Google Sheets For SEO - Tom Pool - London SEO Meetup XL

Google Sheets
For SEO
Tom Pool
Technical SEO Director

@cptntommy
Everyone uses
spreadsheets

@cptntommy
There’s a huge
social following

@cptntommy
For all
things
GSheets &
Excel

@cptntommy
It’s not just tik-
tok

@cptntommy
Even my mum, who
is your classic
technophobe

@cptntommy
Uses Excel (2007) to
manage her CD, DVD
& vinyl collection

@cptntommy
Google Sheets
(GSheets, for the cool kids)

@cptntommy
Google’s answer
to Microsoft Excel

@cptntommy
Everyone has a
favourite

@cptntommy
750 Million Users
https://thenewstack.io/microsoft-excel-becomes-a-
programming-language/
(It was also released in 1985 on Mac,
and 1987 on Windows)

@cptntommy
Microsoft Excel
Google Sheets

@cptntommy
750 Million to 2
Billion
https://www.axios.com/google-g-suite-total-users-
9a6d3df6-c990-4866-9efc-ba6756ba3c4d.html
(Released in 2006)

Microsoft Excel
Google Sheets
Apple Numbers (ew)
Libre Office
…
@cptntommy

@cptntommy
There’s a huge range
of people using
spreadsheet
software everyday

@cptntommy
I’ll share a few
‘hacks’ and tips that
I’ve learnt & used

@cptntommy
Especially useful
for SEO datasets

Look after
technical
output of the
agency
@cptntommy

@cptntommy
I work on almost all of our
clients

@cptntommy
I work on a lot of cool projects,
too!

@cptntommy
I really enjoy testing
and messing around
with sites

@cptntommy
Learning &
implementing all sorts
of technical SEO stuff

@cptntommy
Outside of work, I
spend a lot of time
cycling & running

@cptntommy
I’m currently training for
Ride London 100
https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/
tom-pool-rl2022

@cptntommy
Over the next
15 minutes,
we’re going to
focus on

@cptntommy
How we can use
Google Sheets

@cptntommy
To turbocharge insights
that we can glean from
ecommerce data

@cptntommy
Help us understand
more about the
potential of GSheets

@cptntommy
Identifying
Duplicates

@cptntommy
Let’s have a look
at a website

@cptntommy
Say I wanted to
identify all pages with
a duplicate title

@cptntommy
(Yes, Screaming Frog &
other crawling software
can show this)

@cptntommy
Step 1 - Get the data
& import to GSheets

@cptntommy
There’s a demo sheet
that is attached to
this deck

@cptntommy
Insert another
column, and then use

@cptntommy
=countif(D:D,D2)>1
The range we’re
looking for dupes in

@cptntommy
=countif(D:D,D2)>1
The specific value
we’d like to check

@cptntommy
=countif(D:D,D2)>1
If the value occurs
more than once

@cptntommy
If you want to take this
to the next level, wrap
the COUNTIF in an IF

@cptntommy
=IF(COUNTIF(D:D,D2)>1,
"Duplicated", "Unique")

@cptntommy
What to output if the
COUNTIF = TRUE

@cptntommy
What to output if the
COUNTIF = FALSE

@cptntommy
Vlookup
&
Index Match

@cptntommy
Vlookup is one of
those things that
initially seemed like
magic

@cptntommy
Useful if you want to
match 2 datasets
together

@cptntommy
Crawl data & external
link metrics

@cptntommy
Let's go back to the
crawl data, and add
another column

@cptntommy
=VLOOKUP(A2,'G&B
Majestic
Data'!B:G,5,False)

@cptntommy
=VLOOKUP(A2,'G&B
Majestic
Data'!B:G,5,False)
The value that we’re looking to
match

@cptntommy
=VLOOKUP(A2,'G&B
Majestic
Data'!B:G,5,False)
The range we’re looking for a
match in, and data to return

@cptntommy
=VLOOKUP(A2,'G&B
Majestic
Data'!B:G,5,False)
The number of the column we’d
like data from

@cptntommy
=VLOOKUP(A2,'G&B
Majestic
Data'!B:G,5,False)
If the data is sorted

@cptntommy
Consider wrapping
the vlookup in an
‘IFNA’ to remove
those ugly ‘#N/A’
values

@cptntommy
=IFNA(VLOOKUP(A2,'G&B
Majestic
Data'!B:G,5,False),"Not
Found")

@cptntommy
The problem with
vlookup is that it
doesn’t take CASE
into account

@cptntommy
example.com/product/A2 - 100 links
example.com/product/a2 - 10 links

@cptntommy
Using vlookup, both of these different
product URLs would either be flagged
to have 10 or 100 links

@cptntommy
=INDEX('G&B Majestic
Data'!F2:F,MATCH(TRUE,
EXACT(A2,'G&B Majestic
Data'!B2:B),0))

@cptntommy
Data'!B2:B),0))
We’re looking for an exact match

@cptntommy
Data'!B2:B),0))
The range we’re looking for a
match in

@cptntommy
Data'!B2:B),0))
The data we’d like to return

@cptntommy
Once you
INDEX MATCH,
you never go
back

@cptntommy
To step this up to
the next level
(again)

@cptntommy
Wrap that INDEX
MATCH in an IFNA to
make the data look
nicer

@cptntommy
RegexReplace/
RegexMatch

@cptntommy
Now this is
arguably one of
the most useful

@cptntommy
Especially when
used with other
formulae

@cptntommy
I use it all the time -
and is a life saver
when it comes to
migrations

@cptntommy
Or even for hreflang
mapping

@cptntommy
For example, imagine
that we’re looking to
migrate

@cptntommy
greenandblacks.co.uk
to
gandb.com

@cptntommy
We’d typically create a
redirect mapping
document

@cptntommy
We could copy &
paste, and then run a
find & replace

@cptntommy
=REGEXREPLACE(A2,"^https
://www.greenandblacks.co
.uk","https://www.gandb.
com")

@cptntommy
com")
What we’d like to run the
formula on

@cptntommy
com")
The REGEX that we’d like to
match

@cptntommy
"^(http://|https://|http
://www.|https://www.)gre
enandblacks.co.uk"
We could also take non-www
versions of URLs into account here

@cptntommy
com")
What we’d like to replace the
REGEX with

@cptntommy
This has so many
potential uses &
applications

@cptntommy
Product name changes
Category moves
Redirect mapping
Testing additional modifiers in
meta data
…

@cptntommy
Google Sheets
has a direct line
to Google
Translate

@cptntommy
Which is
incredibly useful
for quick checks

@cptntommy
Or even keyword
research

@cptntommy
For example, let’s
translate:
EN - ES

@cptntommy
=GOOGLETRANSLATE
(B2,"en","es")

@cptntommy
=GOOGLETRANSLATE
(B2,"en","es")
The cell we’d like to translate

@cptntommy
=GOOGLETRANSLATE
(B2,"en","es")
The language that it’s in

@cptntommy
=GOOGLETRANSLATE
(B2,"en","es")
The language we’d like it in

@cptntommy
However, we’d
like to remove
the brand name
from translation

@cptntommy
We could split the cell,
or find & replace the
translated brand name

@cptntommy
Combine with
REGEXEXTRACT
to remove brand
name

@cptntommy
=GOOGLETRANSLATE
(REGEXEXTRACT
(B2,"(.*)| Green and
Black's"),"en","es")

@cptntommy
=GOOGLETRANSLATE
(REGEXEXTRACT
The value to run REGEX on

@cptntommy
=GOOGLETRANSLATE
(REGEXEXTRACT
Our REGEX Expression

@cptntommy
=GOOGLETRANSLATE
(REGEXEXTRACT
Extract everything before “| Green and …”

@cptntommy
=GOOGLETRANSLATE
(REGEXEXTRACT
Then translate into Spanish from English

@cptntommy
Tracking
Spreadsheet
Views In GA

@cptntommy
I found this idea while
looking for something
completely different

@cptntommy
Involves using
Apps Script
Editor

@cptntommy
For those familiar
with GA

@cptntommy
You are provided
with a JS snippet to
add to your website

@cptntommy
Now gtag.js
Used to be UA-
12345

@cptntommy
This ‘hack’
involves writing a
custom function

@cptntommy
This takes
advantage of the
=IMAGE formula

@cptntommy
=IMAGE(https://www.bluearray.co.u
k/wp-
content/uploads/2021/06/mtt-tom-
pool_edit.jpg)

@cptntommy
Save this
function code

@cptntommy
=IMAGE(GOOGLEANALYTICS
("UA-12345-67","Sample
Formulae","GA"))
Using the custom function

@cptntommy
("UA-12345-67","Sample
Formulae","GA"))
Specifying the UA- value

@cptntommy
("UA-12345-67","Sample
Formulae","GA"))
Specifying the spreadsheet

@cptntommy
("UA-12345-67","Sample
Formulae","GA"))
Specifying the individual sheet

@cptntommy
You’ll probably want to
put the formula in a cell
that’s not going to be
overwritten

@cptntommy
Dashboard
building with
Query

@cptntommy
Google Sheets has
something very
similar to SQL

@cptntommy
Can be used to
build dashboards

@cptntommy
Highlighting things
such as

@cptntommy
Top ten category pages
Top ten products by number of links
Most popular pages
Average page views within a
category
Keywords by pre-defined category

@cptntommy
Incredibly valuable,
especially if you have
data that changes a
lot!

@cptntommy
Or (like me) you just
love data

@cptntommy
Let’s have a look at
the first example

@cptntommy
And build the start of
a dashboard, showing
the top ten ‘gift idea’
pages, by number of
referring URLs

@cptntommy
=QUERY('G&B
Majestic
Data'!A:G)

@cptntommy
If you know SQL, the
next steps should
look familiar!

@cptntommy
=QUERY('G&B
Majestic
Data'!A:G,
"SELECT B, F")

@cptntommy
=QUERY('G&B Majestic
Data'!A:G,
"SELECT B, F ORDER
BY F DESC")

@cptntommy
Data'!A:G,"SELECT B,
F WHERE B CONTAINS
'/gift-ideas/' ORDER
BY F DESC")

@cptntommy
Data'!A:G,"SELECT B,
F WHERE B CONTAINS
'/gift-ideas/' ORDER
BY F DESC LIMIT 10")

@cptntommy
Using some further
formula wrapping &
QUERY magic

@cptntommy
=ARRAYFORMULA(SUBSTITUTE(QUERY(
'G&B Majestic Data'!A:G,"SELECT
B, F WHERE B CONTAINS '/gift-
ideas/' ORDER BY F DESC LIMIT
10 LABEL B 'Most Popular /gift-
ideas/ URLs', F 'Incoming
Links'"),"https://www.greenandb
lacks.co.uk/gift-ideas",""))

@cptntommy
I’m not going to go
through that painful
formula - but I’ll show
the results

@cptntommy
You can then insert a
chart to visualise that
lovely data

@cptntommy
Query can be used for
any sort of bulk data
analysis & insight
extraction

@cptntommy
Recapping the
last few minutes

@cptntommy
And a number of
different formulae
that we can use

@cptntommy
To turbocharge insights
that we can glean from
SEO datasets

@cptntommy
Google sheets is powerful.

@cptntommy
Consider how you can
improve processes, increase
efficiency and ultimately,
help improve overall
productivity!

Google Sheets For SEO - Tom Pool - London SEO Meetup XL

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