5 Ways in Which Your Company Can Benefit from HTML Scraping
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Published on: 21 January 2022
Last Updated on: 08 January 2023
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The internet and the ready accessibility of information have revolutionized modern businesses, with data being a crucial element in their success. That’s why web scraping has become essential in their operations, but it’s often tough to make sense of the raw data that web scraping tools gather.
This is where HTML scraping comes in. This type of web scraping process can provide better context about the collected data, turning raw data into valuable and meaningful information.
However, how exactly can your company benefit from HTML scraping? Moreover, what even is HTML scraping?
A Quick Look at HTML Scraping
Before discussing its benefits, we first need to understand what HTML and HTML scraping are. Simply put, HTML stands for the term “HyperText Markup Language,” which effectively serves as the foundation of web pages, specifically in terms of how it’s structured and presented to web users.
Meanwhile, HTML scraping is the process of extracting both a website’s HTML code and the data embedded in the code and compiling them in one location for your use. Some examples of the data this type of web scraping gathers include the page’s metadata, links, alt texts, page attributes, and more.
It’s generally considered a better way of collecting data because the site’s HTML code can offer additional context regarding the raw data you obtain with standard web scraping. In turn, this can significantly impact how well you understand the gathered data and how you use it in your strategies.
With that said, having an XML library can make it easier for you to conduct HTML scraping, particularly with its optimization. You can check out an lxml tutorial to learn more about installing and using an XML library to your advantage. The most comprehensive lxml tutorial can be found here.
5 Ways Your Company Can Benefit from HTML Scraping
So, aside from providing additional context to the raw data, how else can your company benefit from HTML scraping?
Here are some examples:
1. Brand Monitoring
Brand monitoring is a must for any successful business as it allows business owners like yourself to gain a better view of how customers perceive your company, including what they like and don’t like about it.
This data can be valuable for your future strategies, especially when it comes to addressing your customers’ pain points to give them a better experience with your brand.
Fortunately, there are numerous platforms nowadays where you can gather this type of data, and HTML scraping enhances the process since you’ll also be able to know what criteria were used to evaluate your brand.
This will allow you to implement more accurate solutions since you have a clearer idea of what your customers are looking for.
2. Pricing Strategy Optimization
Pricing data is another type of information that can be integral to your business’s success since you’ll need to be able to match your competition when it comes to the prices of your products and services.
Web scraping allows you to collect this type of data from various websites more quickly and conveniently. However, analyzing this data is a must if you want to make better financial decisions.
HTML scraping helps do this since the additional information the HTML code provides lets you gain deeper insights into your competitors’ pricing strategies, such as what sells and what doesn’t.
This information can help you make more informed decisions when adjusting your own pricing strategies for your company.
3. Content Analysis
If your brand is also in the business of content creation, HTML scraping can come in handy for analyzing your competitors’ content.
This type of web scraping will allow you to gather all the other elements of a top-ranking page that contribute to its success, such as the alt text, meta description, and embedded links.
With HTML scraping, you can better understand how to structure your own content to ensure it enjoys a similar level of success.
4. Industry Research
Understanding your brand’s market is also essential to its success, and HTML scraping can offer specific information that will help you better identify and analyze the different trends in your particular niche.
Doing so will allow you to integrate this information into your company’s strategies to ensure they’re more efficient and effective, allowing your business to thrive.
5. Competitor Analysis
HTML scraping also allows you to understand your competitors since the data extracted from their websites will allow you to gain deeper insights into their success, especially once you analyze the said data.
You can check out their site’s HTML code to see how they structure their page and understand why they structure it the way they do. In turn, you can implement similar strategies so that your own company’s website can enjoy a higher level of success.
Conclusion
Data has undeniably become crucial for a business’s operations these days, but it’s not always easy to make sense of the raw data provided by web scraping tools. HTML scraping makes this easier by providing additional context to the data, allowing you to use the information more effectively.
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