SEO proxies like you have never seen before

LunaLopezz — Tue, 10 Aug 2021 11:51:18 +0000

It’s not a surprise that SEO proxies are very useful and used by many various businesses around the globe. With SEO proxies you can do site audits, use proxies when you’re working with backlinks and link building, you can track your SEO ranking globally, and do many other things. But there are more and in this article, I want to discuss the new Search Engine proxies that Smartproxy is offering — how they differ from casual SEO proxies and how they can benefit the business?

What are Search Engine proxies?

Search Engine proxies are a type of proxies that you can use to gather SERP data with a 100% success rate and use it to your advantage. In general, you can look at these proxies as web scraping tools and proxy servers combined together. That means that while using these proxies you don’t need some extra services to scrape SEO-related data from Google and you can retrieve paid and organic data, find out relevant and needed information about keyword ranking as well as track your and your competitors' keyword performance. Besides, you can monitor your SEO performance and the prices, so you will be able to gather valuable data for pricing intelligence and find needed solutions to successfully grow your business with the help of SEO.

How to use Search Engine proxies?

So how can you integrate these proxies into your work and use them? It’s pretty simple. After you purchase these proxies you have to choose your preferred data delivery method (HTML or JASON). Then you have to specify your target — what data needs to be extracted and where it could be found. You can also add some extra perimeters if that’s needed, such as at what period of time the data should be (“no older than…”) or what types of keywords the data should hold, etc. Pretty much this is it because everything else will be done by Smartproxy. They will collect the required data and you will receive it in your chosen format. It’s really as easy as it sounds.

Why should you choose Smartproxy’s Search Engine proxies?

Apart from the fact that it is pretty easy to use this Smartproxy’s solution, there are some more advantages. Gathering data, even with web scraping tools and knowledge, is still tricky and one of the biggest obstacles is IP blocking — websites notice your web scraping tool, non-human activity online, and a high number of the same requests sent over and over again with the same IP address. The result — you get your IP blocked and you might lose all of your work that was done.
When using these Search Engine proxies, you don’t need to worry about IP blocking because Smartproxy filters proxies from their 40 million residential proxy pool, and chooses only the ones that will bring you a 100% success rate — you can be sure of that.

What I found especially great when working with these Search Engine proxies from Smartproxy is that when using them you pay only for successful requests and that means that this smart scrape makes your proxies for Google use cost-efficient. This is a pretty great solution indeed because simple residential proxies that you use for SEO tasks cost a lot of money and you’re risking blocking many IPs. But Smartproxy Search Engine proxies provide you with needed results and you don’t need to worry about the usage of proxies — they will take care of that.

Additional thoughts

Search Engine proxies — as a solution — is a pretty new thing in the market but it can really change the game of gathering needed SEO data while scraping Google. You can use that data for any of your business needs and find some opportunities not only to improve needed fields but also to successfully grow. Smartproxy offers you these services and you can choose one of their 3 paid plans and you can get a discount for these services with the coupon BESMART.
The whole process is very fast and easy and what’s important — you don’t have to do much yourself, because Smartproxy will do that for you. I definitely recommend trying them out and making your day-to-day work easier and more efficient.

This article was first published on Medium

How to stay safe while being online?

LunaLopezz — Thu, 20 Feb 2020 09:47:58 +0000

Online privacy became one of the most important things for Internet users around the globe. People don’t feel safe while browsing the Internet and accessing various kinds of content. This is why VPNs, proxies and other solutions became very popular around independent users as well as business. But how these solutions actually work and how do they protect you while being online? With this article, I will try to explain things in the easiest way possible.

Issues with online privacy

There are many issues with online privacy and the biggest one is spying. People online don’t feel safe usually because they feel that some invisible creature is tracking their every step and collecting data about them. And this is not some conspiracy theory, this is pure reality. Many websites implement cookies, track your location, want to be able to connect with you through emails, phone numbers, social networks, etc. While some of the trackers are implemented for a good reason, there are so many of them that can be used for bad purposes as well.
Apart from spying the other big issue is mishandling information. There are various sites on the internet that need your personal information to get access to their services. These sites often store cookies and save your personal information and later use it for various purposes. Most of the time this information is not encrypted and can be accessed by anyone. This mishandling of personal information may lead to serious consequences.

With this being said, we have to understand that not being spied on is possible only if you stay offline and live in the real-world without accessing the World Wide Web. This sounds crazy in the time we live in. And because of that, people are looking for various solutions to avoid being spied on — they try not to register on the websites and not to leave their online fingerprint, try to accept cookies only when it’s necessary, try not to provide information about themselves, avoid so many annoying registrations online or using services that can help them to change their location, IP addresses, encrypts their data, etc.

How to stay safe online?

Since online privacy has such great importance nowadays, people found various solutions to protect themselves from spying eyes as well as from content and rules they don’t want to access. The most common ways to protect yourself and don’t leave fingerprints online became using VPN services or proxy services.

VPN.
When you use a VPN, it creates an encrypted tunnel between you and a remote server operated by a VPN service. All your internet traffic is routed through this tunnel, so your data is secure from prying eyes along the way. Because your traffic is exiting the VPN server, your computer appears to have the IP address of the said server, masking your identity and location. In other words, a VPN can keep your computer, smartphone, and any other device you connect to the internet safe from hackers and malware while keeping all your personal data and communications safe from prying eyes. With cybercrime on the rise, it’s easy to see why so many people have started using them.
VPNs are usually used by individuals who want to avoid blocks, access restricted content (or the content that isn’t available in their country/region), browse the Internet and are a great help for those who travel. Various geo-restrictions usually cause a lot of problems when trying to connect to the Internet (especially, when you’re traveling or live in the countries in Asia). But with VPN all of these issues can be solved by clicking several buttons.
Because of the usefulness of VPN, there are many providers that can offer you VPN services that can be easily used for any reason — to prevent yourself from spying eyes or to watch your favorite TV shows. These providers can be easily found online, but from my personal experience, I would recommend checking these — NordVPN, Surfshark, IPVanish VPN or to check more here

Proxies.
A proxy server acts as a gateway between you and the internet. It’s an intermediary server separating end users from the websites they browse. Proxy servers act as a firewall and web filter, provide shared network connections, and cache data to speed up common requests. Proxies also change your IP address and help to change your location since there are millions of proxies that can be used throughout the world. Other than VPN, proxies are more used in the business world since many of proxy use cases include market research, web scraping, ad verification, working with automatic tools for social marketing, etc. This is also shown in the prices of proxy services since proxies cost much more than VPN. Nevertheless, proxies can be used by individuals as well. There are several kinds of proxies — datacenter proxies, residential proxies, mobile proxies. All of them can be used for the same reason, the only difference is in how that particular proxy works and from where it allows you to connect to the Internet.
The same as for VPN, there are many proxy providers that can offer you services according to your needs. From my perspective, the best proxy providers at the moment are:
Smartproxy — provider with the pool of 10 million IPs around the world, datacenter and residential proxies that can be used for hiding your IP address, for social marketing automation, market research and much more. They have 4 different pricing plans for their services with the cheapest starting from $75. Also, if you will use code SMARTPRO you can get a 20% discount on your first purchase;
GeoSurf — they can offer you 2 million IPs from various locations around the world. One of the great things about this provider is that it can offer you not only proxy services but VPN as well so it’s worthed to check them out;
Oxylabs - this is one of the most known proxy providers in the market at the moment. Oxylabs have more than 30 million residential IPs in their pool and specializes in data center IPs as well as residential IPs. Simply put - this is the provider that can offer you high-quality services that can keep you safe online and guarantee you your privacy and anonymity when crawling, web scraping, working on market research, ad verification, etc.
Microleaves — various of proxy use case scenarios. Their services are really fast and they have unlimited bandwidth. It’s a bit more pricy compared to Smartproxy or GeoSurf, but it’s always a good idea to invest in your privacy online.
Of course, you can find more providers here

Yet another possibility is to use TOR. Tor is free and open-source software for enabling anonymous communication. Tor does not prevent an online service from determining when it is being accessed through Tor. Tor protects a user’s privacy but does not hide the fact that someone is using Tor. Tor offers technology that bounces internet users’ and websites’ traffic through “relays” run by thousands of volunteers around the world, making it extremely hard for anyone to identify the source of the information or the location of the user. Most commonly this service is used by usual people who want to keep their internet activities private from websites and advertisers; those concerned about cyberspying; and users evading censorship in certain parts of the world. But you should keep in mind that Tor can mask users’ identities, but also host their websites via its “hidden services” capabilities, which mean sites can only be accessed by people on the Tor network. This is the so-called “dark web” element, and it’s not unusual to see Tor pop up in stories about a range of criminal sites.

DEV Community: LunaLopezz

SEO proxies like you have never seen before

How to stay safe while being online?