Web scrapers and proxy service providers have been touting the importance of data for years. Now, businesses are finally paying attention. Various statistics make it increasingly clear that data analytics plays a major role in business operations.
A study shows that in 2023, about 61% of the respondents stated they adopted big data and analytics in their business. However, you might wonder why big data is important. Further, how do you use a data miner to collect it? We look at tips on how to use your scraper better and why it’s necessary.
What’s Web Scraping?
Web scraping, or data mining, is when tools and software collect information from public online sources. It scans and collects the required data from websites. Then, it uses a built-in parser to organize the information in a readable format. This way, businesses can get accurate content from competitors within hours.
Benefits of Web Scraping for Competitive Analysis
The adoption rate of emerging technologies like big data analysis is growing, and we can see why. Access to the latest information ensures a competitive edge over other online brands. Some benefits of web scraping for competitive analysis are helping you identify top-performing content, allowing a flexible strategy, and getting fresh ideas.
Separate the Wheat from the Chaff
You can easily see the high-performing content vs. low-performing content. This helps businesses understand which type of marketing, content, and backlinks are more accepted by potential leads. After all, the best way to get new customers is by offering them what they want and didn’t know they needed. Quality content is your way into niche markets.
Flexible Content Strategy
Content strategies, like marketing campaigns, should be flexible. With a flexible approach, you can easily adjust it to fit the market and the latest trends. Gathering information from your competitors and customers can help you learn about the latest trends as they happen and take advantage of them.
Gain Innovative Content Ideas
Sometimes, an innovative idea isn’t necessarily a 100% unique idea. You can see what your competitors are doing to boost your imagination. Building on concepts and content that resonate with clients can help enhance your strategy. It can also help you see where your content strategy is lacking if you see a format you’re not utilizing to its maximum.
Keep Ahead of the Competition
Innovation and knowledge combined will keep you ahead of the competition. You can be one of the first to know when new trends and technology affect your content strategy. It also helps you know what type of pricing your customers will accept. You must become a market leader and trusted source by using the data available to make informed decisions in your content marketing.
How to Better Scrape Data
While web scraping is crucial to competitive analysis, many people believe it’s out of their reach. There’s a myth that you need coding knowledge to operate a web scraper, which simply isn’t true. No code scrapers are made to be as user-friendly as possible. We also look at four tips to enhance your scraping activities.
Identify Your Top Competitors
The first tip is to identify your top three competitors. While you can scrape hundreds to thousands of sites simultaneously, it’s not always necessary. The best starting point is to look at your direct competitors’ actions.
You should already know which three are your biggest competition, but now you can target them in your scraping activities. That way, you get access to information most relevant to you. It takes into consideration your market, products, services, and pricing.
Automate Your Web Scrapers
Use SEO crawlers and web scrapers to automate the data collection process. The thing about competitive analysis is that it’s not a one-and-done process. You constantly need to collect the most updated and accurate market information. That’s the only way you can make informed decisions.
Luckily, by installing the web scraper and setting it up using a proxy service, it’s easy enough to automate it. It will constantly collect the latest information and sort it based on relevance. It can also filter the data using keywords you provide, so you don’t sit with a massive amount of data you’ll never use.
Determine Your Metrics
When performing competitive content analysis, you must know what metrics to look at. It doesn’t help you to collect competitor data on everything on their site. All that will happen is that you have spreadsheets upon spreadsheets of useless information.
Some of the crucial data you have to collect to see how your competitors are doing are:
- Performance metrics (likes, shares, followers, backlinks, referral domains, etc.)
- Meta tags (H1-H6, meta tags, descriptions, alt text, etc.)
- Content length (reading time and words)
- Other data (visual content, images, category tags, etc.)
Use Proxies
The best way to improve your web scraping is to use a proxy service. Residential and datacenter proxies are ideal tools for enhancing data mining capabilities. Some of the primary challenges scrapers face are being IP-blocked, rate-limited, or geo-blocked.
However, using a proxy means you can bypass these challenges. Proxies, like rotating ones, can change your IP with each connection, bypassing IP blocks and rate limits. You can also change your location automatically or manually to avoid geo-blocks.
Accurate Data Gains an Edge on the Competition
The first step to getting one over your competition is to know what they’re doing. After all, they say, “Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer”. Knowledge helps you make informed decisions. Enhance your data mining using a proxy service, and start accurately analyzing competitive content to gain an edge in the market.