The number of visitors to your website, also known as web traffic, is essential for large and small businesses. Usually, it increases brand awareness, conversions, sales, and, finally, increased revenue. According to research, over 90% of web traffic originates from search engines. This means that sites that can improve their visibility/ranking on search engines stand to benefit significantly. This is where search engine optimization or SEO comes in.
What is Search Engine Optimization?
Search engines have established a working criterion, encased in powerful algorithms powered by machine learning and artificial intelligence, of determining the relevance of a given website in relation to the content therein as well as the search terms used by users. However, the exact details of the technicalities driving the algorithm remain unknown.
However, some information and best practices offered by the search engines or uncovered through web scraping have helped websites navigate the unknown. The information and best practices have led to what we refer to as search engine optimization (SEO).
SEO is a collection of practices and processes that, when integrated into websites, progressively increase their visibility on search engines. Some of these on-page practices include links (backlinking and internal links), keywords (short and long-tail keywords), headings, the structure of the website/content, and more.
Of these, keywords stand out because they are the cradle. They, along with other markers integral in the larger SEO big picture, can be identified through search engine results pages (SERP) scraping.
What is SERP Scraping?
Firstly, a SERP refers to a webpage, which is part of a search engine’s website, that displays the search results for the user to comb through. Thus, SERP scraping is the process of extracting data from these pages. Depending on how sophisticated the SERP scraper is, you can collect information from maps, images, news sites, product pages, books, and more.
SERP scraping is an essential part of a company’s SEO strategy. It helps identify keywords best suited for a given topic or them. Conducted by a SERP scraper, SERP scraping essentially collects the data contained in the top results – including the titles, meta descriptions, URL slugs – and subsequently converts it into a structured format for download. Simply, SERP scraping collects snippets of different results.
However, the scraped SERP data cannot be used in any SEO initiatives when in its raw form. It first has to be analyzed to offer useful insights. Analysis yields the following information:
- The most frequently used keywords, in terms of volume
- The optimum length of the titles in terms of the number of characters
- How to structure a URL slug
- How to create an optimized meta description and much more
Challenges of SERP Scraping for Website SEO
It is not uncommon for search engines to prompt you to solve a puzzle (CAPTCHA) when the algorithms detect unusual traffic originating from your IP address. Given that SERP scraping is bound to generate numerous requests, it goes without saying that the data extraction efforts will potentially be curtailed or slowed by the CAPTCHAs. This is especially so if you are not using a specialized SERP scraper.
Some of the challenges include:
- IP bans and blocks
- CAPTCHAs
- Inability to collect structured data
- Slow data extraction speeds
- Dynamic content if you are to scrap individual websites
Why SERP Scraper API is the Best Solution for Website SEO
Fortunately, you can use a SERP Scraper API, which helps solve all these challenges. It is a sophisticated tool that extracts localized SERP data from leading search engines. It achieves this by using proxy servers located in different countries. Thus, if you operate a multinational business, you are always guaranteed to collect data related to your target market.
It is noteworthy that the SERP Scraper API collects different types of data from various SERPs. These include snippets, images, product data, news, maps and reviews, and more.
At the same time, the use of proxies and an in-built proxy rotator ensures that the SERP scraping proceeds smoothly. This combination guarantees that only a few requests originate from one IP address. This prevents CAPTCHAs or IP blocks. What’s more, it has a retry function that ensures 100% success every time you are extracting SERP data.
Finally, the SERP Scraper API converts the data into a structured format, storing it as a .csv file or in JSON format. This last step facilitates analysis, which subsequently offers insight into how well you can optimize your website for SEO.
Conclusion
Given the influence of search engines on web traffic, search engine optimization has increasingly gained importance. If you are looking to optimize the content and web pages on your business’s website to increase their visibility on search engines, you need to undertake SERP scraping. However, for successful and smooth data extraction, you need to use sophisticated tools such as the SERP Scraper API.
