SEO for indie hackers, from the assistant you already use

The problems at this size

Most indie projects have the same few search problems. A new site has pages that Google has not indexed yet. A launch brings a spike, then traffic settles and you cannot tell which pages still earn clicks. A handful of queries sit on page two, where a small edit could matter more than a new article. And because you run several projects, checking each one in the Search Console web interface becomes a chore you skip.

What to ask, and which tool answers

• Is anything working? gsc_performance_overview returns clicks, impressions, CTR and average position for the last N days, with the daily trend.
• What is close to page one? insights_striking_distance lists queries whose average position is 11-20, sorted by impressions. See striking distance keywords.
• Did Google index my new pages? insights_index_audit inspects a sitemap or a list of URLs and reports the ones Google has not indexed. See the index coverage audit.
• What did the launch change? insights_compare_periods puts two date ranges side by side by query, page, country or device. See compare date ranges.

Publish, then tell the search engines

After you ship new pages, gsc_submit_sitemap resubmits your sitemap to Google. indexnow_submit tells Bing, Yandex and the other IndexNow engines about the added or changed URLs in one call; Google does not take part in IndexNow. Your site has to host a key file once, and the IndexNow setup guide shows how. Both are write actions, so your assistant asks before running them.

Ask from where you code

If you build in Cursor, VS Code with GitHub Copilot, Claude Code or Codex, add mowteng there and ask about search data next to the code that renders the pages. There is no Google Cloud project to create, no API key and nothing to install: you add one URL and sign in with Google. If a site is brand new, add and verify it in Search Console first so there is data to read.

A routine that fits a busy week

For a small site, once a week is enough. The 10-minute weekly SEO check walks through the same questions in order: totals, pages that lost clicks, queries near page one and anything not indexed. Keep the questions in a note and paste them each week.

Price

mowteng has a 7-day free trial with no credit card. It starts when you first connect mowteng to an assistant, and when it ends the tools stop until you subscribe; nothing is charged automatically. After that it is $9 per month or $90 per year, and you can cancel any time from the account page. Details are on trial, subscription and billing.