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Hermes Agent For SEO: The Quick Start, And Where Hermes Sits In My Agent OS Loop

By Julian Goldie · 12 October 2026 · agentos.guide

Hermes Agent for SEO can read your Search Console data, choose the next keyword, draft from your own material, watch competitors, check internal links and indexing, and send you a weekly report.

Hermes Agent is the free, open-source AI agent from Nous Research, and it runs on your own machine with the model you connect.

I'm Julian Goldie, and I run SEO across my sites with AI agents inside an Agent Operating System.

My biggest SEO pipeline runs there with Claude doing most of the writing and Hermes working alongside it, so I'll tell you which part does what.

What Hermes Agent can do for SEO

Hermes is an agent, so it does jobs with tools and doesn't only answer questions.

Here are the eight SEO jobs I'd hand it, with the command behind each one.

I checked every flag on this page against my own install, which is Hermes v0.21.4.

Hermes should not mass-produce thin pages, and I cover Google's policy on that further down.

Quick start: Hermes Agent for SEO in six steps

This is the shortest route from nothing to a weekly SEO loop.

• First, install Hermes Agent, connect a model with hermes setup and run hermes update.
• Second, verify your site in Google Search Console, which is free.
• Third, export your queries from the Performance report and save the file where Hermes can read it.
• Fourth, teach Hermes your rules with /learn.
• Fifth, schedule one weekly job with hermes cron create.
• Sixth, read the draft yourself before anything goes live.

The first command to try is a one-shot scoring run.

hermes -z "Read ~/seo/gsc-queries.csv. List striking-distance keywords at positions 5 to 20, click-through leaks on page one, and content gaps. Rank each list by impressions."

The second is the weekly job.

hermes cron create "0 7 * * 1" "Read the Search Console data above. Pick the top striking-distance keyword. Draft one post from the newest transcript in ~/transcripts and save it as a draft." --name "Weekly SEO loop" --script gsc_pull.py --skill seo-writer --deliver telegram

The --script flag injects the output of a script in ~/.hermes/scripts/ into the prompt on every run.

The --skill flag attaches your SEO skill, and --deliver sends the result to a target such as Telegram once that platform is connected.

You can check jobs with hermes cron list and stop one with hermes cron pause.

How Hermes Agent for SEO fits my Agent OS workflow

I want to be honest about how I really run this.

My biggest SEO pipeline lives in the SEO tab of my Agent OS, and Claude does most of the writing there.

Hermes runs alongside it and handles the jobs that need to happen on a schedule or need memory.

The Agent OS loop has four layers and a fifth step that feeds it.

You can run the same shape with Hermes alone.

The Agent OS simply puts the whole loop behind one tab.

🔥 Want the exact Hermes Agent for SEO setup I run inside my Agent OS?

Inside the AI Profit Boardroom you get the installable Agent OS, step-by-step video tutorials, four coaching calls a week and 3,400+ members building real automations.

→ Get access here

Keyword research from Search Console

Search Console is the only tool that knows what Google already thinks of your site.

You want three lists from it.

• Striking-distance keywords sit at positions 5 to 20, where one good post can move you to page one.
• Click-through leaks are keywords where you're on page one and almost nobody clicks.
• Content gaps are searches where you get impressions and have no page built for them.

One line from my research run on 22 September 2026 shows why this beats guessing.

The keyword "hermes workspace" had about 37,000 impressions across two of my sites and only 307 clicks.

Both pages were already on page one, so the verdict was to fix the title and not to write a new post.

In an earlier live run, my keyword skill scored 184 real queries in one pass and flagged a page at position 6.3 with no clicks.

In my setup the live pull happens in the Agent OS, and in plain Hermes you bring the export or a script.

A scheduled content pipeline

A scheduled job is a prompt Hermes runs on a timetable.

The weekly job in the quick start is the whole pipeline in one line.

I wrote it to save a draft, because a person should read every page before it is published.

Hermes also has a /goal command, which sets a standing goal the agent works on across turns until it is achieved.

In my Hermes SEO post on aiprofitboardroom.com I show the goal I gave it for a content calendar.

The rule at the top of my own SEO skill is that no transcript means no article.

I record my screen while I do real work, and each recording becomes a text file an agent can read.

In my recorded run, one keyword went from transcript to live, linked, indexed and tracked in about 25 minutes.

Skills for SEO with /learn

A skill is a recipe the agent reads before it starts.

The /learn command reads a document once and turns it into a skill.

/learn ~/Documents/seo-style-guide.pdf

You can point it at a style guide, a writing SOP, a list of banned phrases or past sessions.

It writes a lean index, reference files, a glossary and a cheat sheet.

After that, each question goes from the index to one file to the answer.

The engine's own testing on real books reports 24 to 51 times fewer tokens than pasting the book into the chat.

I tested it on The Art of War in my /learn guide.

Hermes mapped the book onto my own work without being asked, including treating keyword research as scouting.

You should run hermes update first, because book mode only ships in newer builds.

Memory: the vault every agent reads first

An SEO agent with no memory repeats topics and writes generic content.

I use an Obsidian vault, which is a folder of plain notes shared by every agent in the Agent OS.

My vault held 614 notes when I measured it for my Hermes second brain guide.

The agent reads one short "about" page first, then today's notes, then the project pages it needs.

My style rules and banned words sit in the Resources folder, and they are read before anything gets written.

You must hand Hermes the full folder path, because I skipped that once on camera and it built the folders in its own workspace.

For SEO, memory means no duplicate articles and smarter internal links.

Competitor monitoring and the trend radar

Hermes has a monitor mode for scheduled jobs.

hermes cron create "every 6h" "A competitor page changed. Summarise what is new and say whether I should respond." --name "Competitor watch" --monitor-url https://example.com/blog --deliver telegram

The page is fetched on each tick, and the agent only runs when the content has changed.

You should pick a stable page, because a page with a clock on it looks changed every time.

The trend radar is the bigger system.

It is one hermes -z run at 6am that reads live posts on X and returns six stories with a heat score out of 100.

The top stories are pushed to my phone with hermes send.

Only xAI models carry the live X search tool, so I pin that run with --provider xai-oauth --model grok-4.

One morning I compared the ranked list with my own picks, and the two stories I chose sat at number two and number three.

The full history is in my Hermes Oracle AI guide.

Internal linking

Every new article in my pipeline links to two to four older posts on the same site.

Before it writes, the skill scans every existing post, so Google sees depth on one topic.

You can give Hermes the same job.

hermes -z "List every post in ~/site/posts. For the draft at ~/site/drafts/new-post.md, suggest four internal links with natural anchor text."

My pipeline also goes back to three to five older posts and adds a small "latest updates" block that points at the new page.

That gives the new page links on day one, and it refreshes the old ones.

That part runs on Claude, and it is covered in my Claude AI SEO guide.

🔥 Want the exact Hermes Agent for SEO setup I run inside my Agent OS?

Inside the AI Profit Boardroom you get the installable Agent OS, step-by-step video tutorials, four coaching calls a week and 3,400+ members building real automations.

→ Get access here

Indexing

A page that isn't indexed can't rank.

Google gives two routes in its recrawl documentation, which are the URL Inspection tool for a few URLs and a sitemap for many.

Google also says a crawl can take from a few days to a few weeks, and a request doesn't guarantee inclusion.

My pipeline submits each new URL to an indexing service the moment it is live.

Then Hermes watches the result.

/loop 10m check whether the new pages are indexed --until all six are indexed

If you leave out the interval, Hermes paces itself, as I explain in my /loop guide.

Reporting

Reporting is the easiest SEO job to hand over.

hermes cron create "0 8 * * 1" "Compare this week with last week. Report clicks, impressions, the three biggest movers and the next keyword, in ten lines." --name "Monday SEO report" --script gsc_pull.py --deliver telegram --continuity

The --continuity flag lets each run see its own previous output, so the report builds on last week.

You can pin a cheap model to this job with --model.

The receipts, and which part produced them

Every number here is from one of my own guides.

Most of these come from the whole Agent OS, and Hermes is one part of it.

They are my results on my sites, and yours will depend on your niche and your links.

What Hermes Agent should not do for SEO

Hermes should not mass-produce thin pages.

Google's spam policies name this as scaled content abuse.

The policy covers many pages generated mainly to manipulate rankings and not to help users, "no matter how it's created".

Google's own examples include using generative AI tools to generate many pages without adding value.

That is why my rule is no transcript, no article, and why a person reads every draft.

Hermes also can't earn real backlinks.

In my Hermes SEO post I compare sites in one niche with the same content setup, and the one with active link building is the one that grew.

Hermes can plan the strategy, build a prospect list and draft outreach, but people build the relationships.

Which model to run Hermes Agent on for SEO

Hermes doesn't ship with a model, so you choose one in hermes setup.

You can pin a model to one scheduled job with --model and --provider, so the cheap jobs stay cheap.

MissingNo is a free stealth model that Nous Research currently offers on its portal.

In my tests it was fast at agentic tool calls, although a coding task was slower and not frontier level.

You can also run Claude inside Hermes, which I cover in my Hermes and Claude subscription guide.

Where to go next

You can learn the seven modules behind this workflow on my AI SEO training page.

You can see where SEO sits among the other jobs in the best Hermes Agent use cases.

You can read who I am and how I got into SEO on the Julian Goldie SEO page.

If you want the loop installed and ready, it lives inside the AI Profit Boardroom.

FAQ

Can Hermes Agent do SEO?

Yes. Hermes Agent can read Search Console data, score keywords, draft posts from your own material, suggest internal links, watch competitor pages, check indexing and send scheduled reports. It should not mass-produce thin pages, and it cannot earn real backlinks.

How does Hermes Agent fit into an Agent OS for SEO?

In Julian Goldie's Agent OS the SEO tab reads Search Console, scores keywords, writes from a transcript and deploys. Claude does most of the writing, and Hermes handles scheduled jobs, the 6am trend radar, the memory vault and skills built with /learn.

How do I schedule an SEO job in Hermes Agent?

Use hermes cron create with a schedule and a prompt. The --script flag feeds data into the prompt, --skill attaches your SEO rules and --deliver sends the result to a target such as Telegram.

Can Hermes Agent monitor competitors?

Yes. A scheduled job with the --monitor-url flag fetches a page on each tick and only runs the agent when the content has changed. A separate scheduled run can scan X for trending stories when it is pinned to an xAI model.

Which model is best for Hermes Agent SEO work?

Use a strong model such as Claude for writing, an xAI model for the trend radar because it carries live X search, and a free or local model for reports and link checks.

Does Google penalise AI content made with Hermes Agent?

Google says it focuses on content quality rather than how content is produced. Its spam policies penalise scaled content abuse, which means generating many pages to manipulate rankings without helping users, however they are created.

Final word on Hermes Agent for SEO

Connect Search Console, teach one skill, schedule one weekly job and read every draft, and you'll have a working loop with Hermes Agent for SEO.

Related guides on agentos.guide

→ Claude AI SEO: Rank #1 Fast

→ The Infinite Ranking Engine

→ Hermes Oracle AI: the trend machine that publishes before the wave

→ AI SEO Training

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