Custom Extractions & XPath for SEO – with David Gossage, Technical SEO Manager at Click Consult

Human-First Digital - SEO and Website Optimization Podcast

This week on Lumar’s Human-First Digital Podcast, we're discussing how to use custom extractions (and XPath) — an often overlooked tool in SEOs’ arsenal — to turbo-charge your website crawls, SEO projects, and provide support for broader marketing efforts. Our guest this week is David Gossage, an e-commerce technical SEO expert and SEO manager at Click Consult.

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“I’ve found that knowing how to extract things is a very good way of making friends with a lot of people,” says Chris Spann, host of Human-First Digital.

“A simple example of where it will benefit non-tech teams: Say you’ve got a list of other websites that you want to target for backlinks. You can crawl a site and go, ‘Well, actually, all of the outbound links of this site are ‘nofollow’ — you can do that using XPath,” explains Gossage.

Explore how custom extractions can benefit SEO, content, paid search teams, and broader digital marketing efforts in the full episode.

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Episode Timestamps:

• 00:00:11 — Welcome to Human-First Digital, a Lumar podcast
• 00:00:29 — Meet David Gossage, Technical SEO Manager for E-Commerce Websites
• 00:05:20 — Understanding XPath Basics
• 00:07:27 — Overcoming XPath Challenges
• 00:11:36 — How Custom Extractions Enable Collaboration Across Web Teams
• 00:14:12 — Key Takeaways & Final Thoughts

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Episode Links:

Follow guest David Gossage on LinkedIn.

Follow host Chris Spann on LinkedIn.

Follow Lumar on LinkedIn.

Explore Lumar’s technical SEO and website optimization platform.

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Further Reading on Custom Extractions:

• How to create XPaths for almost any Custom Extraction (by David Gossage)
• Lumar Webinar On-Demand: Advanced SEO Crawling Techniques – How to Use Custom Extractions
• Getting the Most Out of Lumar with Custom Extractions
• Custom Extraction Use Cases
• Explore Lumar’s Technical SEO Analytics

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About Lumar’s Human-First Digital (HFD) Podcast:

In this podcast series, website optimization expert Chris Spann (Senior Technical SEO at Lumar) speaks to the brightest minds in the world of SEO and digital optimization.

The HFD podcast is brought to you by Lumar. Learn more about Lumar’s full website optimization platform and our robust suite of enterprise-scale SEO, web accessibility, and site speed tools at lumar.io