Web Scraping and the World of SEO

Businesses use web scraping to gain a competitive advantage in the market to maximize their revenue. One of the techniques is to scrape data related to SEO. Businesses prefer web scraping due to its ability to crawl through the internet continuously and gather data. Everyone dreams of becoming the best in what they do. 

The best practice is to use a proxy to help you navigate seamlessly through the internet — whether it’s for personal use, browsing the internet, or scraping content in any shape or form.

All of this and more will be outlined in the article we have for you today.

Most people ask: what is a proxy?

A proxy is a gateway between users and the internet that helps in becoming anonymous while surfing. You’ve probably already heard about different types of proxies like residential, datacenter or scraping proxies. The latter helps a lot in conducting market research, but you can read more here.

Most businesses prefer using scraping proxies to obtain their desired results as these ones are fast and help to mask their personal or registered IP address and provide a proxy IP address instead. Proxies are also used by businesses to check their website rankings anonymously.

As recommended by many top cybersecurity companies, there are instances where the search engine is able to recognize the business’s IP address and would show owned websites in higher search rankings than they actually are. 

Everything is based on keywords

Successful SEO campaigns are based on keywords research, which is one of the major factors that determine search engine rankings. With the help of data scraping, businesses are able to extract their competitor’s keywords results and then compare them with their keywords. They are also able to discover personas that competitors are targeting, including their results. 

Web scraping also provides businesses with accurate and up-to-date data to conduct market analysis such as getting prices of products in real-time, sorting reviews, and understanding the online brand image of the business. Web scraping provides guidance to businesses on how to create outstanding content to boost their revenues and online presence in search engines. 

Another popular use of web scraping is to generate leads. Businesses scrape the web to extract information for reaching potential buyers. This practice is extremely common in numerous business-to-business organizations as contact information is mostly available publicly over the internet. 

Automated extraction

Web scraping for SEO-based writing also has its perks. Large chunks of data are extracted which saves hours of manual labor and searching. Having abundant data at hand lets businesses conduct multiple research to find ways of creating good reach by writing informative articles for their readers or consumers. 

The most important element in SEO is keywords and it is complemented by the use of web scraping. Crawling the web with fast scraping proxies can help users in finding the right keywords to start building their SEO strategy. The easiest method for finding keywords to have an upper hand on your competitors is to find high search volume keywords by scraping Google rankings data.  

With ample content, businesses are able to make better-informed decisions regarding the content they are planning to generate, distribute, or market. With the help of Google-based keyword research, making this possible is not an issue for businesses of large volume as they have the resources and the manpower to conduct detailed keyword research. 

Real-time performance monitoring 

Knowledge about the performance of products or services is also important and with web scraping, getting real-time feedback is no hassle. Just set your web scraper to crawl on the internet and it will extract information related to your product easily. The extracted information can be used to define parameters and performance patterns of your products or services so that you are aware of what went well and what went wrong.

Even if you deploy a web scraper on your business website, it will return metrics that inform you about the performance of your website, impressions, and keyword rankings. This is an important insight for businesses because they are able to rectify themselves if they do something that hurts their image. 

Another method to increase SEO ranking through web scraping is to find relevant industry influencers. This can be easily achieved by deploying a web scraper by using proxies to search for articles related to your keyword. When the database is completed, you can collaborate with them by negotiating a deal to have backlinks to your articles or products inserted into their blog or website. 

The risks involved 

However, web scraping for SEO advantages is a risky step as there is a possibility of a ban by websites or search engines due to extensive scraping. The first step is discovering scrapers by looking up their IP addresses. If businesses use their standard IP frequently, then there is a good chance of getting flagged and blocked. Therefore, the recommended practice is to use proxies to mask your IP address. 

Proxies work in a simple way; the user makes a request from his end, which is received by the proxy first. Then the proxy server uses its unique IP address to send the request to the target website on the user’s behalf. The website sends its feedback to the proxy server, which is forwarded to the user. 

Apart from this, it is better to use a headless browser for deploying a web scraper. Headless browsers have no GUI and web crawlers can navigate easily through the internet without exposing themselves to the security checks imposed by websites. The web crawler can easily mask itself as a human while accessing the website. 

Conclusion 

SEO adaptation has the ability to make or break a business. Timely transition to SEO and adaptation of web scrapers to run SEO-based checks in the background are a few ingredients that lead to a healthy revenue stream and a strong online presence for businesses that are committed to their vision.

To learn more about how to create the best possible content for your website and social media marketing efforts, be sure to read through all of the latest content featured on this blog. Visit often, as new content is added daily.