Regular Expressions for Regular Joes (and SEOs)

Regular Expressionsfor Regular Joes

(and SEOs)

COPYRIGHT 2014 CATALYST. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

What are regular expressions?

• A regular expression (sometimes referred to as regex or regexp) is basically find-and-replace on steroids, an advanced system of matching text patterns.

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I LOVE regular expressions!


Most Common Example: Google Analytics

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• Using “pipes” to exclude pages with extraneous symbols attached to the URL, like UTM tracking parameters.


Where can I use regular expressions?• Many text editors

– Notepad++ is an awesome one for Windows

• SEO Tools for Excel add-on– http://nielsbosma.se/projects/seotools/

• Google Docs– =regexextract() function– =regexmatch() function– =regexreplace() function

• Google Analytics• Screaming Frog• DeepCrawl• .htaccess

– RewriteCond– RewriteRule

• Programming LanguagesAPRIL 11, 2023 | PAGE 4

http://nielsbosma.se/projects/seotools/



COPYRIGHT 2014 CATALYST. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. APRIL 11, 2023

RegEx Basics

Each one of these you learn, the more helpful it is.You don’t have to learn all of them.

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Anchors

• “Anchors” match position in text rather than text itself:– ^ (carat) will match the beginning of a line– $ (dollar sign) will match the end of a line

Example: word word word word

•^word will result in “word word word word”

•word$ will result in “word word word word”

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Character Classes

• [ starts a character class• ] ends a character class

– Any of the characters within [ ] will be matched

Note: ranges like [G-V] (letters g though v) or [1-10] (number 1 through 10) also work.

Example: hnaeyesdtlaeck

•[nedl] will result in “hnaeyesdtlaeck”

Example: Do you do SEO or SEM?

•SE[OM] will result in “Do you do SEO or SEM?”APRIL 11, 2023 | PAGE 7


Miscellaneous Special Characters

• | (pipe) means OR

Example: this or that?– this|that will result in “this or that?”

• . (period) represents any character (wildcard)

Example: Excuse my French; Detect profanity like shit, sh#t, or sh!t.– sh.t will result in “Detect profanity like shit, sh#t, or sh!t.”

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Escaping Characters

There are many characters in regular expressions which have special meanings, so if you wish to find the literal characters they must be “escaped” with a backslash preceding it.

Example: I want to find the period.

– \. I want to find the period.

– If I used just a period without escaping with a backslash:

. will result in “I want to find the period.”APRIL 11, 2023 | PAGE 9


Quantifiers• ? (question mark) means optional. It matches 0 or 1 of the

previous character, essentially making it optional.

Example: is the url http or https?

– https? will result in “is the url http or https?”

• * (asterisk) means zero or more. It will find 0 or more occurrences of the previous character.

Example #1: What’s that photo website again? Is it Flickr, Flicker, or Flickeeer?

– Flicke*r will result in “What’s that photo website again? Is it Flickr, Flicker, or Flickeeer?”

Example #2: hlp help heelp heeeeeeeelp

– he*lp will result in “hlp help heelp heeeeeeeelp”

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Quantifiers - Continued

• + (plus) means one or more. It will find 1 or more occurrences of the previous character.

Example #1: hlp help heelp heeeeeeeelp

– he+lp will result in “hlp help heelp heeeeeeeelp”

Example #2: hlp help heelp heeeeeeeelp hellllllllp

•h.+lp will result in “hlp help heelp heeeeeeeelp hellllllllp”

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Understanding Differences Between Quantifiers

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Animated GIF Example


Quantifiers - Continued

• { } will match a certain quantity of previous characters. You can also specify a range, like “1 to 3” or “3 or more” if you include a , (comma) inside the brackets.

Example #1: buz buzz buzzz buzzzz buzzzzz

– buz{3} will result in “buz buzz buzzz buzzzz buzzzzz”

Note: {3} reads “exactly 3} in plain english.

– buz{2,4} will result in “buz buzz buzzz buzzzz buzzzzz”

Note: {2,4} reads “2 to 4” in plain english.APRIL 11, 2023 | PAGE 13


Groups• Groups are encapsulated in parenthesis ( )

Example: hahaha haha ha haha ha!

– (ha)+ will render “hahaha haha ha haha ha!”

( )APRIL 11, 2023 | PAGE 14


Capture Groups

•Groups can also be easily captured as variables that can be repeated back:– $1 would display the contents of the first group, $2 would

display the contents of the second group and so on.

Example: hello I am paul

– hello I am (.+) used with $1 will capture “paul”

•To disable the capturing of groups we use (?:), so that they can be used solely for the purpose of grouping patterns together.

So with the above example, (?:.+) will not capture anything

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Lookarounds

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• Positive Lookaheads will match a group after the main pattern without actually including it in the result. The expression is (?=)

Example: 1in 250px 2in 3em 40px– [0-9]+(?=px) will result in “1in 250px 2in 3em 40px”

Everything WITH “px”

• A Negative Lookahead is used to specify a group that won’t be matched after the main pattern. The expression is (?!)

Example: 1in 250px 2in 3em 40px– [0-9]+(?!em) will result in “1in 250px 2in 3em 40px”

Everything BUT “em”


RegEx in Practice

Real Use Cases

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Problem #1

I want to take a list of >2,000 Mashable.com URLs, exported from BuzzSumo.com and segment the <titles> into different segments (list posts, title as a question, etc.) and see which ones received a greater number of social shares.

What is the fastest way of doing this?

Hint:

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Solution #1: SEO Tools for Excel Add-on w/ RegEx

• Is the post title a question?– =RegexpIsMatch(A2,"\?$")

• Is the post a listacle/list post?– =RegexpIsMatch(A2,"^[0-9]*\s|^[0-9]\,[0-9]*\s")

• Extract publishing year from URL– =RegexpFind(D2,"https?:\/\/(?:www\.)?

mashable\.com\/([0-9]{4})\/.+","$1")• Presence of a year in the title

– =IFERROR(RegexpFind(A40,"([0-9]{4})","$1"),“N/A")

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Nice! Took < 1 Minute.

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Problem #2

• There are hundreds of pages with <span> tags that should be rendered as <h2>. Some have class and/or id attributes and some don’t. I want to grab the contents (only) of these span tags for a client.

What is the fastest way?

…RegEx!

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Solution #2: SEO Tools for Excel Add-on w/ RegEx• For a list of URL in Excel, and again with the

SEO Tool for Excel add-on, use a regular expression like this:– =RegexpFindOnUrl(D3,"<span(?:.+)?>(.+)<\/

span>",1)

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Problem #3:

• I want to grab the full description from a long list of YouTube videos. We can grab it from the meta description, but it might be an incomplete description that is truncated, so we need to grab the actual page text.

What’s the fastest way?

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…Probably XPath, but we can also use RegEx

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Solution #3: SEO Tools for Excel Add-on

• For a list of YouTube video URLs in Excel, use the SEO Tools for Excel Add-on with the following regular expression:– =RegexpFindOnUrl(A1,"<p id=.eow\-description.\

s?>(.+)<\/p>",1)

Please note, that because the HTML utilized a double-quote, you have to use another character in its place so as not to break Excel, like the period, to represent ANY character.

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Problem #4

• I want to quickly change a long list of keywords into the exact match format with the keyword surrounded by brackets, [ ].


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Solution #4: Notepad++ Example

1. Copy a column of keywords from Excel into Notepad++

2. Control + F and switch to the “Replace” tab.

3. Switch the “Search Mode” to “Regular Expression”

4. Enter ^ in the “Find what” field and [ in the “Replace with” field.

5. Hit the “Replace All” button.6. Then, enter $ in the “Find what”

field and ] in the “Replace with” field.

7. Again, hit the “Replace All” button.

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Problem #5

• I want to identify which keywords from Google Webmaster Tools is Branded/Non-Branded, along with misspellings, from our SQL database in Spotfire.


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A Solution: Calculated Column with ~= Operator• Create a calculated column with an

expression like the below:If([keyword]~="unstopable|unstopables|unstoppable|unstoppables|instopable|instopabales|[ui]nstop[a-z]+?b[a-z]+?s?|(scent booster)|(scent boosters)",true,false)– This should find spellings/mis-spellings of Downy

Unstopables

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Other Places We Might Use RegEx

Google Analytics supports regular expressions:

– When creating filters– When setting up goals– When defining goal funnel steps– When defining advanced segments– When using report filters– When using filters in multichannel reporting

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h/t Annie Cushing

http://www.annielytics.com/blog/analytics/regular-expressions-dont-use-google-analytics-without-them/



.htaccess– Redirect a set of URLs matching a certain pattern to a

new URL pattern:Example: RewriteRule ^/dir/index.php?id=(0-9+)\.htm$ file-

$1 [L]

Screaming Frog– URL Rewriting: RegEx Replace– Spider Include/Exclude URLs

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Deepcrawl

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Resources

Helpful tool for testing RegEx and gives a good breakdown of your patterns:• http://www.regexr.com/A handy cheat sheet to print and put on your desk:• http://www.cheatography.com/davechild/chea

t-sheets/regular-expressions/pdf/

SEO Tools for Excel Add-on• http://nielsbosma.se/projects/seotools/Notepad++• http://notepad-plus-plus.org/ APRIL 11, 2023 | PAGE 33

http://www.regexr.com/



http://www.cheatography.com/davechild/cheat-sheets/regular-expressions/pdf/





http://notepad-plus-plus.org/

http://notepad-plus-plus.org/

Thank You!

Paul [email protected]

@fightohttp://blog.paulshapiro.com

mailto:[email protected]

https://twitter.com/fighto

https://twitter.com/fighto

http://blog.paulnshapiro.com/

Marketing

Regular Expressions for Regular Joes (and SEOs)