Learn To Automate GSA SER (And Everything Else)

donaldbeck

Hello Everyone,

I made a tutorial on how I automate my day to day SEO tasks using Python. GSA SER is an important part of those day to day tasks, so pretty much the whole tutorial is relevant to SER directly.

If you aren't familiar with Python or programming, you should start with "Basics Of Python". This covers pretty much everything you need to know to proceed with the rest of the course.

If you already know some programming you can start with "SEO Scripting With Python", which goes over a bunch of different examples that are very useful in everyday SEO work. For instance, if you want to manipulate the verified links of your projects, all these tutorials will help you a lot.

Sometimes you need to do something more than just work with the filesystem and normal Python, this is where "GUI Automation Basics" comes into play, and I touch on some basics related to GUI automation in this section.

One of the more interesting parts of the tutorial for members of this forum might be "GSA SER Specific Automation". I cover several different things that will help you a lot in automating SER.

Finally I cover some examples of real life automation in the "Complete Automation Examples" section. So far I've only added one. It shows how to automate scraping with Gscraper and then filtering and importing those URLs directly into SER.

If there seems to be any interest in this kind of stuff, or if I just feel like it, I'll add more content as time goes on. I certainly have no shortage of video ideas.

You can see all the videos here http://sertips.com/seo-automation-scripting-tutorial/, complete with the code used in each video, and if you scroll down a bit you'll find a complete table of contents for the whole tutorial.

Hopefully this helps someone!

Sven

Very nice

johng

This is really helpful, thanks for putting it together

zerocloud

Thank you very much!!!

donaldbeck

Thanks @Sven

@johng @zerocloud If you guys, or anyone else, has any feedback I'd be interested to hear it. I'm in my bubble fantasy world talking to my computer making these videos. I'd be interested to hear anyone's thoughts.

You're all welcome! I enjoyed making the videos and I'm glad people find them useful. There will be more to come.

delta_squad

That's really well done! I'll have to watch the videos a couple more times because I've no experience with Python but, still that's a very practical tutorial. Do you intend to make an example automation video for Scrapebox as well? I know the principle is the same as with Gscraper but it still would be nice.

johng

@donaldbeck two suggestions for additional material:

- automate remove duplicate urls / remove duplicate domains in SER
- setting up cron jobs for running the scripts (useful for the above and stuff like restarting SER every x hours)

donaldbeck

Hey @johng

As far as the cron job suggestion, it is a good one, and I already cover this(functionality wise, I don't actually use a cron job) in the video about automating gscraper -> SER. In the video I put the script in an infinite loop to accomplish the same thing. Your suggestion is great though, it needs to be in it's own video, it slipped my mind.

About automating dup url/domain removal from SER, all the pieces are there to do this. You would want to watch the following videos:

1)Any of the videos that talk about dealing with multiple files.

2)Any of the videos that talk about removing dup urls/domains.

3)The video titled "Randomize URLs From Multiple Files & Save Each File". The reason being is, this video shows you how to open multiple files individually, and save the manipulated lines to their own file. Exactly what you would need to do to automate duplicate remove from SER.

Off the top of my head, that's all you would need to do to get that done. If you need any help feel free to post here. 

If you want to do this on a personal level the above is my advice, I think it would be beneficial to code if up on your own. If you were just suggesting it as a useful piece of content, I agree with you, it is very practical and a good idea. I'll keep it in mind when I make future videos. Thanks for your suggestions! They were great.

@delta_squad

I'm glad you are enjoying the videos! I'll keep your idea in mind for a future video. I certainly plan to add more SB content. As you said the idea is the same, you would basically be doing something similar, but working around the peculiarities of SB.

johng

Hey @donaldbeck

Thanks for the detailed reply. I was being lazy and hoping there was a way to do dup remove through the GUI, but it's probably good practice to do it the way you suggest.

I'll check out the Gscraper video. Skipped over it due to general frustration with that software

donaldbeck

@johng

When you're doing automation, there's something you should keep in mind when deciding how you're going to go about your strategy.

When you do GUI automation, there will be lots of cases, where your Python script will no longer work if you close your remote desktop connection. You can solve that by opening a remote desktop inside another remote desktop, but you can see how it adds unwanted complexity.

For example, I've automated the SB backlink checker(which I'll cover in a future video), and if you close your remote desktop session, it doesn't work anymore.

Some programs still work, for example, I've also automated hrefer, and there is some GUI automation involved in that, and it still works with the remote desktop session closed. Why? I have no idea really.

So once you open up the GUI automation can of worms, it can cause some extra little problems, which admittedly aren't that hard to get around if you really love automating though the GUI.

In the case of directly manipulating text files though, you almost never run into these kinds of problems. Especially not in this particular instance. That's why I suggested you go through the filesystem and work with text files directly.

You definitely could do what you want through GUI automation though, if you are dead set on doing that, there are several approaches I can think of off the top of my head that might work.

1) Use PyWinAuto like I briefly talk about in the GUI section. I'm not sure it would work with SER.

2) Use the windows API directly. This stackoverflow answer has some insight into that. This tutorial might also be helpful.

3) You could also use Sikulix potentially.

Hope that helps, and you're welcome for the replies.

icarusVN

Just want to point out @donaldbeck, that this tutorial doesn't seem to be accessible from the sertips homepage. I might be blind but I had to come back here to find it.

And thanks for the amazing tutorial.

sengines

@donaldbeck please reup the videos. Thanks.

1linklist

Pretty frickin handy man Well done.

Another option for the person who needs something less thorough, or who is still picking up on Python, is Sickuli.

See: http://www.sikuli.org/

Sickuli is just a simple image-based macro, and it does use a sort of Python-Psuedo-code. But its a good starting place if your only just beggining to automate your backends.