How to Use a Blog Scraper to Acquire Data
To make money, a blog needs two essential things: lots of views and an extensive following. Both of those things can be hard to obtain without great content. Simply put, the most reliable way to get more eyes on your blog — in a consistent manner — is by creating content that people actually want to see.
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But how do you know what your target audience is craving? You might have a ton of great ideas, but they may not align with what the majority of people want to read online.
Fortunately, there’s an easy way to find out what content is popular in your niche. This method is known as web scraping. Learning how to scrape blog content can help you gain insight into what’s popular and what sort of content will bring more viewers to your blog. The best blog scrapers are easy to use and can get you the data you need to start building a popular, high-quality blog.
What is Blog Scraping?
Blog scraping is a great way to guide your content creation process. Scraping involves mining information from the internet based on keywords. It’s performed by bots that make copies of data from other sites. These bots come in the form of scraping software that you can either purchase or develop on your own (if you have the technical skills to do so). Companies that rely on data to help direct their business goals and strategy can utilize scraping to harvest their data.
But before using any scraping software, you should first do a little research of your own. Start by finding a popular website within your niche — think of some of your biggest blogging competitors. Once you have a website in mind, a scraping tool like Scraping Robot can be used to look at that website’s essential data. This includes information like what posts are most popular on the site and how many views those posts get, overall and on the day you scraped.
How Blog Scraping Brings Value to Your Business
A blog takes valuable time, resources, and money to create, especially if you’re hiring outside help like writers and designers to create quality content. It can be challenging to figure out which types of blog posts to create, though — whether you’ve just started a blog or have had one up for a while.
Instead of working through months of trial and error, you can use a blog scraper to help point you in the right direction. A blog scraper can help you understand what is working (and not working) for your biggest competitors, and where you can fill in the gaps on your own blog. The data you get from blog scraping can direct your content strategy so that you’re building and publishing blog posts that will actually be read, appreciated, and (hopefully) shared.
Scraping popular blogs based on significant keywords will allow you to know the kind of content your target audience is reading. Blog scrapers will generate a list of content titles, along with how many total views and daily views those posts get. This information allows you to differentiate between currently trending content and content that has staying power.
How to Scrape Blog Content
Scraping blog content is a fast way to gain access to data that will help you grow your own blog. There are a couple of ways to effectively scrape blog content. First, you can scrape other blogs for keywords relevant to your site and generate a list of the most popular and effective posts in your niche. Second, you can scrape a few popular blogs to see which content has proven successful for them.
To scrape blog data, use a scraping API (Application Programming Interface) that allows you to access an application. Scraping APIs can be used on websites and apps.
An API scraper works a little differently than traditional scraping methods. Web scraping only allows you to access information via software. But when you use an API to scrape blog content, you can acquire real-time data from that blog. Having access to real-time data keeps you updated on the latest trends within your niche.
When you are new to business, blogging, scraping, or a combination of the three, the last thing you need is a complicated scraper you have to learn how to use — or one that doesn’t even work at all. Keep in mind that many blogs, websites, and search engines have anti-bot software in place that can detect bots and stop a search in its tracks. CAPTCHA tools can also prevent scraping bots from working effectively.
Depending on what you attempt to scrape, you may end up getting your IP address blocked from major search engines or social media platforms. To avoid these frustrating scenarios, it is highly recommended that you use an established scraping API, like Scraping Robot. This simple and straightforward tool requires only a few clicks to get you the valuable data you need.
Once you’ve signed up with Scraping Robot, just follow this three-step plan to scrape a blog, get your data, and start bringing in more customers to your site:
- Choose the website you want to scrape, then copy the link to it.
- Paste the URL in Scraping Robot’s search bar feature and click “Run.”
- Download your results to analyze and begin planning your upcoming blog posts.
If you require more than the primary data from your scrape, you can always request custom scraping models to give you even more detailed data.
How to Use the Data from a Blog Scraper
Once you have collected data from scraping, you can start to improve your business by creating posts related to high-ranking topics. Along with content creation, there are various other ways to use the data acquired from a blog scraping API to grow your business.
For example, having access to real-time data allows you to identify opportunities to focus on the trends of the day, week, month, or year — and even get ahead of those trends. Knowing what your competitors are doing — and how well they’re doing it — keeps you in the know and helps you zoom in on the content and products you should be focusing on.
Another way to build up your blog quickly and effectively via scraping is create an aggregator using outside content. Aggregation is the process of collecting relevant content via a web scraper and posting it to your site. Building an aggregator allows you to offer a wide range of great content without having to take the time to create it yourself. This is not a form of plagiarism if you follow a few important steps before publishing any aggregated content:
- Contact the source and get a written contract that says it is okay to aggregate their content.
- Only post part of the content and provide a link to the original source.
- Provide proper citation with author information.
Whether you want to create your own content or provide an aggregator that spotlights related content, Scraping Robot can build a custom scraper for your needs. That scraper will scrape for specific keywords, categories, or content types, allowing you to feature the best, most relevant content on your site and filter out the rest.
Find the Best API to Collect Blog Data
There are many web scraping tools available to collect blog data, so it’s hard to know which one is easiest and most effective. The whole point of scraping is to collect data without putting extra unnecessary strain on your business. For the best results, look for API scrapers that are fast, easy to use, and give you real-time results. When choosing an API scraper, also keep in mind that the latest technology is constantly changing. Having the most up-to-date tool is important.
Scraping Robot is the best API to use, especially when you are learning how to scrape blog data. This cost-effective tool only requires three simple steps to access the valuable data you are looking for to improve your business. The first 5,000 scrapes performed by Scraping Robot are performed free of charge. After 5,000 scrapes, it costs less than a penny per scrape.
Scraping Robot is constantly reviewing its processes and coming up with newer and more effective scraping models to get you the most accurate data. We also offer customer support that’s available all day, every day. Our support staff can assist you with questions and concerns at any step in your blog scraping process.
Get Scraping Robot today to start collecting valuable blog data to help you bring in more readers and more customers for your business.
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