Data-Driven SEO with Python: Solve SEO Challenges with Data Science Using Python

Cover....1 Title Page....2 Copyright....3 Table of Contents....5 About the Author....13 About the Contributing Editor....14 About the Technical Reviewer....15 Acknowledgments....16 Why I Wrote This Book....17 Foreword....21 Chapter 1: Introduction....23 The Inexact (Data) Science of SEO....23 Noisy Feedback Loop....23 Diminishing Value of the Channel....24 Making Ads Look More like Organic Listings....24 Lack of Sample Data....24 Things That Can’t Be Measured....25 High Costs....26 Why You Should Turn to Data Science for SEO....26 SEO Is Data Rich....26 SEO Is Automatable....27 Data Science Is Cheap....27 Summary....27 Chapter 2: Keyword Research....28 Data Sources....28 Google Search Console (GSC)....29 Import, Clean, and Arrange the Data....30 Segment by Query Type....32 Round the Position Data into Whole Numbers....33 Calculate the Segment Average and Variation....34 Compare Impression Levels to the Average....36 Explore the Data....36 Export Your High Value Keyword List....39 Activation....39 Google Trends....40 Single Keyword....40 Multiple Keywords....41 Visualizing Google Trends....44 Forecast Future Demand....45 Exploring Your Data....46 Decomposing the Trend....48 Fitting Your SARIMA Model....51 Test the Model....54 Forecast the Future....56 Clustering by Search Intent....59 Starting Point....61 Filter Data for Page 1....62 Convert Ranking URLs to a String....62 Compare SERP Distance....64 SERP Competitor Titles....78 Filter and Clean the Data for Sections Covering Only What You Sell....79 Extract Keywords from the Title Tags....81 Filter Using SERPs Data....82 Summary....83 Chapter 3: Technical....84 Where Data Science Fits In....85 Modeling Page Authority....85 Filtering in Web Pages....87 Examine the Distribution of Authority Before Optimization....88 Calculating the New Distribution....91 Internal Link Optimization....98 By Site Level....102 Site-Level URLs That Are Underlinked....111 By Page Authority....118 Page Authority URLs That Are Underlinked....125 Content Type....128 Combining Site Level and Page Authority....130 Anchor Texts....132 Anchor Issues by Site Level....135 Anchor Text Relevance....138 Location....142 Anchor Text Words....143 Core Web Vitals (CWV)....146 Landscape....146 Onsite CWV....162 Summary....171 Chapter 4: Content and UX....172 Content That Best Satisfies the User Query....173 Data Sources....173 Keyword Mapping....173 String Matching....174 String Distance to Map Keyword Evaluation....180 Content Gap Analysis....181 Getting the Data....182 Creating the Combinations....189 Finding the Content Intersection....190 Establishing Gap....192 Content Creation: Planning Landing Page Content....195 Getting SERP Data....197 Crawling the Content....200 Extracting the Headings....203 Cleaning and Selecting Headings....208 Cluster Headings....212 Reflections....218 Summary....219 Chapter 5: Authority....220 Some SEO History....220 A Little More History....221 Authority, Links, and Other....221 Examining Your Own Links....222 Importing and Cleaning the Target Link Data....223 Targeting Domain Authority....227 Domain Authority Over Time....229 Targeting Link Volumes....233 Analyzing Your Competitor’s Links....237 Data Importing and Cleaning....237 Anatomy of a Good Link....242 Link Quality....246 Link Volumes....252 Link Velocity....255 Link Capital....256 Finding Power Networks....259 Taking It Further....264 Summary....265 Chapter 6: Competitors....266 And Algorithm Recovery Too!....266 Defining the Problem....266 Outcome Metric....267 Why Ranking?....267 Features....267 Data Strategy....267 Data Sources....269 Explore, Clean, and Transform....270 Import Data – Both SERPs and Features....271 Start with the Keywords....273 Focus on the Competitors....275 Join the Data....289 Derive New Features....291 Single-Level Factors (SLFs)....295 Rescale Your Data....298 Near Zero Variance (NZVs)....300 Median Impute....305 One Hot Encoding (OHE)....307 Eliminate NAs....309 Modeling the SERPs....310 Evaluate the SERPs ML Model....313 The Most Predictive Drivers of Rank....314 How Much Rank a Ranking Factor Is Worth....317 The Winning Benchmark for a Ranking Factor....320 Tips to Make Your Model More Robust....320 Activation....320 Automating This Analysis....320 Summary....321 Chapter 7: Experiments....322 How Experiments Fit into the SEO Process....322 Generating Hypotheses....323 Competitor Analysis....323 Website Articles and Social Media....323 You/Your Team’s Ideas....324 Recent Website Updates....324 Conference Events and Industry Peers....324 Past Experiment Failures....325 Experiment Design....325 Zero Inflation....329 Split A/A Analysis....332 Determining the Sample Size....341 Test and Control Assignment....343 Running Your Experiment....348 Ending A/B Tests Prematurely....348 Not Basing Tests on a Hypothesis....349 Simultaneous Changes to Both Test and Control....349 Non-QA of Test Implementation and Experiment Evaluation....350 Split A/B Exploratory Analysis....353 Inconclusive Experiment Outcomes....361 Summary....362 Chapter 8: Dashboards....363 Data Sources....363 Don’t Plug Directly into Google Data Studio....364 Using Data Warehouses....364 Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL)....364 Extracting Data....365 Google Analytics....365 DataForSEO SERPs API....371 Google Search Console (GSC)....376 Google PageSpeed API....382 Transforming Data....385 Loading Data....390 Visualization....393 Automation....394 Summary....394 Chapter 9: Site Migration Planning....396 Verifying Traffic and Ranking Changes....396 Identifying the Parent and Child Nodes....398 Separating Migration Documents....404 Finding the Closest Matching Category URL....408 Mapping Current URLs to the New Category URLs....412 Mapping the Remaining URLs to the Migration URL....414 Importing the URLs....418 Migration Forensics....431 Traffic Trends....432 Segmenting URLs....442 Time Trends and Change Point Analysis....456 Segmented Time Trends....459 Analysis Impact....461 Diagnostics....473 Road Map....482 Summary....486 Chapter 10: Google Updates....487 Algo Updates....488 Dedupe....495 Domains....497 Reach Stratified....503 Rankings....511 WAVG Search Volume....513 Visibility....514 Result Types....522 Cannibalization....530 Keywords....538 Token Length....538 Token Length Deep Dive....543 Target Level....551 Keywords....551 Pages....555 Segments....562 Top Competitors....562 Visibility....568 Snippets....575 Summary....579 Chapter 11: The Future of SEO....580 Aggregation....580 Distributions....581 String Matching....581 Clustering....582 Machine Learning (ML) Modeling....582 Set Theory....583 What Computers Can and Can’t Do....583 For the SEO Experts....583 Summary....584 Index....585