What is Crawlability and Why is it So Important for SEO?

What do crawlers mean?

This automated script browses the World Wide Web in a one-way, automated way. A web crawler, sometimes called a spider or spiderbot, is a computer program that automatically searches documents on the web to generate entries for a search engine index. Crawlers gained the name because they find new pages by re-crawling existing pages and extracting links to other pages to find new URLs. While search engines mainly use crawlers to browse the Internet and build indexes, other crawlers search for different types of information, such as RSS feeds and email addresses.

They intended to index the content of websites across the Internet so that those websites could appear in search engine results. It’s about learning what every webpage on the web is about, so it’s about being able to retrieve information when needed.

Many legitimate websites use crawlers as a means of providing up-to-date data. Here, web crawlers create a copy of all the pages visited for later processing, which will index the downloaded pages to generate faster searches. Crawlers are also very effective in automating the maintenance of a website, such as checking links or validating HTML code. Also, people use crawlers to collect specific types of information from web pages, such as gathering email addresses.

Next, we will look at what crawlability is,

When talking about crawlers, we can’t leave the term index. Once it comes to a website, it saves the HTML version in a gigantic index database. This index is updated every time the crawler comes around your website and finds a new or revised version of it.

What does crawlability mean?

Crawlability is the foundation of any technical SEO strategy, which indicates how easy it is for a search engine to crawl or process information about a website. A crawlability is a term used to describe the ability of a search engine to access and crawl the content of a page and follow links in the content of your site. Crawlability is the foundation of any technical SEO strategy, which indicates how easy it is for a search engine to crawl or process information about a website. Indexing or ranking is not possible if a search engine does not access the website content. Those things rely on search engines that can crawl content first.

You may have keyword-targeted pages with as much relevant content as you need, but all will be in vain if you cannot crawl directly. When a search engine crawler accesses a website, they crawl it to find all pages, images, links, CSS, and JavaScript files.

There are many differences between a Crawlability website and a not-so-crawlable website. The crawling webpage has a clear layout, a detailed sitemap, and internal links to access every content page. Search engines like the features of a crawlable website because they make the site navigable. As a result, it is easier for search engines to index a website. When it comes to a not-so-crawlable website, it may encounter an incoherent sitemap, broken links, 404 errors, and dead-end webpages. As a result, navigating the site and determining its ranking makes it more complicated for search engines.

Now look at the things that prevent Google from crawling a website,

Before crawling your website, the crawler will check the HTTP title of your page. This HTTP header contains a status code. Google will not crawl your website if that status code says a page does not exist.

When your robots.txt file blocks the crawler, Google will not crawl your website or specific webpage.

When the robot meta tag on a particular page blocks the search engine from indexing any specific page, Google will crawl that page but not add it to its index.

How do crawlability and SEO relate to each other?

Crawling is something you can see as the first step in ranking your website and is one of the most important concepts of technical SEO. Crawlability is one of the most important concepts of technical SEO. Technical SEO is about making the most of your website and overcoming competition to create a site better for search engines. It’s about making your website easy for people to read, navigate and understand. 

SEO is a technical term closely related to Crawlability. Here, we should be improving the crawler experience more than enhancing the user experience. Poor Crawlability can adversely affect your search engine rankings. The most important thing about Crawlability is to make Google’s task as easy as possible. Thereby, you can impress your search engines, and then you are free from the worries about the search engine rankings. 

Google does not want to bother indexing your website. Therefore, they insist that your site data be clear, readable, and accessible to readers and their robots. Otherwise, they will penalize you if they have difficulty processing your website.

All crawler boats will follow a “crawler budget,” They set an upper limit on the amount of time and resources you can spend on each website. If a crawler spends a lot of time navigating a site instead of crawling content, it will affect that site’s online ranking. Not only that, but it may also prevent crawlers from indexing your site and showing up overall in Google search results. Even minor issues like deadlinks and 404 errors limit the crawler budget and affect the ranking results.

What can affect the crawlability of a website?

The Crawlability of a website depends upon several factors.

Let’s see what they are,

Website structure or site map

No matter how many hours you spend creating your dream website, it is essential to ensure that its structure allows people to easily navigate from any area. This is because the structure of a site is closely related to its scalability and plays a crucial role in determining how crawler-friendly a website is. Here, crawlers can easily navigate your website and find the information you need to index. Also, pay special attention to creating links to other relevant and authoritative websites only if you have a well-organized XML and HTML sitemap. Also, pay special attention to building links to other relevant and authoritative websites.

Server errors  

Broken server redirects and other server-related issues can make it difficult to load the page, prevent crawlers from accessing and indexing your website content, and increase bounce rate. It also adversely affects your traffic. Therefore, make sure that you resolve these issues immediately.

Page loading speed

At low load speeds, websites have a small crawl budget to operate. Just as visitors do not want to wait long for the web pages to load, so do the crawlers. They are limited in the “crawl time” they can spend on one page before moving on to the next.

Internal Links

An internal link is any link from one page on your website to another page. Its behaviour is quite different from external links that link to pages on other domains. Having a good internal link structure can quickly reach even the deepest pages in the structure of your website. But a web crawler will lose some of your content by sending it to a dead-end if it has a bad structure.  

A web crawler follows links and navigates the web on any website. Therefore, it can only find pages you link to from other content. There are several reasons for this; first and foremost, they help crawlers find more pages on your site, giving you a boost to your “crawler budget.” Then, the keyword crawler on your link will tell you what the next page will be, making it easier to crawl your content further.

Outdated or unsupported technology factors

Some web technologies cannot be properly crawlable by search engine bots. You need to pay special attention to this as the technology you use on the site can cause huge crawlability issues. Here, make sure the bots do not use anything obsolete or unsupported to prevent them from crawling the website. Moreover, Special care should be taken in this regard as various scripts such as JavaScript or Ajax block content from web crawlers.   

Code errors 

Code errors also play a significant role in blocking access to boats. Robots.txt is a text file created to instruct bots on crawling specific pages of a website. These text files specify whether a search engine should crawl by allowing or, in some cases disabling it to behave. You may not want search engines to index a specific page in some cases. In that case, you need to make sure that no code errors prevent it from working.

Blocking Web crawler Access 

There may be times when you need to block web crawlers from indexing pages on your site deliberately. Hereabouts, it is very easy to block other pages accidentally. For example, a simple error in the code blocks the entire website. There are many reasons to do so. One of the main reasons for this is to create a page that wants to restrict public access. As part of blocking access, you are trying to block it from search engines.

Loaded redirects

Broken page redirects are always a headache for those who crawl. This will completely block a crawler and cause a lot of problems.

What are the various ways to make our sites crawler-friendly?

We have already discussed the factors that can cause your site to experience craziness or indexability issues. As such, you can make sure that they do not occur on your site. However, there are some things you need to do to ensure that web crawlers can easily access and index your pages.

All websites are optimized for web crawlers to ensure maximum scalability. After focusing on the factors listed above, your focus should be on improving scalability and indexability. Let’s get acquainted with some of those things.

Develop a Consistent Sitemap to Google

The sitemap is a file that provides complete information about pages, videos, other files, and links between them. Developers have always considered it one of the essential web design practices. A sitemap makes it easy for web crawlers to find, crawl and index all the content of your website. It also tells Google about your content and notifies you of updates you have made to it. It also tells search engines which pages on your site are the most relevant and performing the function.

It usually takes the form of an XML sitemap that links to different pages on your website. It is essential for any website because it builds a vital link between it and the search engine. Therefore, it is important to make sure that it is well structured. This makes it easier to crawl your website and get more accurate search results when users search for keywords related to your products or services.

Nourishes internal links

We have already looked at how interlinking affects Crawlability. When certain links become obsolete and broken or create a redirect loop, it prevents crawlers from moving further. Your website also acts as a collection of interconnected links. Such links help determine if any content within your website is related to anything and the value of that content. They look great when your posts and pages are linked from anywhere on the web. However, adding internal links to your content does not justify your work, it must be accurately optimized.

Improve the links between pages to increase the likelihood that Google Crawler will find all content on your site and ensure that all content is connected. For example, if you wrote something in another blog post related to the content on your other page, you should link back to that post. This lets crawlers know that all your pages are linked and interconnected.

Update your content from time to time

While it’s important not to overlook the technical aspects of SEO, content is an important part of your website that can never be missed. It helps brands attract visitors, introduce them to your business and turn them into clients. Not only that, but it also allows you to get a higher rank in search engines. Hence, this is a basic requirement for any website and, fortunately, something that can help to improve the crawlability of your website.

Web crawlers are interested in visiting websites that are constantly updating their content. Thereby, they will crawl and index your page much faster. Here, images, videos, slides, audio, and more will be included in this content category. It helps your website visitors better understand what you are doing and ensures that it is crawled and indexed.

Improve your page load time

Page speed is a measure of how fast the content of a web page loads. It is determined by various factors, including a website server, page file size, and image compression. Many tools are available to decide on your page speed, and Google also offers a tool.

We mentioned earlier that web crawlers have limited time crawling and indexing your website. As a result, they will leave your website when their crawl budget is over. Even if the pages on your website load quickly, a crawler will only have time to visit before it runs out. Additionally, visitors may leave your website and pick your competitors if your page load time is high. They have many more options for your products and services. We all live in the digital age, and everything can be found online in seconds.

The faster your visitors leave your website, the higher your bounce rate. Search engines will be misunderstood that your content is irrelevant, thus lowering your search ranking.

Avoid duplicating content

Duplicate content is a term that refers to similar or exact content contained on other websites or different pages of the same website. Here, Google and other search engines find it difficult to determine which version of duplicate content is more relevant. In such cases, they may be confused as to which version of the index should be excluded and which version of the link metric, such as Authority and Link Equity.

Hence, increasing the workload for search engines is not good for your search engine rankings. Therefore, there is only one way to avoid duplicate content altogether. Duplicate content not only causes pages containing similar or similar content to lose ranking but also reduces the frequency of content crawlers visiting your website. Therefore, it is best to avoid duplicate content to confuse search engines. Also, those who use a syndicated blog service from marketing companies ensure the content is not crawlable.

Bottom line

This article analyses how much our website ranking depends on crawling and indexing and the many ways we can improve it. All websites are constantly optimized and make the right improvements to advance search rankings. Hereabouts, all sorts of problems preventing search engines from crawling and indexing web pages become a major headache for web owners. Hence, this post will be a great guide for seeing the results in search engine rankings, reading our tips carefully, and enabling them.