Proxies for SEO â The How, When & Why
Hey! If you found it this far, either you likely googled âSEO proxiesâ or you found our site another way and this topic just so happened to catch your eye.
Well, we know the former is most likely. Who else would read a blog on SEO proxies if they werenât in the search engine optimization game and curious about the role proxies play and, if they can be used to your benefit, how?
The Best Proxies For SEO?
Thatâd be residential â theyâre authentic, geolocated and the least likely to get banned.
So letâs explore what we actually mean by âSEO proxiesâ, how they can help you in your SEO data projects and what kind of proxies are the best SEO proxies.
How Can Proxies Help With Search Engine Optimization?
The short answer is that proxies donât help with search engine optimization directly. Now obviously youâve seen the length of this article, so letâs just to the longer answer.
Anyone who has worked in search engine optimization for any amount of time knows that tools are essential. SEO is an information game, and that information usually comes from tools that crawl search engine rankings and do their best to estimate those sweet average search volumes that we love to chase đ
What â did you think keyword research happened by magic? Whether youâre looking to optimize local SEO results, or just want to build a tool for SEO monitoring a given brand, ad campaign or other organic initiative⊠youâre going to need proxies.
What Do We Mean By âSEO Proxiesâ?
A proxy server is just an external IP address that handles your internet requests. This way, search engines donât see your real IP address and they send data back based on the IP they are working with. So, you can think of it like incognito mode or a VPN, but itâs a little better than that.
Private browsing just clears your history and cookies â youâre still interacting via the same IP address or location. This means youâre just getting the same search engine rankings, customized to your locale. Not great if youâre trying to implement specific SEO monitoring.
A VPN, on the other hand, lets you better control the region you appear from. For many purposes, such as keyword research and SEO monitoring, this might very well do. In fact, if you wanted a cheap SEO proxy service, we suppose you could use such a tool but⊠youâre still using a well used service. Sure, that provider has thousands of IPs, but if someone else has been using them for something similar, it could likewise implicate your own search results.
Do Search Engines Like Proxies?
In general, search engines donât particularly relish the use of proxies, but they do tolerate them. What you have to remember is that search engines are built to serve real, human users. What they have no stake in is automated data extraction, competitive research and SEO analysis.
And while the former do use the occasional VPN and proxy, large scale SEO proxies are often deployed by the latter. Spam bots, ad fraudsters and more use proxies for malicious, en masse activity, so itâs understandable that search engines get easily triggered by mass requests and other actions that betray any human input.
We saw this in one of Googleâs most recent updates, which required browser rendering in order to view the search engine rankings.
Who Uses SEO Proxies?
Despite what we just said about search engines tolerating SEO proxies, the fact is that SEO agencies, market research companies and more all deploy proxies to effective use.
If youâve used a keyword research tool or a SERP analyzer, SEO proxies are certainly being used. How else can those companies implement large scale, frequent activity without clashing with the search engine in the first place?
From our experience, we can think of quite a few people who could benefit from SEO proxies:
- SEO specialists that want to build their own web scraping or data collection tools. For example, inhouse experts who want their own personal tools to track their company in SERP data, or SEO agencies that want to gather data with their own in-house tools.
- SaaS and tech companies that offer SERP rankings and other SEO services. If youâre building any tool or service that offers large sale data collection â even SERP data â then you need a proxy pool to power it.
- Anyone looking to undertake some competitor research. If you have competition in a variety of markets â and want to see how you fair in SEO rankings and ads â then a proxy pool of localized SEO proxies is the only way to get the most accurate data.
Of course, pre-existing tools are already available. But theyâre far from perfect. Maybe you donât want to pay a hefty fee, or you just need a few key essential functionalities and youâd prefer them done right. In these cases, as weâll explore, SEO proxies are the foundation for building your own solutions.
What Kind of SEO Proxies Are There?
Brace yourself, we need to get a little technical. We know not everyone enjoys discussing the difference between datacenter and residential proxies but, hey, weâre a proxy provider and this is our jam.
And if you want the best success scraping SEO data, whether thatâs a local SEO project or large scale web scraping, youâre going to need to know a little, too.
In other words, if you want the best SEO proxies available, you need to know the different types and how they interact with your keyword rankings and web scraping endeavours.
More Than Just a Proxy Server
Itâs important to note that, for the most part, weâre talking about proxies for SEO. Proxies. Plural.
A single proxy server is great if all you want to do is browse manually at a human speed. If you want to look at search rankings in a different geolocation, for example, then youâre effectively using the proxy as a VPN. Thatâs fine and all, but we sense you might be a bit of SEO data degenerate, sooooâŠ
If you plan to scrape SEO data en masse, you need multiple proxies. Weâll go into more detail later but the short answer is that you need to rotate them. Use any one address too frequently and search engines get suspicious.
This is also compounded by the type of proxies you use. While there are many different types of proxies out there, the main two we want to focus on are residential and datacenter proxies.
Datacenter Proxies for SEO
Datacenters proxies refer to proxies that come from, youâve guessed it, a datacenter. Since these are purpose-built buildings, they donât have an IP address from a typical internet service provider.
What that means is datacenters offer a vast proxy network or pool for you to utilize, but none of those IPs well reflect a real, actual address. In simple language, this means that the datacenter proxy type is good for many things, but it has its limitations.
So what could you use datacenter proxies for?
- Bulk SERP scraping: if you simply want to collect data from search engines en masse, datacenters offer the most cost effective approach.
- Competitor analysis: if you want to see how your competitors rank, check their ads or explore their backlink profiles, datacenters are certainly useful.
- Technical SEO audits: if you want to crawl websites for meta data, assess indexing issues or even find broken links, datacenter proxies are efficient starting places for web crawlers.
In short, datacenters can be used for most common or basic SEO tasks. Theyâre reliable SEO proxies, assuming you scrape results responsibly.
Residential Proxies for SEO
In contrast to datacenter proxy networks, residential proxies utilize actual residential IP addresses. These are a form of ISP proxy â which means they come from a home-based internet service provider.
The best use cases for residential proxies are:
- Localized keyword tracking: Since residential proxies are genuine and localized IP addresses, they give the most authentic results in search engines.
- Local SEO research: To conduct localized keyword research, a localized proxy server can ensure you get the authentic results for a given geolocation.
- Competitor PPC research: Alongside keywords, residential SEO proxies can also help you view localized paid search ads.
Residential IP addresses have a lot of benefits, but theyâre usually a little more costly than a datacenter alternative. We recommend using them, of course, but if you have to choose, itâs worth knowing when to deploy each.
Already Convinced?
Want to stop reading and start scraping? We donât blame you!
If youâre building SEO tools for local SEO ranking, for example, then residential proxies offer the most accurate data. Likewise if you checking search engine result pages in a given region and want probability in your favor, rotating residential proxies offer the best success rates.
Dedicated Proxies vs Undedicated Proxies
When looking into SEO proxies, youâll come across terms such as âdedicatedâ and âundedicatedâ. These refer to who else has access. Dedicated proxies are reserved for you or a very small number of other customers/businesses. The benefit of this is that these IP addresses arenât being used frequently, which typically leads to greater success.
You might also hear these as private proxies for SEO â âprivateâ essentially meaning âfully dedicatedâ.
Are There Other Types of Proxies?
When it comes to rotating SEO proxies, datacenters and residential IP pools are usually the best bet. But for full transparency, there are other proxies available, ranging from mobile proxies (that, as you can guess, use a mobile carrier network to appear as mobile IPs), ISP proxies (that are similar to residential proxies, but not as authentic).
The reason weâre not mentioning them here is that theyâre simply not ideal if your target website is a search engine result page. They have their niche uses, but for most SEO tools, you shouldnât start with them.
Getting Started With Proxies for SEO
By now, youâre either ready to go or completely bored. If itâs the latter, weâre sorry! If itâs the former, then letâs look into how to secure the best SEO proxies for your needs.
Find The Right Proxy Provider
Proxies arenât just something you put out an ad for. Since an SEO proxy is an IP address that you are able to access and use, there are only a few options.
- Somehow you have access to a range of proxies around the world already.
- You find a proxy provider who can provide the SEO proxies you need.
The latter sounds simple, but itâs worth considering the right proxy provider. Money isnât everything: you should find a company that specializes in ethical proxy management and usage. This way, your own projects wonât get disrupted by any previous misconduct.
Use Multiple SEO Proxies
Sure, weâre an SEO proxy provider, so of course we might say that. But the truth is, if you use any given proxy too much, it can get end in CAPTCHAs or even bans.
And letâs face it, when it comes to SEO data, more is more đ
Using multiple SEO proxies in rotation is the best approach to avoid anti-bot bans or other countermeasures. By rotating proxies, your giving each of them a cool down period, which in turn means your solutions can keep on working.
Respect Website Limits
At the end of the day, search engines are still websites. That means they have their own limits when it comes to web scraping and repeat visits. Abuse it too often, and your deviceâs IP address will be flagged and/or blocked. Itâs the same with any individual proxy server.
This is part of a much wider topic on ethical web scraping â if youâre new to this whole âdata scrapingâ thing, we recommend reading up on it.
The Key Word on SEO Proxies
So, do you need a dedicated SEO proxy service? If youâre looking to build a small scale project, such as SEO monitoring at a low frequency, then a few proxies will likely see you through. But if you want to go big, then you donât just need a few SEO proxies, you need a proxy pool.
In short, SEO proxies support your SEO tools and processes by giving you the best chances of readily accessing search engine results pages. If youâre automating SERP scraping, you need a good proxy pool to ensure you donât get CAPTCHAâd or even banned.
Still not sure? Sometimes the best way to understand your needs is to talk to someone thatâs done it before. If youâre not sure what you need, come talk to us. Tell us a little about your SEO strategy and we can recommend the web scrapers and best SEO proxies for you.
The Best Proxies For SEO?
Thatâd be residential â theyâre authentic, geolocated and the least likely to get banned.
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