There’s a true race in ranking high on search engine results. Among optimizing your website, branding your product, and building an audience, being visible on the Internet can take more than a day’s work to achieve. But Rome wasn’t built in one day, was it?
To stay on top of the Google game, you first need research, which entails collecting all the existent information there is. Can that be achieved manually? Highly debatable. While you shouldn’t rule this option out, know that it doesn’t come without extra difficulties. Perhaps you do want to employ a whole new team of people to achieve this in a month’s time, but maybe you should automate the process and be done with it overnight. Introducing: SERP scraping.
What are SERP scrapers?
A SERP (Search Engine Results Page) scraper is a tool that collects the data that search engines like Google present for a certain search term.
When you extract data from SERPs, you may identify the top-ranking contenders for the keywords that interest you. Then you can examine these results and determine which SEO tactics they used to get such results.
API requests are tailored so you get back only the results you need. This is a terrific method to execute a focused, uncomplicated plan without having to spend hours on a search engine copying and pasting data.
The most important data to look for is usually who holds the top spots in the organic ranking. According to studies, the top page results receive the most traffic. In addition, it performs better in terms of other KPIs than succeeding pages.
Since manually using search engines is slow and gives varying results, we have to take matters into our own hands. There are two options available: building your own SERP scraper or using a pre-built SERP data API. So let us look into both, shall we?
DIY SERP Scraper
So you’ve decided to build your own SERP Scraper and not rely on SEO tools that only get a fraction of the job done. Or maybe you’re simply ambitious and want to customize your tool as much as possible.
This option might, however, cost you significantly more in terms of time and patience. Even though learning how to build your own SERP scraper is a viable choice, money can still be an issue. You might think that this option circumvents all costs, but you must still pay for some resources, such as proxies.
Don’t think about using public proxies. Not only can they be dangerous, but if you know about them, Google does too and they most likely already blocked those IPs.
Your best bet are residential proxies, since those are the least likely to be noticed. The ideal proxy solution is a pool of residential IPs spread around the globe and rotated after each request.
Using a pre-built API
Let's look at the alternative, which is to use a SERP API that has already been developed. There are several sorts of SERP scraping tools available, however pre-built APIs are what most developers use.
Disclaimer: you don’t need to be a code wizard for this, but some knowledge is helpful. And even if you are one, you must certainly be aware of the fact that building your own scraper is a matter of trial-and-error. Result accuracy is challenging to obtain when not using a ready-made SERP data API since those were carefully crafted to gather all data related to any keyword. You have a lot of available request options with each API call that will assist you in acquiring the exact information you need.
A REST (Representational State Transfer) API, on the other hand, will get you all the search results you ask for. To get it going, type in your desired keywords, and a JSON file will be returned to you in a jiffy. The great thing is that it goes beyond automation. In fact, a pre-built API will solve issues like CAPTCHAs and IP blocks straight out of the box. Pick a tool with a headless browser so it can render Javascript.
Unlike a do-it-yourself scraper, an API can instantly get you results from multiple locations around the globe, as opposed to one that would take much longer to program yourself. Having a large pool of IP addresses makes your process untraceable, and in turn, allows you to gather more data, faster. The end results are also easy to configure based on language and geographic positioning.
Pick and Choose
There's the DIY SERP scraper, which provides the homespun element and adaptability at the cost of time, extensive coding, and brain cells. On the other side awaits the pre-built REST API, which is constantly maintained by developers and takes care of the heavy-duty tasks.
Still unsure? Try seeing if the costs are worth it with the SearchData 100 free searches upon signup!
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