Five Essential Google Sheet Formulas to Create SEO Workflows

Manu Sanker | Updated 03 Feb 2022 | 2 min read

An SEO professional starts their journey with a Google Spreadsheet. That’s why Google Spreadsheet has become an unavoidable tool for all SEO professionals. Here in this article, we discuss the top 5 Google sheet formulas that every SEO professional and SEO company should know. Those are Meta Title, Meta Description, H1 Tag, canonical & Meta Keywords. Many meaningful decisions are made based on this. It helps to semi-automate the workflows and makes the SEO life more manageable.

Below are the Google sheets formulas to create SEO workflows.

Meta Title

Meta Title is simply the title of a page. The meta title is one of the critical SEO ranking factors.

To import the meta title, here’s the formula :

= IMPORTXML(<Url>, “//title”)

Eg :

=IMPORTXML(https://www.zyxware.com/, ”//title”)

Meta Description

Meta Description is a small blurb about the webpage, which appears underneath the SEO title on the Google SERP. It is not a direct ranking factor. But has a significant role in improving the webpage CTR.

To import the meta description, here’s the formula :

=IMPORTXML(<Url>, "//meta[@name='description']/@content")

e.g.:

=IMPORTXML(https://www.zyxware.com/, "//meta[@name='description']/@content")

Heading Tag (H1)

After the Meta title, the H1 tag is an important SEO ranking factor. H1 heading draws the web page visitors’ attention and then clearly indicates the content on the page.

To Import the H1 heading, here’s the formula:

=IMPORTXML( Url, “//h1”)

e.g.:

=IMPORTXML(https://www.zyxware.com/, ”//h1”)

Canonical Url

Canonical URL tells the Search engine which is the master copy or official address of each web page. It helps web admins prevent duplication.

To Import Canonical URL, here’s the formula :

=IMPORTXML(<url>, “//link[@rel=’canonical’]/@href”)

For eg :

=IMPORTXML(https://www.zyxware.com/, “//link[@rel=’canonical’]/@href”)

Internal Links

Internal links refer to a link from a page to another page in the same domain. It helps both Google and website visitors quickly understand the site architecture and find out the essential pages on the website. The right internal linking strategy helps to boost SEO performance.

To Import Internal Links, here’s the formula :

=IMPORTXML(url, "//a[contains(@href, 'domain.com')]/@href”)

For e.g.:

=IMPORTXML(https://www.zyxware.com/, “//a[contains(@href, 'zyxware.com')]/@href”)

Conclusion

Google sheets are insanely powerful. This article only depicts very few most widely used SEO parameters. I hope all of you are playing around with the formulas that we mentioned above. And share your thoughts here. It will help us to come up with more fruitful content.