What is Web Scraping

 

Extraction of data and information from a given web source and transforming it into a structured data format for further analysis is referred to as Web Scraping, also commonly known as web harvesting and / or web data extraction.

Why Web Scraping

 

In the recent times, with huge amount of data outpouring on the internet, web scraping has grown to become one of the most essential tool for aggregating Big Data sets. Not only this, it has also proven to be a helpful tool for marketers devising their inbound marketing strategies, which many a times, though, may seem to be a far-less aggressive and intrusive form of marketing. Its role in inbound marketing is of greater importance and more so because inbound marketing cannot happen in a vacuum i.e., one cannot create blogs and posts or other website material on topics to pull out of thin air. Instead, it requires plenty of accurate data pertaining to the potential and/or targeted strata of audience, their interests when seeing or learning about something, and most importantly, the way the content is to be presented to them such that it is engaging and interesting but at the same time fulfills the required goal of marketing. And that’s exactly how web scraping helps an individual / firm through its data mining techniques, using which one can learn everything and anything about the customers, their interests, and the best ways to reach out to them.

However, beside the aforesaid, there 3 are other benefits too which tag along the art of Web Scraping, which include:-

 

Contact Database Build-up

 

One of the most essential task for any marketer is to locate where the audience is with respect to their product(s) and that’s where the role of Web scraping comes in.  It is a tool which quickly finds the required information, particularly if data is to be mined from social media, and filters it through to find the targeted audiences by the use of comprehensive web data integration techniques.

Market Analysis

 

In today’s competitive arena, it is absolutely crucial for any firm or organization to be up to date in terms of data and technology, so as o create its own niche and maintain it throughout, more so as it helps in understanding the kind of content  to be produced for the targeted audience. And for this, be it in the bygone era or be it now in the modern times, market research stands as the only tried and tested option. And so, to help everyone with their market anlysis web scraping tools automatically provide the marketer with feeds of news articles, ongoing pricing and sales data, and details about their competitors’ traits, thus ensuring a safer and better game play.

Search engine optimization

 

In today’s era, one of the most effective way to generate and divert traffic to a brand’s website is by the effective use of search engine optimization or SEO. But where on one hand it sounds easy, in reality it is an art to SEO. This is because one has to know accurately as to what the right keywords are and has to continuously evaluate its ratings and effectiveness. In such cases, Web scraping comes to the rescue as it instantly tells which keywords are generating the best traffic—both as per one’s website as well as per that of their competitors