The Seotistics newsletter is written by Marco Giordano, a Data/Web Analyst with the goal of combining business and web data. Tired of the usual boring Analytics content without any business impact? Seotistics teaches you how to use Analytics, web data and even content in your workflow while helping you with Strategy.
☁️ SEO Automation With Google Cloud
Use Data Or Be Used By Data! The February 5 issue of Seotistics is here for you! |
In the last few issues, we discussed about processes and SEO stacks. If you are like me, you like having everything in place so you don't worry about it. The solution is using Google Cloud Platform and we will go through a journey to show its potential. P.S. Big announcement soon, I know you are waiting for it ;) Please move this email to your Primary inbox or reply to it. This is to prevent Seotistics goes into spam by accident. Gmail users can read this tutorial to do it. A Story Of InefficiencyYou may want to read first: 1. 🛠 Advanced Content Optimization With Analytics (Overview) 2. 🤖 3 SEO Processes For Advanced Automation Many organizations live in chaos and there is a lot of overlap across teams. It's common to work on the same project but without knowing it. SEO suffers from the same problem. What to say, a lot of inefficiencies and negative effects like:
In many companies, you see a lot of SEO tools that don't interact with each other while the time to decision goes up. When preparing annual reports, it's often impossible to do YoY comparisons because few store their GSC data. "Can we check our clicks compared to last year?" Frequent reply: we only have the last 16 months, so nope lol What's even worse is that some think a tool can solve your problems... when it's actually all about organization. I can't be your psychologist but I can show you the solution to your other problems... The SolutionCloud systems are the best option so far due to their ease of use and availability. I don't want to oversimplify the topic, but to show you what, how and why. Many of you have probably learned or used scripts or even ChatGPT for automation. But one thing is running it locally and manually, another one is automating the process. Google shows a sample architecture below: To ensure quality and safety, it's easier to move your creations to the cloud. Many SEOs stop at Python or SQL (which is completely fine) but if you want to create systems, you have to take it further. The main issue I noticed is that back then what I was producing didn't stick to a bigger frame. Now, for SEO use cases you need much less and in general, there is no universal tool or architecture. A few ideas you want to memorize here:
Don't worry if this sounds too new. You will get used to it in the next issues! Sample Architectures For SEO DataYou won't use 100% Google services. The most crucial step in our case is transforming data. DBT is a great tool to do so that garnered a lot of popularity since its release. In plain English, it's a data transformation tool based on SQL. Yes, this means you can use most of the stuff I Axel Trevenot (check out his LinkedIn profile!), a GCP Engineer, has helped me to come up with a minimum viable architecture for most use cases: The example above takes data from GSC/GA4 with direct connectors to BigQuery. Then, you can load your data in DBT and ingest them again in BigQuery. A slightly more complex example follows: Mind you, the idea is similar with small changes. Instead of DBT, I use Dataflow, a Google tool to process data. The tool you use isn't really important for learning so I won't go over the detailed differences today. Then, we store the raw data in Cloud Storage, another Google tool I mentioned before. The rest is the same. Airtable is one of my favorite SaaS and a great data source if you labeled your content data (check this past issue). ProcessingFor cleaning and processing your data, you can test using different services but the operations are always the same:
Importing data from GA4/GSC to BigQuery means you will have a lot of processing to do. Now, there are many methods to do it but I recommend you use DBT. It'll also make your life easier by sending the processed tables straight to BigQuery. Remember, data cleaning is an important step in my chartflow:
After a while, you will realize data cleaning isn't that hard since it's always the same. This is great because you can focus on SEO and Execution! Insights & ActivationYou can use Looker Studio and BigQuery itself to run most analyses. The first is our go-to tool for dashboarding and visualizations, although limited. No matter what you use, dashboarding is a powerful ally, given that:
BigQuery is more for analysts and not ideal for a non-technical audience, since well, they would have to write SQL! So dashboards and small apps are often your best friends, along with standardized reports in Excel or you name it. What This Means To BusinessesCloud allows you to automate the SEO you need without needing to worry too much about different tools. For a big website, it's impossible to work with Google Sheets and Looker Studio like others normally do. I've seen countless business owners relying on interfaces and biased data to make important decisions. You are not supposed to use GSC/GA4 to make decisions. That's why APIs and connectors exist! BigQuery is also the only way to get access to the most GSC data available. There is no reason to stop at BigQuery when you can simply create a full system that automates the most common SEO tasks. This translates to: ✅ Accuracy in reporting ✅ Quicker decisions ✅ Opportunities at scale ✅ Cheaper than enterprise tools in the long term A Tool RecapIf you were so brave to read until this point, you deserve a recap. The image below will help you: For storing, use BigQuery in most cases, use Cloud Storage for data you won't access often (raw data). Processing has many options, choose accordingly:
Analysis can be expanded to include anything but mostly the 2 services you should already know by now. TakeawaysNot every SEO needs to learn this stuff. Not every business needs the cloud. But you can still practice and learn a lot from this issue:
I recommend you practice with some of the services I listed if you want to. In reality, data engineers will do the job and you will simply instruct them. It's still useful to learn about this topic, especially if you are an agency or a large business. We will focus on specific use cases and benefits in the next issues, stay tuned! 👥 Join Our CommunityOur Discord community offers a small place where we can talk business and SEO. If you hate all the noise of social media, then this place is for you.
📚 Recommended Reads - Peak Content 🗻Today's topics are quite new for many but you can still have some quick reads:
Mind you, most of this stuff is NOT as simplified as this newsletter! If you want something easier to digest:
🔎 Analytics For SEO Ebook (v6)If you want to expand on the use cases I showed and get the best resource on Analytics for SEO, this is for you. It will teach you or your employees to: 👉 Prepare audits that make sense and are actionable 🔥 👉 Avoid common pitfalls that cost you money 💸 👉 Create analyses that add value and money💯 👉 Move the needle faster with efficient SEO systems ⏳ This comes with periodical updates to keep the content fresh.
v7 is coming out next week at most, the wait is worth it! 📞 One-Hour CallWant to implement an SEO system like the one I showed you here? Problems with Content or SEO Data? Look no further, I can help you:
❗️ Feedback and RecommendationsIf you have ideas/recommendations for the next issues of Seotistics, you can simply reply to this email. Marco Giordano Follow me on 🔽🔽🔽: |
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Seotistics - Web Analytics + Business + Strategy
The Seotistics newsletter is written by Marco Giordano, a Data/Web Analyst with the goal of combining business and web data. Tired of the usual boring Analytics content without any business impact? Seotistics teaches you how to use Analytics, web data and even content in your workflow while helping you with Strategy.
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