Smxl milan 2019 - Apps script for SEO

@dsottimanowww.smxl.it #SMXL19
6-7, NOVEMBER 2019
Apps script & SEO automation
David Sottimano
VP, Keyphraseology

The “average” marketer
Julie Ling
Job title: SEO Analyst
Birthplace:
https://thispersondoesnot
exist.com/

@dsottimanowww.smxl.it #SMXL19 @dsottimanowww.smxl.it #SMXL19
Working knowledge of HTML, CSS and JavaScript
Interpreting data from tools like SEMRush, Ahrefs,
Screaming Frog, etc.
Strong grasp of Microsoft Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint, and
Word
Yep
always
it’s 2019.
come on.

+

I choose Apps Script to make
things accessible to many.

Apps Script is
JavaScript
Lives in G Suite
(Sheets,
documents, etc..)
and Adwords
https://developers.google.com/apps-script/overview

*Magic lives here*

My problem with
spreadsheets.

This is a mess.
=SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SU
BSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(C5,"the
",""),"Hat",""),"written",""),"@","")

There’s an easier way.
=SUBSTITUTE_ALL(a1,“the,Hat,@,writ
ten”,””)

How do you parse the URL path
here?
https://www.lastampa.it/sport/calcio/2
019/10/26/news/pareggia-anche-l-inter
-fallito-il-sorpasso-sulla-juve-1.3779317
4

Ridiculous.
=MID(A1,FIND("*",SUBSTITUTE(
A1,"/","*",LEN(A1)-LEN(SUBSTITU
TE(A1,"/",""))))+1,LEN(A1))

What if you could do this?
=PARSE_URI(a2,”path”)

How do you
GET Google
search
results?

What if it was this easy?
=GOOGLE_SEARCH(“smx milano”)

@dsottimanowww.smxl.it #SMXL19www.smxl.it #SMXL19

JavaScript functions are Custom
formulas.
function COMBINE_STRINGS(string1,string2){
return string1 + string2
}

There’s so much that’s already built
for JavaScript for you to use.

Let’s talk
about
JavaScript

Using Apps Script to speed up SEO
tasks

I need to clean data quickly.
To..
create redirect ﬁles
create disavow ﬁles
write metadata

Parse URLs quickly
From this:
https://www.lastampa.it/calcio/2019/news/inter.pdf
To this:
Protocol: https
Host: lastampa.it
Directory: /sport/calcio/2019/10/26/news/
Path: /sport/calcio/2019/10/26/news/inter.pdf
File: inter.pdf

Spreadsheet: bit.do/smx-milan
Code: bit.do/smxl-milan-code
PARSE_URI(a1,”protocol”)

Make a copy of the sheet

Or drop the code in the editor

Don’t remember the formula?
It’s OK! We can write our own help ﬁle too!

Cool, cool.

Substitute multiple
words/characters
We want to remove the parts in red.
example.com/directory/567/~!page.html
example.com/directory/56789/!page.html
example.com/@directory/56789/~page.php

SUBSTITUTE_ALL(“@,.html,~”,a1)

Combine columns?

=COMBINE_TO_COLUMN(L1:M14)

I need to scrape Google search
results
To..
perform competitive analysis
check if a page is indexed
check page ranking

Scrape Google
search results,
reliably
Let’s make this easier.

You’ll need an API Key ﬁrst.
https://serpapi.com
Note: I do not work for Serpapi.com and do not receive any
compensation from them

Tools > Script Editor to add key

Your own custom rank/index checker

I need to render webpages at scale
programatically
To..
check server responses
scraping

JavaScript render webpage
anonymously from a speciﬁc
location/device/user-agent
From a SPREADSHEET CELL.

You’ll need an API Key ﬁrst.
https://proxycrawl.com
ProxyCrawl is a great API based crawler with
several options. It’s free for 1000 requests a month.
Note: I do not work for ProxyCrawl and do not receive any
compensation from them

We can fetch a page on demand
like this:
https://api.proxycrawl.com/?token=12
3&url=https://lastampa.it

Which would result in this:

Then we can scrape using
Importxml like this
=importxml(“https://api.proxycrawl.co
m/?token=123&url=https://lastampa.it”,
”//h1”)

Then we can scrape using
Importxml like this

But that isn’t smart.
If we store the page, we can make
mistakes in code without paying for extra
requests.
Luckily, proxycrawl.com makes this very
easy.

There’s a lot of options to explore
proxycrawl.com

Let’s solve SEO problems with
Apps script

I’m going to delete pages.
How do I ﬁnd 301 target?
PROBLEM

Imagine the trainline.com is going
to get rid of this (beautiful) page:
https://www.thetrainline.com/en/train-times/milan-to-turin

We need to ﬁnd
the closest next
target. An easy
way to do this is to
use the site: query

Using the =GOOGLE_SEARCH() function, we can do a
site:thetrainline.com Milan to Turin by train to ﬁnd the
next most relevant page

I need to do quick keyword
discovery
PROBLEM

Fast Solution: Google auto-suggest
Make your own
interface in the
place you’ll end
up anyway.

http://bit.do/kw-research

One formula powers this tool.
=GOOGLE_SUGGEST()
Make your own tool
however you want it to
look.

I need to know if / when my page
has changed
PROBLEM

Step 1 - Use Wayback Machine to
save pages
To save a page in the archive,
simply add
https://web.archive.org/save/ to
the start of the URL
We’re going to automate this.

Step 2 - Set up automated captures
Look for “WAYBACK_SAVE” in the code and
change the URLs

Step 2.1 - Add email
Change the variable emailAddress to your email
address if you want email updates.
example: var emailAddress = “info@example.com”

Step 2.2 - Set time trigger

Step 3 - Pull captures into sheet
=WAYBACK_GET(URL,dateFrom,dateTo)

No code visual comparisons
https://web.archive.org/web/diﬀ/20141217113451/201908
01042909/https://davidsottimano.com/

Or scrape directly!
Think, free page monitor

I need to know how to target my
content
PROBLEM

Supervised Machine learning
classiﬁcation in 10 minutes.
For free.
Accessible to any Google sheet.
https://bigml.com/features/classiﬁcation-regression

Step 1 - Training data
3 sites’ organic
keyword data from
Semrush.com
Nytimes.com =
informational
Yelp.com = local
Amazon.com =
transactional

Step 2 - Upload to Bigml.com

https://bigml.com/user/dsottimano/gallery/model/5dba0a831efc927c130024cd
Step 3 - 1 click model

https://bigml.com/user/dsottimano/gallery/model/5dba0a831efc927c130024cd
Step 4 - Install free Bigml Addon

Not bad for 10 minutes of work.

Beyond Sheets, Apps Script can do
wonderful things.

Solution: Master Folder (repository)

Call the PageSpeed insights API
directly

@dsottimanowww.smxl.it #SMXL19 @dsottimano
All employees have access, in any
document.
https://developers.google.com/gsuite/add-ons/how-tos/publishing
-editor-addons

Building xml sitemaps with hreﬂang

Change font for every Google slide
Add the code,
save
Refresh. Click
custom menu
Type in new font
http://bit.do/g-slides

Apps script
can
leverage
any API..

“But, it’s just JavaScript..in a
spreadsheet”

https://pulse.appsscript.info/p/2019/11/building-a-deep-neural-net-in-
google-sheets/

Subscribe to:pulse.appsscript.info

Where do you
go from here?

Want to learn JavaScript?
1) JavaScript track on Freecodecamp.org
2) Book: JavaScript - the good parts

Learn Apps Script
1) Follow this list on Twitter:
2) Stack Overﬂow
3) Google documentation
4) Starter guide on opensourceseo.org

Hire Apps Script developers
https://www.upwork.com/hire/google-apps-script-freela
ncers/

Thank you.
Currently building:
seotoolsforsheets.com
Yell at me here:
@dsottimano (Twitter)
dave@keyphraseology.com

Smxl milan 2019 - Apps script for SEO

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (20)

Similar to Smxl milan 2019 - Apps script for SEO

Similar to Smxl milan 2019 - Apps script for SEO (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Smxl milan 2019 - Apps script for SEO