How Python Programming Can Boost Your Technical SEO
What is Python?
Python was first released way back in 1991 and is a high level, general-purpose programming language. It is remarkably easy to use and simple to read making it a favourite with many developers. Your Python programmer may use the software for repetitive tasks as well as websites and web based apps.It is still one of the top 10 languages in use today and for many good reasons. In addition to how easy it is to read and debug, it also supports the use of modules and packages. This allows you to reuse code and simply plug in one of the many modules that are freely out there to do tasks that have already been programmed. Having been around so long there is an extensive library that you can use.
The SEO industry has become more and more interested in the use of Python in recent years. Many are looking for a Python programmer for hire to help them with automating many of the tasks that they need doing to improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for their sites.
Why Is Python Being Used for SEO?
Search Engine Optimization is a vital skill for any website owner or builder. Understanding how a website is ranked within the search engines can help you to ensure that your site will appear highly in the rankings rather than disappearing into obscurity.Search engines such as Google use hundreds of different signals about your site to decide how relevant you are to a particular search term and where to place you in the rankings. Ideally you will want to ensure that your site will appear top of those rankings whenever anyone types in the search phrases or keywords that you wish to rank the site for.
Many of the things that need to be done within a site to improve your ranking come under basic On-Page SEO. These are often highly repetitive tasks that lend themselves to programing within Python. Analysis of your own site and also evaluation of competitors against your own are also tasks that will lend themselves to simple programming by any decent Python developer.
SEO professionals often buy highly expensive suites of programs to help them to ensure that their sites will rank highly. However, you will find that there are already many Python modules out there that can be used or integrated to provide you with the help that you need. A Python developer salary will often be saved quickly if you hire one to do what you need, compared to buying some of these programs that often come with expensive monthly payments to use. You can use python for automation of many of these tasks.
How Can Python Boost Your Technical SEO?
If you want your developer to earn their python programmer salary they need to understand SEO and how they can contribute to your ranking improvements. A good Python programmer will be able to use available modules as well as to write code to undertake specific SEO actions according to your needs.The following are some of the many areas where Python lends itself to aiding in your quest to improve your SEO:
- Link Checking: links within your site as well as to other sites external to your own can be an important ranking signal. Having broken links can negatively affect a page or even the whole site if there are many of them. Using Python you will be able to quickly detect the links that you need to correct.
- Optimizing meta tags: these are snippets of information about your page that are held within the source code of the page rather than on the actual page itself. They provide information to the search engine so that it can understand what your page is all about. Get this information wrong or missing it entirely can have a significant negative impact on your rankings. This is another area where Python can be quickly used to make corrections to your site.
- ALT tag and image optimization: the tags and captions that accompany your images can also significantly boost your rankings. Python can help you to review existing images to ensure that the tags exist and you can even use it to write descriptive tags automatically. Not only that, you can use Python to resize your images. Large images take time to load and if they are too big they can negatively impact your rankings due to page load speed.
- Understanding Keyword rankings: there are modules that you can use to help you to identify where you sit within the rankings for a whole range of keywords. These modules are used by Google to provide trend information. This can help you to understand where you rank for certain keywords allowing you to target them better.
- Gathering Analytics information: there is a huge amount of information that you can find out about your site through Google webmaster’s tools. However, by using the many Python scripts that are out there you can set up your own customized analysis. The software can even provide you with effective visualization of that data.
- Speed optimization: another factor that can affect your ranking is how fast each page is able to load within the browser. Too slow and you are not going to gain the rankings that you are looking for. Python can put each of your pages through the speed insights tool in Google to get you the information that you need.
- SEO analysis: there are also scripts out there that will do a full analysis of your site to highlight where you need to focus your attention to improve your SEO. Free to use they will be able to provide you with as much information as many of the highly expensive tools that you will find.
- Curation of content: being able to curate relevant information for your site can be a time-consuming task. By using the power of Python you will be able to identify and use content that will correctly satisfy the search strings that you use.