SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a mechanism most online businesses use to drive tons of traffic to their websites by increasing their visibility in search engines. Achieving overwhelming traffic with SEO requires commitment, hard work, and trial and error with various methods. However, did you know that using proxies can make your SEO activities relatively
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a mechanism most online businesses use to drive tons of traffic to their websites by increasing their visibility in search engines. Achieving overwhelming traffic with SEO requires commitment, hard work, and trial and error with various methods.
However, did you know that using proxies can make your SEO activities relatively easier and faster? It certainly does, and this article will provide an overview of how you could use proxies for enhancing your SEO strategy.
Before we dive into how proxies could help SEO let’s begin with the basics.
What is SEO in a nutshell?
SEO is the process of increasing the visibility of your website to search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, and others. So that when people search for your products in those search engines, they appear among the top results in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). Higher the visibility of your pages in SERPs, you would attract and gain more visitors to your website.
Since Google shares 90% of the search engine market globally, most SEO experts optimize websites to rank their content in Google’s SERPs.It doesn’t mean that you don’t optimize for other search engines. However, priority will be given to Google.
To achieve search engine visibility, you can approach an SEO agency. But, it would cost you a hefty sum of money. Alternatively, manual tools such as ahrefs, Moz, Semrush, and other vendors may offer their services for a higher price as well. On the other hand, some Vendors sell “Do it yourself” SEO tools that anyone can test and audit.
Whichever tool you use, proxies operate from the background of these tools. Now you might be wondering how proxies could help your SEO strategy. Stay tuned for the next section where you will discover it.
How can brands’ SEO strategies benefit from using proxies?
Suppose you have read our previous blog articles on proxies. In that case, you may be already aware that a proxy server acts as an intermediary between your computer and the web server that you”ll be connecting to by masking your IP address and location. As a result, you will be able to access geo-restricted websites, scraping the web along with numerous other benefits.
We”ll look a how these significant benefits assist with each of the steps for SEO mentioned below:
Competitor analysis
Competitor Analysis is often the first step involved when conducting an SEO strategy for a product’s website. It primarily focuses on gathering the tactics your competitors use for keyword research and their content strategy — for instance, the type of content they post on blogs and what techniques they use for writing titles and meta descriptions. Through web scraping, you could obtain such data with ease.
However, when you scrape any website, let alone competitors’ numerous times, it will block your IP address, preventing you from further scraping them. This is where you could use a proxy server to conceal your IP address and mask your location.
Even using a single proxy could lead to an IP ban on the proxy itself. Therefore, an ideal solution would be to use a pool of residential proxies that you will get to know below.
Site audits with SEO proxies and avoiding IP bans
SEO experts often implement SEO audits for competitor websites as well as their own websites. The primary objective of performing an SEO audit is to know your competitors and know where they rank in search engines.
Likewise, it enables you to identify who you are and where you rank within your region and globally. So as you may realize by now, SEO audit requires continuous scraping of Google and other reputed search engines.
So you’re left with fewer options when it comes to scraping Google. One such option being the use of bots. However, Google is notorious for banning bots. Therefore the most feasible option is to use proxies. That too, you have to make them appear as they are coming from different sources.
Keyword Research
“Content is the king” is a famous phrase that is more applicable to SEO. This is because no matter how breathtaking your site may be in terms of design, failing in good content equals failure in SEO. So the foundation for creating this great content starts with keyword research.
Using prominent keyword research tools such as Moz, ahrefs, and others, you can carry out keyword research. These tools make the best use of proxies that operate from background checking the popularity of keywords in various locations. This is known as spoofing the location, which we will cover in more detail below.
Analyzing backlinks with SEO proxies
Backlinks are another essential component for SEO that affects the ranking of your website. So you would need to have a high number of backlinks from high authority websites.
In order to get these backlinks, an older technique was to visit as many websites as possible and create accounts by verifying emails. Then the content was submitted at each one of those websites that you visited.
However, the above method proved to be ineffective. So one of the prevailing methods to create backlinks is to use automated SEO tools. These tools like ScrapeBox scans backlink opportunities, including contact details, through social media as well.
Just merely using these tools to scan or scrape data will likely cause you an IP ban. Therefore, again you need to rotate proxies not to have your website blacklisted, which may even downgrade your Google ranking.
Rank the tracking with proxies
As I have mentioned in the introductory part, SEO requires continuous experiments and tests. Thus it is a never-ending process. So there should be a mechanism to monitor your progress to measure your results.
Obviously, you can track the traffic that your website generates. However, merely measuring traffic is not sufficient as you also need to see how your targeted keywords rank not just locally but globally as well.
To investigate how your keywords rank in SERPs for multiple locations, you must scrape SERPs in real-time for a particular period for all the targeted keywords.
When doing so, I once again iterated using a pool of rotating proxies for each scrape. So that search engines will not block your website.
Check the search engine ranking for any county with local proxies
Local SEO is a critical component of any SEO strategy. You need to create multiple content to suit the different target audiences in different parts of the globe. When doing so, you need to research keywords and competitors for each country.
After this content creation, you need to observe how they rank in each country. The most obvious method is to use an IP address from the country that you wish to monitor the traffic from. You can choose such IP addresses from a specific location when you use geo-targeted proxies.
Then you would be able to view search engine rankings from any country.
Social media enhancement with proxies
Social media monitoring forms an essential component of your SEO strategy. This is because 71% of consumers who have had a positive experience with a brand on social media are likely to recommend it to their friends or family members.
By using proxies, you can share multiple ads and monitor and conduct social media activities continuously without fearing getting spammed or suspicious. So whenever you automate comments or views, it would appear to the spam detectors as they are coming from multiple sources. When in reality, they are originating from the same source.
Such automated acts can certainly boost SEO traffic via social media entering your website.
Simulate human-like traffic through SEO proxies
Before starting to describe this context, I must say that this is a grey area in SEO.So please be very careful and think twice before you implement this with SEO proxies.
However, we have decided to mention this context here because your competitors might use this tactic to have a competitive edge, mainly if you compete against top competitors in the market.
One emerging factor determining your rank is the number of clicks that a user clicks on a link in a SERP that leads to a page on your site. This is known as the click-through rate. The other factor is the amount of time a user spends on that page, known as the dwell time. In other words, the higher the click-through rate and the higher the amount of time spent on the page will lead to a higher ranking.
Most spammers increment the click-through rate and dwell time using automated bots with SEO proxies.
So before you intend to follow this technique, we recommend seeking advice from an experienced SEO personal.
Tips to keep in mind when purchasing SEO proxies
- Paid or Free proxy Server
Although free proxies are available frequently, you should not use them for SEO purposes. With most of the free proxies, multiple users use them simultaneously. Therefore, If an IP address from a free proxy gets blocked or blacklisted, you would not be able to use it continuously.
In addition, some of the free proxy providers tend to steal confidential information while you’re using it. Therefore you must continually invest in paid proxies for the SEO strategy of your company.
- Location targeted SEO proxies
As I have mentioned previously, you can create content for different countries and then monitor how they rank in those countries. For instance, how your content ranks in the US versus how it ranks in Germany. To monitor these various rankings, you need to use proxies from multiple locations.
So when you’re choosing a proxy provider, you need to check if they provide proxies from various locations.
- Security
You do not want your competitors to find out that you were scraping their websites to search what keywords or link-building strategies they use. You can also encounter situations where malicious websites are attempting to provide you with fake information.
A proxy server will shield you from accessing malicious websites and your competitors, banning you in both the above scenarios. So you need to check for security features before purchasing a proxy.
- Speed
Without effective speed, scraping data for competitive analysis and site audits would not be efficient. As after all, you don’t want to be standard for hours trying to scrape quality information. So speed is an essential factor when selecting a proxy for SEO.
So you need to select a proxy server that offers good bandwidth and faster speeds. You could check ou residential proxy page for further information.
Frequently Asked Questions:
Is it legal to use proxies for SEO scraping?
It is legal in the US, Europe, and most other countries to use proxies for SEO. However, you need to be aware of the purpose of using the proxy, as not all websites allow scraping from websites. So it remains in your hands to use the proxy safely.
What types of proxies are best for SEO?
As mentioned above, you need private proxies with reliable bandwidth, speed, and a range of multiple locations to choose from. So, residential proxies will be your best choice as they contain real users’ IP addresses. So they will not be likely to be blocked by target websites.
Conclusion
In this article, you have learned about how proxies play a part in assisting your SEO strategy. To achieve ranking for your website and drive traffic, you need to implement SEO strategies with patience. Proxies play a considerable role when executing an SEO strategy for your company, from keyword research to link building and monitoring your traffic.
Therefore, you can not ignore the proxies for SEO.