brightonSEO Set 23 - Exploiting XPath in ScreamingFrog and Google Sheets

Transcript

1. Exploiting XPath in ScreamingFrog and Google Sheets Thiago Pojda SIXT Speakerdeck.com/pojda @tedois
2. The Nerd • Husband, dad • Software Engineer • SEO since 2008 • Since 2015, wesearch.media • Since 2019, living in DE • Since 2022, Director SEO @ SIXT
3. The Nerd • Husband, dad • Software Engineer • SEO since 2008 • Since 2015, wesearch.media • Since 2019, living in DE • Since 2022, Director SEO @ SIXT
4. 2,000+ locations 100+ countries 270,000+ cars 7,500+ employees 20 SEOs
5. SEO @ SIXT • SEO Specialists • Local, Content, Tech, Authority, Data • Product specialists
9. Understanding how sites are built and how to extract information from pages has made my analysis much more relevant to both me and my clients
10. DOM DOM DOM
11. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Document_Object_Model
12. XPath //div[@class=“content”]/text()
13. Expanded syntax is handy but looks terrible /descendant-or-self::div[@class=“content”]/child::text()
14. Abbreviated syntax is enough for 99% of the cases /descendant-or-self::div[@class=“content”]/child::text() //div[@class=“content”]/text()
15. Abbreviated syntax is enough for 99% of the cases /descendant-or-self::div[@class=“content”]/child::text() //div[@class=“content”]/text()
16. Specifier Meaning / Selects a direct child // Select any descendant or self @ Attribute .. Parent . Self
17. Specifier Meaning [ and ] Official name is Predicates, you can think of them as filters * Any element function() … a function
18. Useful functions • text() • contains(where, what) • normalize-space(text) • starts-with(where, what) & ends- with(where, what) • sum() • and, or
19. //author[contains(.,"Matt")] Matches on all author nodes, in current node contains Matt (case-sensitive)
20. //author[starts-with(.,"G")] Matches on all author nodes, in current node starts with G (case-sensitive)
21. //author[matches(.,"Matt.*")] Regular expressions match Source: https://librarycarpentry.org/lc-webscraping/02-xpath/index.html License: CC BY 4.0
22. //h3[1] The first H3 element
23. //h3[last()] The last H3 element
24. //h3[last()-1] The one before last H3 element
25. //img[not(@alt)] Only images without alt attribute
26. //img[@alt] Only images with alt attribute (will match empty alts)
27. //img[string-length(@alt) >= 1] Only images with alt attribute longer than 1 character
28. Source: https://librarycarpentry.org/lc-webscraping/02-xpath/index.html License: CC BY 4.0
30. https://brightonseo.com/people/thiago-pojda
31. <h1> <p> <a>
32. Formula Result =importxml(“//title”, D1) Thiago Pojda =importxml(“//h1”, D1) Thiago Pojda =join(,importxml(“//h1/following- sibling::*[1]”, D1)) SIXT | Director of SEO & In-house Dad Joke Specialist =importxml(“//h1/following- sibling::*[2]”, D1) Thiago is a Brazilian SEO nerd who loves learning about (and nudging) consumer behaviours. Worked several years with SEO for big and small brands both at agencies and as in-house, he now leads the SEO Team at SIXT in Germany. =importxml(“//h1/..//a/@href”, D1) https://www.sixt.com/ https://twitter.com/tedois https://linkedin.com/in/pojda
34. Find XPath via SF
38. ☹
40. 🤩
44. use cases
45. #1 Pages with SEO Text
47. //article[@data-testid='streamSeoSection']
48. Is my competitor using “SEO texts”? On which page types? Any category they’re doing it more? Why? WHY? WHY?
49. Is my competitor using “SEO texts”? On which page types? Any category they’re doing it more? Why? WHY? WHY?
50. Is my competitor using “SEO texts”? On which page types? Any category they’re doing it more? Why? WHY? WHY?
53. Export your crawl (internal all)
54. Categorise what you see
55. Analyze
56. #2 Products per category
58. //div[@id="listing"]//div[contains(text() ,"Ergebnisse")]/text()
59. #3 Mapping indexable filters
62. //a[contains(@class,"pill")]/text() //a[contains(@class,"pill")]/@href
63. Where to use
65. Wrap up
66. • Think about elements you can use to breakdown your competitor’s strategy • Find a great XPath for it, crawl, analyze • Hate XPath until you love it
67. Read more • https://librarycarpentry.org/lc- webscraping/02-xpath/index.html • https://www.searchenginejournal.com/xpath s-large-site-audits/329851/ • https://twitter.com/tedois
68. Exploiting XPath in ScreamingFrog and Google Sheets Thiago Pojda SIXT Speakerdeck.com/pojda @tedois