Speaker 1: 0:02

Hello and welcome to. Seo is not that hard. I'm your host, ed Dawson, the founder of keywordspeopleusecom, the place to find and organise the questions people ask online. I'm an SEO developer, affiliate marketer and entrepreneur. I've been building and monetising websites for over 20 years and I've bought and sold a few along the way. I'm here to share with you the SEO knowledge, hints and tips I've built up over the years the SEO knowledge, hints and tips I've built up over the years. Hello there, welcome back to SEO is not hard. It's me, ed, as usual.

Speaker 1: 0:34

And today we are on to part 20 of our SEO A to Z, where we're going to cover Penguin to Python. So yeah, that's quite funny, I suppose, a bird to a snake. But yeah, obviously we're not talking birds, we're not talking snakes, we're talking seo. So let's start with penguin. So penguin, you probably you listen to enough of these podcasts. You bound to have heard me talk about it before. Penguin was a google ranking update that first launched on april, the 24th of 2012, a date that lives in infamy for many seos that specifically targeted websites that broke the link buildingbuilding part of Google's guidelines. Now, penguin had a devastating effect on many websites that had previously been buying links and building spam links for many years without any ill effect whatsoever, and today it remains one of the most well-known Google updates, even probably to people who joined the industry since Penguin happened and those many people who are, fortunately, still very young and were probably, you know, at school when penguin happened. It's something they will still have heard about, um, from those old timers like myself who were around at the time. We got hit really badly at world running, co uk at the time because we were buying links. We were lots of people were. It was so so much more common and prevalent and open back um, you know, prior to 2012, it was just an accepted way of doing it and we got badly hit, and that's when I changed my complete philosophy around links. But I won't get into that now because I've talked about it too many of the times.

Speaker 1: 1:59

So let's move on to the next thing, which is people also ask, or also known as paa. So people also ask is a search feature in the Google search results that displays questions that people ask related to your search query. Now, these questions are based on real questions that Google receives around a topic area and the most popular ones related to your query are shown. So PAA questions shown by Google can be very dynamic and they do respond to trending news and events very quickly and they're an incredible source for keyword research, so much so that that's the whole premise behind why we originally launched keywords people use, which is based on my personal philosophy of the fact that people go online, go on search engines, to get answers to questions.

Speaker 1: 2:44

Everybody sits down at Google to ask a question. It's trying to, that's it. They're asking a question, they're trying to get an answer to a question, and I've always built content around trying to think what questions people are asking. If I can get content on a website that answers the questions in depth about a topic and the questions people ask about that topic, it is the perfect framework for doing your keyword research. It just beats out chasing volume, it beats out the way that most of the people do keyword research. It's what I've built all my SEO success on is this answering people's questions and people also ask. It's just manna from heaven now, because google tell you the questions people ask, if you mind those questions using a tool like keywords people use or if you just do it manually and go there and manually go through and follow all those questions through. Click all the questions. See the follow-up questions. Link them all together. You can get so much information there and it can help you design all your keyword content you need to do help you design your website. So people also ask is really really valuable? You probably already figured this out if you listen to any of my podcasts how valuable I think it is. But yeah, if you're looking to do any kind of keyword research, do go and use keywords people use Because you know I spent so much time and effort and money building it and building a team to do that site. That tool is really really valuable. So, yeah, I don't pitch very often on this podcast. In this case, do go and try it.

Speaker 1: 4:15

So next, we've got personalization. So google may personalize the results it shows any one user depending on factors such as location, previous search history and a number of other factors, and it means that no two search results for the same keyword can be guaranteed to be the same. Now, often they are the same, but it's no guarantee. I think, especially if the more in-depth search you're doing, the more you're querying, the more likely is Google is going to come back and start personalizing results to you. So that's why you always have to never assume that someone else is going to see exactly the same search results as you do.

Speaker 1: 4:48

Next P is pillar page. So pillar page is a piece of content on a website that covers a topic at a broad level and it will link to, and be linked back from, a cluster of sub page. Explore the subtopics of the pillar page in detail. Now. This is a technique that I've used for many, many years on my websites. If you go to broadbandcouk even though I don't own it anymore, it's still got the same structure and much of the same content as when I built it over the past sort of 20 years or so, and you can see there that there are pillar pages. There's a home broadband pillar page, there is a mobile broadband pillar page, there is a broadband speed pillar page. There's a number of these pillar pages and then within them you'll see there are sub pages within them that are the cluster pages for those pillars. It's a really, really powerful way of organizing your content. It helps provide a lot of context to google as to what particular parts of the site about. It strengthens that internal link building and it also helps people never get around, you know, if people have come to website after they came to broadband at codeuk they're interested in home broadband then they go straight into that section, into that pillar, and then they can work down from there to find the content. So it's a really, really powerful way of organizing structure in your website. It's one I strongly recommend.

Speaker 1: 5:59

Next book so I mean you're listening to a podcast, so I don't need to tell you what a podcast is, otherwise how would you have got here? Um? But in the seo world, many prominent seos appear on or publish their own podcasts, and finding and subscribing to them and regularly listening to them it's a great way of learning new things in the world of seo and keeping up to date with the latest news in the sector. I listen to loads of podcasts myself, seo and otherwise. I actually did an episode on all the my favorite podcasts, um, a while back. So just look through the archive to find that um. I probably need to do another one because I discover new podcasts all the time. But I think podcasts are a fantastic resource and I encourage you to go out there and find others, not just mine. Go and find others, listen to them, because they're just a great way of learning.

Speaker 1: 6:41

Next P is press release. So a press release is a communication that's put out by an organisation or a business, usually to promote some newsworthy item they're involved with. These press releases are then often put out by networks that push them to news organizations and others. Press releases are often used as part of some link building strategies, such as digital PR, or even as a basic link building tactic in itself. If you've got a press release, there are plenty of websites that just syndicate those releases and might include any links in that you put in there in that press release. Google does find press releases because this is a way of communicating news with the developments that's been going around since before the internet. So, yeah, always potentially a good way to get something out there, especially if you've got something very newsworthy, something that people might pick up on.

Speaker 1: 7:31

P is Programmatic SEO, or PSEO for short. Now, this is the use of databases of content and common templates to generate large amounts of pages of content algorithmically. Now, done badly, programmatic SEO can be seen and actually indeed actually it is spam and it will be penalised by Google. However, done well, it can be genuinely helpful and useful content and be well indexed by Google. I've used Programmatic SEO in a lot of the projects I've worked on.

Speaker 1: 8:02

Broadbentic UK has got Programmatic SEO built in because all the content around individual providers and the current deals that those providers have available are all done by Programmatic SEO providers and have available are all done by a programmatic seo. There are all templated pages and there's a database of information that's captured to date by the staff at broadbandcouk with all that information so as new deals come online or taken away, new providers get listed on the website, all those kind of things. It's all controlled by a database. Those pages aren't written by hand, they are written by the database. So the database is hand curated but it then powers a template which creates all the different pages. Lots of the big sites like um, airbnb that's programmatic seo. You know they have a database of all their properties and then they use templated pages to create, you know, many thousands, if not millions of pages that take information about those properties and list them in various ways. So you have the property pages themselves. You have properties in certain areas. You'll have types of property page templates, all powered by programmatic seo. So it's done well and made useful and helpful and they're not a problem. So if someone says programmatic seo is spam, no, it's not spam in of in and of itself, but done badly it can be spam. Anything done badly can be spam. Programmatic seo itself is not spam. So, yeah, really, really useful. I've done at least one previous episode all about programmatic seo, so if you're interested in learning more, just search programmatic seo in the archives and you'll find more about it.

Speaker 1: 9:36

Next up, we've got proxy services. So a proxy service is one that allows you to access the web as if you're in another location to that which you actually are. Now why would you want to do this? Well, google will change the results it shows depending on your location. So if you want to see what the search looked like for someone in new york but you're in london, then a proxy service will allow you to do this and connect as if you are in New York and see what the search results look like. Some proxy services are available that provide proxy rotation. Now, these are designed to work with software, so you can make repeated requests to Google and other services at a much faster rate than you will from any single IP address. So this is for if you are scraping, for example, at QBush use. We have to use proxy services that rotate proxies so that we can actually scrape and mine. Those People also ask questions because if we did it off one IP address, google would ban us, because they don't actually like people scraping their results, even though they make their living by scraping the whole internet and then summarizing those results for people. If you try and do it to them, they don't like it. So, results for people if you try and do it to them, they don't like it. So we have to use proxy services to be able to do that. Um, if you use vpns like nordvpn, um, surf shock, all those those essentially are, they are essentially a type of proxy service themselves and they're the ones where you can just use them to say I want php in the usa today, even if you are actually in the uk, and even within lots of these, you can even say what city or state you want to be in within larger countries. So it's just a way of being able to appear to a website as being in a different location to which you actually are.

Speaker 1: 11:06

And then, finally, today we've got python. So if you've heard of python, it's a programming language. It's very popular amongst some seo's who like to produce software to automate certain SEO tasks. Python in itself is not a programming language that is specialist towards SEO. It just has become quite popular. Google use it themselves. It's used quite heavily inside Google and there are actually lots of libraries with it that help automate some tasks that SEOs do, like scraping, like organizing data. So it can be quite useful, and lots of people have built little tools with python um to help them with their seo. But you don't need to know python to be an seo, and knowing python does not make you an seo. But it's just what a programming language, very popular with certain seos. I use it again, you know, sometimes, for if I'm trying to lock up some demo software or do something quickly, I'll use it, but it's not something we use in production on our websites, so that's it. So today we've gone from penguin to python.

Speaker 1: 12:06

We've covered quite a lot today, I think, so hopefully you found it useful. If there are any p's you think we've missed, do get in touch. We'll get them added in. If you've listened this far, hopefully you must have enjoyed it. I assume you have to get this far. Either that or you're a glutton for punishment. If we are helpful, please do subscribe. Please do write a review. All really helps, helps us reach for the people and it lets us know that we're being useful. So that's it for today and we'll see you next time.

Speaker 1: 12:32

Before I go, I just wanted to let you know that if you'd like a personal demo of our tools at Keywords People Use that, you can book a free, no obligation, one-on-one video call with me where I show you how we can help you level up your content by finding and answering the questions your audience actually have. You can also ask me any SEO questions you have. You just need to go to keywordspeoplesusecom slash demo where you can pick a time and date that suits you for us to catch up Once again. That's keywordspeopleusecom slash demo and you can also find that link in the show notes of today's episode. Hope to chat with you soon. Thanks for being a listener. I really appreciate it. Please subscribe and share. It really helps.

Speaker 1: 13:10

Seo is not that hard. It's brought to you by keywordspeopleusecom, the place to find and organize the questions people ask online. See why thousands of people use us every day. Try it today for free at keywordspeopleusecom to get an instant hit of more seo tips. Then find the link to download a free copy of my 101 quick seo tips in the show notes of today's episode. If you want to get in touch, have any questions, I'd love to hear from you. I'm at channel 5 on twitter. You can email me at podcast at keywords people usecom. Bye for now and see you in the next episode of SEO is not that hard.