technique

Introduction to Python for SEO

Python is a powerful tool for technical SEO — from automation to data analysis and natural language processing. Discover the key libraries and use cases for SEO professionals.

Published on Reading 4 min By Stan De Jesus Oliveira
Définition de Introduction de Python pour le SEO

The Python programming language is at the heart of technical SEO workflows. It enables SEO automation, data analysis and much more.

Given that Google is a machine that relies heavily on artificial intelligence and machine learning, Python development allows you to simulate similar processes and build better SEO strategies.

Data Engineers primarily use Python to develop their algorithms. But even before neural networks, Google used Python from the very early days of their search engine — for example, to power their web crawlers.

Python SEO Libraries

One of the many reasons Python is so appreciated is its rich ecosystem of libraries.

If you’re unfamiliar with what a programming library is: it’s simply pre-written code. A developer can use these ready-made functions without having to rewrite them from scratch. For beginners, it’s a huge advantage — when you don’t know how to do something technical but want to try anyway, libraries make it accessible.

For an SEO professional, here’s what Python libraries can help with:

  • Data extraction.
  • Data analysis and preparation.
  • Scientific computation.
  • Natural language processing.
  • Machine learning.
  • Crawling and indexation.
  • …

In organic SEO, the libraries that will be most useful are:

  • Pandas: Used for data manipulation and analysis.
  • NumPy: Used for scientific computing.
  • SciPy: Used for scientific and technical computing.
  • SciKit Learn: Machine learning for data exploration and analysis.
  • SpaCy: A powerful natural language processing library.
  • Requests: A library for making HTTP requests.
  • Beautiful Soup: Used for extracting data from HTML and XML files.
  • Matplotlib: For creating visualizations from data.

What You Can Do with Python for SEO

Here are some key things you can do with Python that we will cover on this blog:

  • URL mapping before a site migration.
  • Image optimization (web performance and automatic alt tag generation).
  • Content optimization (semantics and entities, vector spaces, statistics).
  • TF*IDF analysis.
  • N-gram analysis.
  • Predictive SEO.
  • Internal link analysis.
  • Indexation & crawl.
  • Machine learning.
  • Pulling keywords from Google Search Console for optimization.
  • …

The best way to integrate Python into your workflow is to start thinking about what can be automated — particularly tedious, time-consuming tasks like filling in image alt tags.

Another reason Python is an excellent way to level up is through data analysis and processing, which allows you to draw more meaningful conclusions about what to do, change or optimize.

Resources to Learn Python for SEO

There are many resources available — mostly in English — where you can learn what you want to do with Python for SEO.

Here are the main ones:

advertools — Elias Dabbas:

advertools is both an information source and a Python package for SEO professionals

advertools is both an information source and a Python package for SEO professionals.

SEO_Pythonistas:

SEO_Pythonistas is a site bringing together authors writing about SEO with Python

Some authors worth following, particularly on Twitter or LinkedIn:

  • Moshe Ma-yafit
  • Lazarina Stoy
  • Francis Angelo Reyes
  • Yaniss Illoul
  • Danielle Rohe
  • Muhammad Hammad
  • Charley Warginer