{"id":6710,"date":"2020-09-09T17:47:50","date_gmt":"2020-09-09T16:47:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.brainlabsdigital.com\/?p=6710"},"modified":"2025-06-20T20:36:00","modified_gmt":"2025-06-20T20:36:00","slug":"how-to-use-xpath-a-beginner-seo-guide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brainlabsdigital.com\/how-to-use-xpath-a-beginner-seo-guide\/","title":{"rendered":"How to use XPath: a beginner SEO\u2019s guide"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

XPath is one of those things I learned out of pure, unabashed hatred for data entry. There are few things more boring than clicking through a spreadsheet full of URLs in column A just to copy and paste their date published into column B.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s where XPath queries come in handy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

XPath is the language we use to navigate to specific parts of an XML document, and with a single XPath query and the scraping tool of our choice (we like Screaming Frog and Google Sheets\u2019 IMPORTXML for scraping), we can grab information off of dozens of pages at once without ever having to do the copy\/paste dance that makes us wither away in our office chairs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this article, I\u2019ll teach you a few XPath queries and how to use them for scraping webpage elements for SEO, and then I\u2019ll teach you some XPath syntax to write your own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

XPath Cheat Sheet<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Before we begin creating some of our own XPath queries for different pages, here\u2019s a list of queries that can be used on any site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

XPath Query<\/td>Outcome<\/td><\/tr>
\/\/h1<\/code><\/td>Scrapes all h1s<\/td><\/tr>
\/\/title<\/code><\/td>Scrapes all titles<\/td><\/tr>
\/\/meta[@name='description']\/@content<\/code><\/td>Scrapes the meta description<\/td><\/tr>
\/\/@href<\/code><\/td>Scrapes all links<\/td><\/tr>
\/\/link[@rel=\u2019canonical\u2019]\/@href<\/code><\/td>Scrapes any canonicals<\/td><\/tr>
\/\/*[@itemtype]\/@itemtype<\/code><\/td>Scrapes types of schema<\/td><\/tr>
\/\/*[@hreflang]<\/code><\/td>Scrapes hreflang<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For pulling these elements off of a bunch of pages, I\u2019ve outlined two tools below:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scraping with XPath Method 1: Using Google Sheets\u2019 =IMPORTXML<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

1. Here\u2019s my Google Sheets document for scraping data off of different pages. I\u2019ve put the list of the URLs I want to scrape from in Column A:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Google<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

2. In column B, I\u2019m going to use the function on each URL listed in Column A:
=IMPORTXML(URL, XPath query)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

IMPORTXML takes two parameters:<\/p>\n\n\n\n