How to Install Python on Windows, Mac, and Linux

Python is a programming language that is useful for a wide variety of SEO, data analysis, Web scraping, and Web development tasks.

This page explains how to install Python and Poetry in order to follow the tutorials on this site.

Python

To see if Python 3 is already installed, open up a terminal window and type this command:

python --version

(If you’re using Linux or Mac, the regular terminal will work. If you’re using Windows, try WSL, which is a kind of Linux that runs inside of Windows, making it easier to do programming-related tasks.)

If Python is installed, you should see a version number something like this:

Python 3.10.2

(Your version number might be different, but it should begin with a 3.)

If you have Python 3, you should be fine and can skip to the Poetry section below.

If you don’t have Python installed yet, I recommend installing it with Pyenv. It works on Mac, Linux, and inside of WSL for Windows. The reason for using Pyenv is that it allows you to easily run multiple versions of Python on your computer at the same time.

To install Pyenv, check out the documentation for your platform.

Poetry

You will also want to install Poetry using these instructions.

If you already know how to use virtual environments and want to use venv, that will work too, but I’d recommend checking out Poetry.