It’s easy to get swept away by monthly search volume and to forget that behind every search there is a person with a specific motivation and set of needs to fulfil. This talk will look at how you can use Google’s algorithmic rewriting of the SERPs to help you identify those motivations so you can effectively optimise for intent and query context to improve the ranking performance of your landing pages. This talk will also help you understand how you can use this information to create more tailored online experiences for your prospective customers and how the same workflows can be applied for more general business intelligence insights.

1. Analysing the SERPS
For SEO, Content &
Customer Insights

2. That’s how often Google rewrites the SERP
displayed meta description

3. WHY?

4. To make
SEOs sad?

5. Just for a
laugh?

6. Nope…

7. It’s because Google thinks
it is smarter than us

8. Intriguing…
Can we use that to our advantage?

9. Yes, we
can!
(sorry, that was
the last puppy pic)

10. How?
@RoryT11

11. Deconstruct &
analyse the
language of the
SERPs
@RoryT11

12. Curious?
We are in the age of
semantic search
@RoryT11

13. Google isn’t ranking a page based on how it
uses a keyword
On-page Optimisation
@RoryT11

14. • User intent
• Query context
• Topical relevance
• Word relationships
Target the keyword, but optimise for this.
How does Google provide accurate results?
@RoryT11

15. Understand
customer
intent to better
tailor your
messaging
@RoryT11

16. Structure
landing pages
to help Google
understand
context
@RoryT11

17. Create more
impactful
online
experiences
@RoryT11

18. Your
Toolkit
@RoryT11

19. You need
SERP content
There are
four ways
you can get
this.
@RoryT11

20. Scrape at scale with
Screaming Frog
Follow these instructions
@RoryT11
Option
A

21. Option
B
Get SERP content via an
API

22. Option
C
Get SERP content using the
Scraper Chrome extension
Get
Scraper

23. Option
D
Use ‘Thruuu’ – a free
SERP analysis tool
Use
Thruuu
By Samuel Schmitt

24. There are
four ways you
can get this.
You need
Jupyter Notebook
What is
that?

25. The Jupyter Notebook is an open-source web
application that allows you to create and share
documents that contain live code, equations,
visualizations and narrative text. Uses include:
data cleaning and transformation, numerical
simulation, statistical modeling, data visualization,
machine learning, and much more.
Jupyter.org
@RoryT11

26. Stumped.

27. Jupyter Notebook is an environment on my laptop
where I can learn Python by copying scripts
created by people significantly smarter than me
and breaking them or making them do something
slightly different.
Rory Truesdale
Python Charlatan
@RoryT11

28. Resources to get started…
Jupyter
Notebook –
Getting
Started Guide
Robin Lord
Find
scripts
Paul Shapiro JR Oakes Hamlet Batista
Find
scripts
Find
scripts

29. You’ll end up
with…
@RoryT11

30. Your SERP content in a CSV@RoryT11

31. Imported into Jupyter Notebook
@RoryT11

32. You’re (nearly) ready to use
Python to analyse the SERPs!
@RoryT11

33. There’s a
treat for you.

34. I’ll share a link to a Dropbox
with everything you need to
get you started
@RoryT11

35. Before we
dive in…

36. Start by
cleaning
your SERP
content
@RoryT11

37. Avoids
duplication &
punctuation
adds no value
Lower case &
remove
punctuation
@RoryT11

38. Get rid of words like:
“Do”
“Of”
“Am”
“If”
“But”
Remove
stop
words
@RoryT11

39. Chop up a
sentence into
individual pieces
Tokenization
@RoryT11

40. Convert a word to
its root:
-‘Playing’ > ‘Play’
-‘Crawling’ > ‘Crawl’
Lemmatization
(optional)
@RoryT11

41. @RoryT11

42. @RoryT11

43. How many times
a combination of
words appear in
your SERP
content?
Co-occurrence
@RoryT11

44. Co-
occurrence
@RoryT11

45. Co-
occurrence
Shows the
topics
competitors
cover on landing
pages
@RoryT11

46. Co-
occurrence
What does
Google see as
semantically
relevant?
@RoryT11

47. •Additional keyword research
•Topical content gaps
•Use semantically relevant phrases on landing pages
HOW CAN WE APPLY THIS?
@RoryT11

48. Cost:
Range:
Time to Charge:
Battery Size/Capacity:
All Wheel Drive:
Towing Capacity:
Semi-Conductor SERP XLT: Product Page
£
44,360 MSV
9,620 MSV
7,470 MSV
380 MSV
3,040 MSV
180 MSV

49. What are the
most frequently
occurring nouns,
verbs &
adjectives in a
SERP?
Part of
Speech (PoS)
tagging
@RoryT11

50. PoS
tagging
What
‘things’ are
competitors
writing
about?
Nouns (people, place, thing)
@RoryT11

51. PoS
tagging
How is Google
interpreting
the context
and intent of
a search
Verbs (action or state)
@RoryT11

52. PoS
tagging
The language
& tone that
will resonate
with a
searcher
Adjectives (descriptive word)
@RoryT11

53. PoS
tagging
Credit Card Example
Verbs = Intent Clues

54. PoS
tagging
Credit Card Example
Nouns = Context Clues
@RoryT11

55. PoS
tagging
Credit Card Example
Adjectives = Context Clues
@RoryT11

56. •Align pages with the motivations of a searcher
•What language will resonate with your target audience
•Use to improve on page optimisation
HOW CAN WE APPLY THIS?
@RoryT11

57. Can we use
NLP to uncover
topical trends
in the SERPs?
Topic
modelling
@RoryT11

58. Topic
modelling
Topic modelling is an NLP method that assumes a
corpus contains a mixture of topics. It looks at how
words and phrases co-occur in a corpus and attempts
to group them in coherent themes or topics.
@RoryT11

59. Topic
modelling
OK, computer. Here are some words. Group them.
@RoryT11
Rory Truesdale
Cheapening machine
learning since 2019

60. Topic
modelling
Each bubble
represents a
topic
@RoryT11

61. Topic
modelling
The bigger
the bubble
the more
prominent
the topic
@RoryT11

62. Topic
modelling
The further
away the
bubbles are,
the more
distinct those
topic are

63. Topic
modelling
Get a
breakdown of
the terms our
topics consist
of
@RoryT11

64. Topic
modelling
@RoryT11

65. Topic
modelling
Use Google’s
algorithm to help
us identify areas
of interest for our
audience

66. •Reference for content ideation
•Internal linking and content recommendations
•Optimise effectively for semantic relevance
HOW CAN WE APPLY THIS?
@RoryT11

67. Can we make our
scripts work
across other data
sources to
understand our
customers?
Other
useful
applications
@RoryT11

68. Product
Reviews
@RoryT11

69. GMB
Reviews
@RoryT11

70. Reddit
@RoryT11

71. YouTube
Captions
@RoryT11

72. Competitors & Top
Ranking Pages
@RoryT11

73. You can
scrape
it all!
@RoryT11

74. With some minor
tweaks we can
make our scripts
work across a huge
range of user-
centric content
Pretty cool, right?
@RoryT11

75. Visualise sentiment across GMB reviews
@RoryT11

76. Positive:
• Simple
• Easy to use
• Intuitive
Negative:
• Buggy
• Broken exports
• Crashes
@RoryT11
Identify recurring themes in product reviews

77. Create networks based on word relationships
@RoryT11

78. What does
it all
mean?
@RoryT11

79. SERPs give us
amazing insight
into what
customers want
@RoryT11

80. Python makes
getting these
insights at scale
accessible
@RoryT11

81. Use these insights
to align landing
pages with intent
and semantic
relevance
@RoryT11

82. Scripts we create
allow us to get
these insights from
lots of other user-
centric sources
@RoryT11

83. http://cndr.co/jupyter
Python Dropbox Link
@RoryT11

84. Get the slides link
@RoryT11
http://cndr.co/searchlove

85. • https://www.searchenginejournal.com/scrape-google-serp-custom-extractions/267211/
• https://www.searchenginejournal.com/mine-serps-seo-content-customer-insights/311137/
• https://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/user-testing-serps-an-audience-first-approach-to-seo/
• https://www.dropbox.com/sh/vl5miyt6sgbvmkl/AAC5365YcWTun_EzkQLtixe1a?dl=0 (Jupyter
Notebook tutorial)
• http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/algorithm-analysis-in-the-age-of-embeddings
• https://www.searchenginejournal.com/semantic-search-seo/264037/#close
• https://www.slideshare.net/DawnFitton/natural-language-processing-and-search-intent-
understanding-c3-conductor-2019-dawn-anderson
• https://moz.com/blog/what-is-semantic-search
• https://www.slideshare.net/paulshapiro/redefining-technical-seo-mozcon-2019-by-paul-shapiro
Useful Resources
@RoryT11

86. Thanks
For
Listening!
Conductor.com
@RoryT11