Web Scraping - This article talks about Web Scraping, its types and the Top 5 best practices to build your structured database.

1. 5 Best Web Scraping Practices to Build Your Structured Database
A database is an organized collection of
data, generally stored and accessed
electronically from a computer system.
Where databases are more complex, they
are often developed using formal design
and modelling techniques. A data
structure is a data organization,
management, and storage format that
enables efficient access and modification.
More precisely, a data structure is a
collection of data values, the relationships
among them, and the functions or
operations that can be applied to the
data.
The data structure is of 3 different types. For the analysis of data, it is important to
understand the three common types of data structures. They are,
Structured Data
Semi-structured Data
Unstructured Data
Structured Data:
Structured data is comprised of clearly defined data types whose pattern makes them easily
searchable. Structured data is the data which conforms to a data model, has a well define
structure, follows a consistent order and can be easily accessed and used by a person or a
computer program.
Semi-Structured Data:
Semi-structured data is a form of structured data that does not obey the tabular structure of
data models associated with relational databases or other forms of data tables, but
nonetheless contains tags or other markers to separate semantic elements and enforce
hierarchies of records and fields within the data.
Unstructured Data:
Unstructured data is information that either does not have a pre-defined data model or is
not organized in a pre-defined manner. Unstructured information is typically text-heavy, but
may contain data such as dates, numbers, and facts as well.

2. Web scraping, web harvesting, or
web data extraction is data scraping
used for extracting data from
websites. Web scraping software
may access the World Wide Web
directly using the Hypertext
Transfer Protocol, or through a web
browser.
How Web Scraping Works?
Web scraping, in general is down in 2 ways. Manual scraping and automatic scraping.
Copying and pasting of information and data manually is known as Manual scraping. This
process is highly intense and needs lots of effort and time consuming. For any large data set,
manual process is not viable. An algorithm or a software is used in Automatic scraping to
search and extract data through multiple websites. Automatic scraping can be performed in
multiple ways such as Parsers, Bots, and Text. There are so many possible ways to perform
web scraping. JavaScript and Python are the two most used languages for web scraping.
Source: datahut
Web Scraping

3. Top 5 Web Scraping Practise to Building Structured Database are,
 Content Market Planning
 Brand Identity
 Price Monitoring
 Research & Development
 Competitor Analysis
For any business irrespective of their size and nature, to find their ideal leads and clients - content
plays a key role. Yes - is the answer when asked "if Web Scraping can make your content marketing
strategy better?".
Data for content marketing is not readily available. Flow of data is very critical for content
marketing. Data can be extracted from multiple data sources using web scraping. Using web
scraping, we can easily create the content that sync with the customer needs. Web scraping can also
extract data from whitepapers, reports, audits, and online reviews.
By extracting information with the help if web scraping from news articles, social media websites
such as Facebook - one can write better articles on industry trends, about the new product launch,
service offerings, etc.
Web scraping can make a huge difference in brand identity, marketing and monitoring. Web
scraping for branding is a cost effective and an efficient process since this can be customized on
need basis of a company.
Web crawling tools are preconfigured to collect and store only relevant data. The process can be
largely automated. By doing so, one can automatically monitor and collect data from multiple web
sources. This helps companies to get a more intimate and holistic view of customers, their opinions,
tastes and preferences.
The advantages of branding through web scraping are effective brand management, in-depth insight
about customers, competitor analysis, tracking and monitoring, real time response, enhance
customer satisfaction, and increase sales.
Content
Market
Planning
Brand
Identity
Monitor
Pricing
For the business to grow, one of the key strategies is pricing. Be it any leading brand or a new one to
the market, pricing strategy is very crucial. If the pricing is higher than the competitors (or) lower
than the competitors, then the business is understood to be in a bad shape.
Web scraping helps you to scrape the price chart. Price chart can be scraped from multiple sources
and brands. Once can scrape the entire website (or) a product to determine a pricing strategy. Data
inputs can be controlled while using the tool to scrape.
With the help of web scraping, historical price data of competitors can be used to analyse,
understand and learn the patterns in pricing behaviour. By doing so, it is easy to foresee competitors
short-term and long-term strategies and develop counterstrategies. To obtain high profitability and
enhance efficiency, data driven pricing strategy is the key.

4. Web scraping plays an important role in competitor research and analysis. Manually collecting huge
amount of information from the web is next to impossible. Hence, web scraping is used to gather all
the data. If you need a partner to work with you on web scraping, talk to our expert team and get
their professional views and suggestions.
R&D
By using the traditional methods, only basic information shall be obtained. However, web crawling
usage helps to extract information that are more specific and can dig deeper. Web scraping is the
common process used by researchers these days. They use web scraping and carry our research on
web forums, and social media platforms.
Web scraping is the best bet for producing critical data to aid in the R&D process. Using web
scraping key insights can be obtained about the competition of the existing products. This
information shall help to improve the quality of existing products. For any organisation, R&D is the
most important unit/team for introducing new products and services successfully.
The features and benefits of a newly launched product by the competitor can be analysed using web
scraping. This information can be utilized in developing new product with improved quality and
competitive pricing.
Competitor
Analysis
Web scraping plays a key role in competitor research and analysis. With web scraping, competitor’s
vital information such as pricing strategy, content form, leads reviews, and SEO/SMM strategy can
be extracted.
Once the data is extracted using web scraping, the data can be used to improve the current solution
and define it in a way to create an interest and attention among the target audience to draw more
closely to what you have to offer.
Competitors SEO strategy, PPC spend, product pricing, product line auditing, reviews and comments
for their products/services, and information about funding – All the mentioned information can be
collected and analysed using web scraping.