SEO. Where high-quality counts
SEO with proxy servers is one of the most common uses. For the uninitiated, SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimisation, which is:
The process of maximising the number of visitors to a website by ensuring that the site appears high on the list of results returned by a search engine.
Using proxy servers for SEO mainly involves tracking the search engine ranking results for a site, checking and building backlinks and harvesting search result data to follow up on later.
How to use intelligently use proxy servers with SEO.
All sites are naturally averse to being scraped, to varying degrees. Too many requests in a short space of time from one IP address will quickly lead to the server becoming blocked. Search engines are a massive target for scraping and receive constant requests for the information they provide. To defend against being bombarded with scrapes, search engines have developed incredibly sophisticated algorithms to deter requests from bots and try and ensure that they only deliver results back to real users.
Those algorithms are regularly updated and if you want to read up on current best practice head over to our responsible scraping page. However, a reliable proxy server provider should be able to advise you how to optimise your software to scrape search engines with their services efficiently and effectively. It’s in the providers’ interest to help you avoid blocks; otherwise, there could be a negative impact on their server pool. That, in turn, could result in increased costs to them and cause problems for their other customers.
No matter which site you target, with all web scraping there is always one fundamental constant: you need to simulate requests from many different users. The only way you can do that is by using a large pool of IP addresses, rotating your queries through them and employing proper human emulation settings.
It’s also essential that you find a high-quality provider. If you use free or low-cost proxy servers, then those are very often blocked by the search engines due to past abuse.
Here’s a list of providers that are suitable for SEO. Just click on the provider for more details.
SmartProxy
Recommended For:
Those targeting SERPs and localised results from all over the globe at a very reasonable cost.
Although relatively new to the proxy server market, not entering until 2018, SmartProxy landed with a splash.
Part of their success is down to providing a vast number of over 10 million residential IP addresses in almost 200 locations. But SmartProxy also recognises that the integrity of their network is just as, if not more important than the number of IP addresses they can provide.
When it comes to SEO with proxy servers, the bar is high as search engines quickly block entire classes on a whim. Fortunately, SmartProxy’s network not only consists of ‘clean’ IP addresses, but they handle their IP addresses intelligently to prevent blocks.
Add to that their low entry point and a limitless number of concurrent connections, and you can see why SmartProxy offer excellent value.
Residential
- 55 million+ IP addresses available in every country across the globe with the option to select IP’s from specific countries.
- 8 major cities are also available.
24/7 support via email and live chat.
Bright Data
Recommended For:
For those looking to scrape or monitor SEO-related data, Bright Data stands as the industry's largest proxy network.
Bright Data's SEO Proxies are recognized as the #1 Proxy Ecosystem, providing a powerful toolset for conducting accurate competitor research and monitoring both your own and competitors' rankings. With proxies available from 195 countries, Bright Data's infrastructure is powered by award-winning technology. This extensive network includes over 72 million IPs, offering best-in-class technology and the capability to target any country, city, ZIP code, carrier, and ASN, making it a top choice for developers worldwide.
Its proxies are designed for scalability and peak performance, ensuring that you won't be caught without the data you need due to access blocks. By rotating your IP through millions of proxies, Bright Data helps you access local content, check for blockages, and conduct comprehensive competitor research without the risk of being blocked.
Developers prefer Bright Data's SEO proxies because they provide the highest quality data, the largest geographical coverage, the best network uptime, and the fastest output. This ensures you can effortlessly and safely obtain the data you need, avoiding common issues like access restrictions or host resolution problems.
- Global coverage in 195 countries
- Ability to target specific cities and ZIP codes
- Options for country, state, and city-level targeting
- Support for ASN (Autonomous System Number) targeting
- Carrier-specific proxies available
- Comprehensive documentation and guides
- 24/7 customer support
- API access for seamless integration
- Regular updates and improvements to the proxy network
- Access to the Bright Data ecosystem of web data collection tools
- Community forums and knowledge base for troubleshooting and best practices
Oxylabs
Recommended For:
Those looking for a heavy-duty, powerful data extraction and collection tool.
Unlike most other providers, Oxylabs use a system called the ‘Real-Time Crawler’. The claim is that this is “the most powerful heavy-duty data extraction tool on the web, effortlessly capturing data from search engines.”
Oxylabs state that this is unique and handles the most defensive sites, so it’s perfect for scraping Google.
Thanks to this, Oxylabs promise a 100% success rate with zero blocks and also includes a captcha solver. On top of that, it’s simple to integrate through their API with all locations are available. What more do you need?
Oxylabs state every location is available.
- Dedicated account manager.
- 24/7 live support.
- Advice on target scraping.
- Quarterly web scraping analysis.
- 7 day free trial for companies.
- 3 day money-back guarantee for individuals.
NetNut
Recommended For:
Those looking for a high-speed, high-quality service but have the budget to match
Another newcomer to the market is NetNut. Their main selling point is an advanced DiViNetwork.
What’s unique about this network is that it utilises IP addresses sourced directly from over 100 ISPs worldwide. On paper, this makes them perfect for SEO use with their proxy servers.
NetNut completely controls these so they can shape your traffic, load balance your queries and ensure a guaranteed quality of service. NetNut can manage 100’s of Gigabits per second of network traffic, so they are well-used to maintaining a very high-speed network.
As no other parties are involved, this makes their network more secure than their competitors. NetNut can also guarantee no disconnections or interruptions.
As you’d expect, a dashboard and API is available to check your statistics and usage in real-time.
Extensive availability in Europe, the Americas, Middle East, Asia, and Australia.
- Dedicated account manager.
- Full integration support available if required.
GeoSurf (Closed!)
Recommended For:
Those looking for an Enterprise level provider offering truly granular, city-level results.
GeoSurf’s residential IP addresses are excellent for use with SEO and proxy servers. Not only do they provide a high number of IP addresses, but you can select IPs right down to a considerable amount of over 1,700 cities.
On a technical level, GeoSurf offers unlimited connections and threads, and an API along with code examples in every common programming language. In addition to that, easy to use Chrome & Firefox extensions are also available.
Residential
- 130+ locations including the US, Canada, Germany, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia and Thailand.
- 1,700+ cities.
- Premium support via email, phone and Skype is available from a designated support agent with all plans.
- Developer friendly code examples offered.