Overall SEO of the site means following the tips and standards that search engines specify for websites and pages. Part of these standards refers to the structure of the website and its speed (technical SEO) and the other part to On page and Off page SEO. Of course, research and analysis of the main site and competitors should also be included in the SEO of the site. All these can be difficult and complicated tasks. With the help of Python, some of these difficulties and complications are reduced.
How does Python help improve SEO? Why should a high-level programming language help SEO? Isn’t Python the language used in machine learning and deep learning? If so, what does it have to do with SEO?
Yes, it is related; A lot too! Python is a special language and an important language. You can do many things with Python. Python makes things simple and fast. Google itself uses Python. The first Google crawler was written in this language. Also, one of Google’s server-side languages is Python. When Google is also interested in Python, the SEO expert should definitely not ignore it.
This article was written to answer the above questions and clarify the connection between Python and SEO.
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Using Python to improve SEO
Before we get to the point, we need to know more about Python. So first we have to answer the question, what is Python?
Python is a high-level, object-oriented, open source, and interpreted programming language that has simple and dynamic commands and codes. Python programming language is much simpler than other programming languages.
This simple language has many features. With this language, you can easily create web applications. Because there are strong and different frameworks for this language. Software can also be made with Python. Simplifying complex scientific and statistical calculations and data analysis, as well as visualization (that is, it delivers data to you in the form of a table, graph or color chart) are other features of this language. Python has incredibly powerful libraries that can be used for data mining and machine learning.
Now we have to answer the question, what does Python and its power and facilities help SEO site?
Python helps SEO experts in several ways and makes them stronger. An SEO expert with Python not only automates repetitive tasks, but also can extract and analyze large amounts of data.
An SEO expert deals a lot with research and data analysis. Many of the decisions it has to make are data-driven. Therefore, the more accurate information and statistics the SEO expert has; He can make a better and more correct decision. So, the first benefit of Python for SEO is to automate repetitive and common and time-consuming tasks in SEO, and the second is to help collect and analyze data.
1. SEO automation with Python
With Python codes, it is possible to divide the site into sections and categories with a specific value (attribute) and ask it to rotate (crawl) in the site (even in its database and HTML files) at certain time intervals, for example, daily, weekly or monthly. And see if all those sections or categories have that feature or not. In fact, Python is used in SEO automation to extract different data from the site.
For example, you can ask Python to see if all pages on the site are correct based on their address. That is, if a page has a different address or there is a problem in its URL, show it. It may be asked to deliver the result visually (table). This is where Python libraries come in handy for SEO experts. (At the end of this article, useful Python libraries for SEO are introduced.)
The following SEO site tasks can be automated with Python code snippets:
Controlling redirects and URLs
The old site may be moved to the new site. In this case, the address of all the pages of the site must be changed. How to make sure all pages are redirected correctly? Python codes can be used to check all pages before and after being redirected. The code may be written to deliver the result in tabular (visualized) form.
Analyzing internal links
If you want to know which part of your site has the most links, you can easily find it with Python. It is possible to create a table like the one below for you to understand the status of each part of the site in terms of internal linking.
Indexing review
One of the most important topics in SEO is the indexing of pages and the time it takes for pages to be indexed. It is possible to find out how long it takes to index pages using Python code snippets. And it also reached the average indexing time of the site. If this period of time is long, the SEO expert needs to do something.
Check site errors
Python codes can be used to crawl the entire site (site map) and find pages that have errors (400 and 500). Then he gave the result to the technical team to fix the errors.
2. Machine learning with Python in SEO site
As mentioned, Python is used for machine learning. In machine learning, with the help of artificial intelligence, you teach the machine to find and understand patterns and expand its knowledge. As a result, the machine can perform tasks or achieve results for which it was not programmed.
With the help of Python and tools and programs that are special for building machine learning models, the behavior of the user on the site and the type of interaction can be predicted. That is, by using the behavior pattern of the user in his previous visits to the site, it is possible to guess which content the user will go to. On the same basis, the SEO expert has the opportunity to improve the content of the site and the user experience of the site and coordinate it with the desire of the users. In addition, machine learning, sometimes combined with automation, helps improve on-page SEO and content creation in the following cases:
Writing page titles and alt imgs
With Python, the SEO expert does not need to write title pages or alternative text for individual photos. Python itself can suggest a title page or use deep learning to read the image and write the image description. (Of course, this case is a combination of automation and machine learning.)
Building models to improve content quality
With the help of Python, the SEO expert can build a model that first teaches it the main factors of good content from the point of view of Google and the user. Then this model evaluates each content based on those factors and gives it a score. This model may even give suggestions to improve the quality of the content.
Improve internal links
In terms of improving internal links, machine learning and Python can help SEO experts and site content producers a lot. The model designed based on big data can suggest the best and most relevant internal links when content is written. He may check the internal links in different contents and if he thinks the content is more relevant and appropriate, he will suggest it. The model may even be asked to replace the previous link with a better internal link.
Useful Python libraries for SEO
As I mentioned earlier, the power of Python lies in its libraries. Some of these libraries are very useful and important for data analysis and SEO automation. These libraries and their applications include:
- Pandas: Used for data manipulation and data analysis.
- NumPy: Used for scientific computing.
- Requests: It is used for HTTP requests.
- Beautiful Soup: Used to extract data from HTML and XML files.
- SciKit Learn: Used for machine learning to extract and analyze data.
- Matplotlib: Used for data visualization.