@foo-software/binoculars

A tool to measure web page SEO friendliness. Binoculars extends Google's Lighthouse to provide a more opinionated, SEO specific audit.

• Choice of programmatic usage or CLI.
• Run a single audit or multiple audits at once.
• Upload reports to S3 via simple configuration.
• Automatically post results as comments in GitHub via commits or pull requests (see options).
• Automatically post results in Slack (see options).

Meaningful Content

Binoculars extends Lighthouse by adding the following audits in a custom group named "Meaningful Content".

• Title Length: Title should be between 50 - 70 characters.
• Description Length: Descriptions should be between 100 - 160 characters.
• Keywords: Keyword phrases of at least 2 words should exist in the title, description and at least twice in the content of the page.
• Headings: Has at least 1 <h1> tag and 1 <h2> tag.
• Meaningful Text: Has sufficient textual content (300 characters).
• Meaningful Tag Structure: Has at least 2 different informational HTML tags of the following types: <p>, <li>, <img>, <table>.

Metrics

Binoculars accounts for metrics from Lighthouse SEO and accessibility categories and weights them accordingly. It combines metrics from these categories with the "Meaningful Content" group detailed above. See the complete list of audits and weighting here.

Usage

Use programmatically or via CLI.

npm i @foo-software/binoculars

or

yarn @foo-software/binoculars

Programmatic Usage

const path = require('path');
const binoculars = require('@foo-software/binoculars').default;

(async () => {
  const results = await binoculars({
    url: 'https://www.foo.software',
 
    // example if you have an "artifacts" directory in your root directory
    outputDirectory: path.resolve('./artifacts'),
 
    // any other options go here
  });
 
  console.log('local report', results[0].localReport);
  // local report ./reports/report-1602194942162.html

  console.log('score', results[0].result.categories.binocularsSeo.score);
  // score 0.96
})();

CLI Usage

Arguments are represented in the options section. Any array type relies on the pipe symbol as shown with urls in the second example below.

binoculars --url https://www.foo.software --outputDirectory ./artifacts

Use a | when auditing multiple URLs like so:

binoculars --urls "https://www.foo.software|https://www.foo.software/register"

Options

Name	Description	Type	Default	Required
author	For Slack notifications: A user handle, typically from GitHub.	string	undefined	no
awsAccessKeyId	The AWS accessKeyId for an S3 bucket.	string	undefined	no
awsBucket	The AWS Bucket for an S3 bucket.	string	undefined	no
awsRegion	The AWS region for an S3 bucket.	string	undefined	no
awsSecretAccessKey	The AWS secretAccessKey for an S3 bucket.	string	undefined	no
branch	For Slack notifications: A version control branch, typically from GitHub.	string	undefined	no
commentAccessToken	Access token of a user to post PR comments.	string	undefined	no
commentUrl	An endpoint to post comments to. Typically this will be from GitHub's API. Example: https://api.github.com/repos/:owner/:repo/pulls/:pull_number/reviews	string	undefined	no
enableComments	If true and commentAccessToken is set along with commentUrl, scores will be posted as comments.	boolean	true	no
finalScreenshotAwsBucket	The AWS Bucket for an S3 bucket. If this is defined, the final screenshot will be uploaded here	string	undefined	no
minScore	The required minimum score. If score is lower an error will throw.	number	undefined	no
outputDirectory	An absolute directory path to output report. You can do this an an alternative or combined with an S3 upload.	string	undefined	no
pr	For Slack notifications: A version control pull request URL, typically from GitHub.	string	undefined	no
slackWebhookUrl	A Slack Incoming Webhook URL to send notifications to.	string	undefined	no
sha	For Slack notifications: A version control sha, typically from GitHub.	string	undefined	no
url	A URL to run Binoculars against.	string	undefined	yes
urls	An array of URLs. In the CLI this value should be a pipe separated list (|).	string[]	undefined	yes

Return Payload

binoculars is a promise that resolves an array. The reason it resolves with an array is because options allow url or urls. Because a consistent return is ideal, we return an array regardless if there is only one result or more. Each array item is an object with the below payload.

Name	Description	Type
finalScreenshot	A URL to the final screenshot image. This will only be defined if finalScreenshotAwsBucket parameter was.	string
localReport	A local path to the report (if applicable).	string
result	A comprehensive result - the equivalent of what is returned when using the lighthouse module directly.	object
report	A URL to the report HTML file.	string

Environment Variables

You can optionally provide environment variables as detailed below.

Name	Description	Type	Default
BINOCULARS_CHROME_PORT	The port for Chrome to run audits on.	number	4000
BINOCULARS_INTEGRATION_SERVER_DOMAIN	Domain of the integration server.	string	localhost
BINOCULARS_INTEGRATION_SERVER_PORT	Port to run the integration server on.	number	3000
BINOCULARS_INTEGRATION_SERVER_PROTOCOL	Protocol of the integration server.	string	http
LOG_LEVEL	The Winston log level (use "off" to run without logging).	string	info

Credits

This package was brought to you by Foo - a website quality monitoring tool. Automatically test and monitor website performance, SEO and accessibility with Lighthouse. Analyze historical records of Lighthouse tests with automated monitoring. Report with confidence about SEO and performance improvements to stay on top of changes when they happen!