicting the code that matches your description. The AI generates code Link: https://bolt.new/
38. After the AI provides some code, you (the human) check it. Does the extension work? Maybe the AI’s first attempt has issues or isn’t quite what you envisioned. You then tell the AI what to change or fix. For instance, “The page looks too plain. Make the design more colorful and add error handling if the city is not found.” The AI will take this feedback and modify the code accordingly. You review and refine
39. This cycle continues — describe changes, get new code, test it out — until you’re satisfied with the result. Because the AI can produce a lot of code quickly, you might go through multiple iterations in a short time. Iterate as needed
40. What tools to use? Cursor Windsurf Github Coilot Lovable Bolt v0 CodeGuide
41. Start vibe coding
42. Real-world example: Proof that this works
43. things you can do in under 3 seconds (and save HOURS a week) Sprout SEO Extension 14 Speed up your daily SEO routine. Get one-click insights on any page you're on, straight from your Browser
44. Technical SEO can feel a bit like…
45. #1 See all main page information at a glance ✅ Title tag ✅ Meta description ✅ Canonical URL ✅ Meta robots ✅ Core Web Vitals ✅ Word count on the page ✅ Heading structure ✅ hreflang issues ✅ ….
46. #2 Export page copy in 1 click You can then use it for further analysis (or feed it to ChatGPT 😉) Super simple!
47. #3 Instantly check Core Web Vitals metrics for a page The Sprout SEO extension shows the Core Web Vitals on-page and in the SERP: LCP (largest contentful paint) INP (Interaction to Next Paint) CLS (cumulative layout shift)
48. #4 Quickly spot indexing and canonicalization issues Sprout SEO will show you: If meta-robots is set to ‘noindex’ Canonical is different from the page URL
49. #5 Easily analyze the headings hierarchy ✅ See how many H1s on the page ✅ Spot any heading opportunities your competitors are using. 💡 Export all the headings found on a page in a CSV with just 1 click!
50. Instantly check the page HTTP response. 💪 Pro tip: You can also check if the most common duplicates – like http/https and www/non-www – are handled properly on the website you’re analyzing. #6 See status codes and redirect chains at a glance
51. ✅ Internal links ✅ External links ✅ Anchor text for each of these links 💪 Pro tip: Export the links and their anchor text for further analysis AND you can also right click on any page to highlight all links AND their status code. #7 Get the number of links on a page, their type and anchor text
52. #8 Highlight nofollow and other links on a page The Sprout SEO extension lets easily hightlight all internal or external links on a page, and see which ones have a Query String, are No Follow, are Blocked by Robots, etc.
53. #9 Spot images with missing Alt tags, Title tags, and explicit dimensions On the Images tab, you can easily see the alt tags of the images on a page. It will help you quickly spot the images that are missing alt tags. 💪 Pro tip: Export all images along with their dimensions in a CSV in 1 click for further analysis
54. #10 See what a page preview will look like when shared on social media and Reddit! No need to look for Open graph tags in the source code anymore! The Sprout SEO extension will show you the preview image, website, title and description of any page so that you can make sure it looks great when you share it online. It will also check if the current URL has been submitted on Reddit, so you can easily submit the link yourself or join an existing discussion.
55. #11 Check schema markup Sprout SEO extension makes it easy for you to check all types of Schema markup so that you don’t need to open the Rich Snippets tool and wait minutes for it to show the results. You can also easily download all existing schema from a page in JSON format so you can build your own templates based on the success of your competitors.
56. #12 Your Right > Click menu, supercharged for speed ✅ Test schema markup in the rich result tester or schema.org ✅ Highlight internal or external links ✅ Test your current page in the most popular speed test tools. ✅ Remove breadcrumbs gives you back the full URL of the page you're trying to visit. ✅ Open your current page (or site) in Ahrefs, Moz, Majestic, Archive.org, SimilarWeb, SEMRush and more.
57. #13 Enhance your SERP experience ✅ See live 'Google Trends' data straight in the SERP ✅ Simulate a different search location for debugging “near me” searches ✅ See a correlation between web vitals and rankings ✅ Extract 'People Also Asked' from search results in one click.
58. With dozens more features, like… ✅ Quick link to the sitemap (sitemap.xml) file on any site. ✅ Fix faulty redirects post-migration with our archive.org CSV download feature, saving you hours of troubleshooting ✅ Get bulk Google Trends data and graphs Download now
59. 🧠 Got an idea? Prompt it. 🛠 Got a task? Automate it. 🚀 Got a tool? Ship it. 💬 “The best way to learn is to build. The best time to start is now.” Remember: You don ’ t need permission to build
60. 💬 Find me on LinkedIn @jcvangent, or just come say hi after! (PS – If you want to beta test the new Sprout SEO site audit features, come talk to me! ) 👉 Go out and build something today.