Automating Scan Reports in Looker Studio
Posted: Mon Dec 09, 2024 6:14 am
In this article, we will discuss making the crawl reports we perform with Screaming Frog more understandable and traceable. In order to do this, we will use three main tools: Screaming Frog, Google Sheets and Google Looker Studio. Screaming Frog stands out as an SEO tool that has improved itself considerably in recent years. Here, we will connect a planned crawl using Screaming Frog to our Google Drive account and then use a Looker Studio template to monitor the crawl reports from a single screen. We can say that we do this in order to clearly see the changes that occur on sites where we do intensive technical work from time to time and to provide more meaningful data in customer reports.
Schedule Scan
To export in a Looker Studio compatible manner, you can only use the automatic scan schedule tool in the File>Schedule section of the top menu.
To do this, we need to click on the " Insert " tab in the image .
Note: If you want to do this for more than one domain name, you can do it faster with the " Duplicate " tab after completing the configuration. It is important to remember to update the source URL address here.
Creating Basic Configuration Settings
After the first process, you will see a screen as seen below.
Here you need to fill in the relevant fields as you wish. It would be good to create a unique Task Name for the scheduler. I recommend that you specify a Project Name in order to avoid confusion in your similar works . Along with these, you need to determine when the scan will first occur and at what interval it will occur afterwards.
Setting Up Initial Settings
After you have completed the basic configurations, you need to configure the startup settings by clicking on the "Start Options" section on the side tab.
Here, the tool actually offers us two different options. One of them is to scan via Spider, the other is to scan via List Mode.
I prefer to proceed via Spider and enter my information quickly.
Here, in the Crawl Config field, if we have previously created a configuration related to Spider, we can add it.
For example, I created and saved a Configuration file specifically for this project. I will use this file. The purpose of this file is to perform the scan according to the settings and features found in the relevant file.
You can find detailed information on this subject here .
I would like to point out that I have activated the Pagespeed API tab from the API section .
Configuring Export Settings
In order for Looker Studio compatible exporting to be done overseas chinese in uk data smoothly, we need to use Headless Mode. Let's not forget to enable this feature.
After this process, I add the Google Account by clicking on the Manage tab in the Google Drive Account section .
Then, I complete the binding process by defining some permissions as seen below.
After completing the SEO Spider authorization, I edit my settings as follows.
After selecting the custom scan overview report, I set which data I want to export from the Configure section.
Since I wanted to export all the fields here, I quickly completed this part by clicking on the >> tab.
After making all the settings and clicking OK, a scan takes place as you see below.
After this process is completed, we need to look at the Google Drive account we integrated.
When we look, we see that our file is located here:
As you can see below, the export was done in a single line.
When scans occur weekly, they will all be overwritten in this file.
Connecting to Google Looker Studio
In fact, we have now technically completed a large part of the work.
After this stage, you can now create your own Looker Studio report from scratch, if you wish, or you can obtain the report by selecting your own data and creating a copy of the report we created here.
To copy the report, simply click on the three dots in the upper right corner and then click on the Create Copy tab.
Then, as can be seen below, we need to proceed by selecting our own file as the data source against the existing data sources.
When selecting a new data source, you need to perform the following steps in order to select the spreadsheet.
After selecting Google spreadsheets as the new data source, you need to follow the steps below.
After clicking on the Connect tab, the screen below will appear. Here, we complete the process by clicking Add to Report.
After adding to report, you may get errors in some parts or sometimes Looker Studio may see some fields as date type instead of number. You can edit these parts manually.
After adding to report, you can complete the process by clicking “Copy Report” as you can see in the section below.
After copying the report, the Looker Studio report will be updated in the same way every time our automatic scan runs, and you will be able to analyze the data in more graphical detail on a weekly basis.
This template, created as an example, includes elements that concern general site health. We will ensure that this is improved in the future.
Images from our report are as follows:
Overview
Indexability
On Page
In fact, all the elements on the pages above are used to quickly inform you of site problems and important changes in general.
All elements included in the relevant template are as follows:
Summary – Provides an overview of related items.
Response Codes – Allows you to get response codes of pages and information about blocked pages.
URL Types – Allows you to neatly view data related to internal HTML, images, js files, and similar items.
Indexability – Allows you to check general information for site-wide index status.
Site Structure – This usually allows you to track if there has been a change in internal links.
In-Page – Allows you to track changes in elements within the site.
Content Issues – Allows you to track issues like duplicate content, thin content, etc.
Page Speed – Allows you to systematically track CWV performance and the impact of your work.
Structured Data – Allows you to track the status of structured data across the site.
Security – Allows you to check security issues throughout your website and perform page-based http header checks.
Hreflang – Provides you with convenience for hreflang validations, especially on multilingual sites.
Sitemaps – Allows you to perform a sitemap audit.
JavaScript – Allows you to quickly follow optimization elements related to Javascript.
After updating our relevant template, an additional URL Inspection will be included in the template, which will be done with the Google URL Inspection API.
If you wish, you can enable e-mail scheduling via Looker Studio and have the report shared daily, weekly or monthly to the e-mail addresses you want.
This will make it easier for you to inform brand managers every time the report is updated.
To do this, you need to apply the settings as in the image below.
Schedule Scan
To export in a Looker Studio compatible manner, you can only use the automatic scan schedule tool in the File>Schedule section of the top menu.
To do this, we need to click on the " Insert " tab in the image .
Note: If you want to do this for more than one domain name, you can do it faster with the " Duplicate " tab after completing the configuration. It is important to remember to update the source URL address here.
Creating Basic Configuration Settings
After the first process, you will see a screen as seen below.
Here you need to fill in the relevant fields as you wish. It would be good to create a unique Task Name for the scheduler. I recommend that you specify a Project Name in order to avoid confusion in your similar works . Along with these, you need to determine when the scan will first occur and at what interval it will occur afterwards.
Setting Up Initial Settings
After you have completed the basic configurations, you need to configure the startup settings by clicking on the "Start Options" section on the side tab.
Here, the tool actually offers us two different options. One of them is to scan via Spider, the other is to scan via List Mode.
I prefer to proceed via Spider and enter my information quickly.
Here, in the Crawl Config field, if we have previously created a configuration related to Spider, we can add it.
For example, I created and saved a Configuration file specifically for this project. I will use this file. The purpose of this file is to perform the scan according to the settings and features found in the relevant file.
You can find detailed information on this subject here .
I would like to point out that I have activated the Pagespeed API tab from the API section .
Configuring Export Settings
In order for Looker Studio compatible exporting to be done overseas chinese in uk data smoothly, we need to use Headless Mode. Let's not forget to enable this feature.
After this process, I add the Google Account by clicking on the Manage tab in the Google Drive Account section .
Then, I complete the binding process by defining some permissions as seen below.
After completing the SEO Spider authorization, I edit my settings as follows.
After selecting the custom scan overview report, I set which data I want to export from the Configure section.
Since I wanted to export all the fields here, I quickly completed this part by clicking on the >> tab.
After making all the settings and clicking OK, a scan takes place as you see below.
After this process is completed, we need to look at the Google Drive account we integrated.
When we look, we see that our file is located here:
As you can see below, the export was done in a single line.
When scans occur weekly, they will all be overwritten in this file.
Connecting to Google Looker Studio
In fact, we have now technically completed a large part of the work.
After this stage, you can now create your own Looker Studio report from scratch, if you wish, or you can obtain the report by selecting your own data and creating a copy of the report we created here.
To copy the report, simply click on the three dots in the upper right corner and then click on the Create Copy tab.
Then, as can be seen below, we need to proceed by selecting our own file as the data source against the existing data sources.
When selecting a new data source, you need to perform the following steps in order to select the spreadsheet.
After selecting Google spreadsheets as the new data source, you need to follow the steps below.
After clicking on the Connect tab, the screen below will appear. Here, we complete the process by clicking Add to Report.
After adding to report, you may get errors in some parts or sometimes Looker Studio may see some fields as date type instead of number. You can edit these parts manually.
After adding to report, you can complete the process by clicking “Copy Report” as you can see in the section below.
After copying the report, the Looker Studio report will be updated in the same way every time our automatic scan runs, and you will be able to analyze the data in more graphical detail on a weekly basis.
This template, created as an example, includes elements that concern general site health. We will ensure that this is improved in the future.
Images from our report are as follows:
Overview
Indexability
On Page
In fact, all the elements on the pages above are used to quickly inform you of site problems and important changes in general.
All elements included in the relevant template are as follows:
Summary – Provides an overview of related items.
Response Codes – Allows you to get response codes of pages and information about blocked pages.
URL Types – Allows you to neatly view data related to internal HTML, images, js files, and similar items.
Indexability – Allows you to check general information for site-wide index status.
Site Structure – This usually allows you to track if there has been a change in internal links.
In-Page – Allows you to track changes in elements within the site.
Content Issues – Allows you to track issues like duplicate content, thin content, etc.
Page Speed – Allows you to systematically track CWV performance and the impact of your work.
Structured Data – Allows you to track the status of structured data across the site.
Security – Allows you to check security issues throughout your website and perform page-based http header checks.
Hreflang – Provides you with convenience for hreflang validations, especially on multilingual sites.
Sitemaps – Allows you to perform a sitemap audit.
JavaScript – Allows you to quickly follow optimization elements related to Javascript.
After updating our relevant template, an additional URL Inspection will be included in the template, which will be done with the Google URL Inspection API.
If you wish, you can enable e-mail scheduling via Looker Studio and have the report shared daily, weekly or monthly to the e-mail addresses you want.
This will make it easier for you to inform brand managers every time the report is updated.
To do this, you need to apply the settings as in the image below.