One of the key aspects of digital marketing is search engine optimization, which is the process of making your site more visible in the search engine results page. We all know this—the Post Launch nerds have been shoving this information down your throats since 2013. However, did you know that when you type in a search, you’re actually searching Google’s index of the Internet?
If you want your site to rank higher in search results, one of the first things you have to do is make sure your website crawlability and indexability are on-point.
What Is Crawlability?
Search engines like Google send out crawlers, or robots, to explore your site. Website crawlability is the ability of a search engine to access pages on your site, read them, and add them to its index—a giant database of all the things on the net.
The Google Bots update their index every time they come back to your site and find revised versions of your pages. When does the crawler come around? Well, that depends on the authority of your site and how often you make changes on the site. Often, Google will crawl your site more when you update it frequently.
If you’re not careful, though, errors like broken links can result in crawlability issues, making it difficult for the Bots to crawl your site. This will stop them from indexing those pieces of content. And in most cases, these blocked pages will not show up in search results.
Improving Your Website Crawlability
Okay, so now that you know the basics of website crawlability and indexability, here are some tips for making the Bots more welcome on your site.
Polish your site structure
For crawlability, you want the best website structure as possible. Your site structure is how you organize the pages on your website. Think of how your pages and subpages are linked to each other. You want to organize your site so well that the Google Bots know exactly where you want them to go. You also want them to be able to find each page on your site.
Often, you can run into issues with crawlability if you’ve got too many pages on the site or if some of those pages are hidden. If your site includes a page that’s not linked from somewhere else, you run the risk of the Bots not being able to access them.
Create a good internal linking structure
Google Bots crawl sites through links, just as people click links while surfing the web. A good internal link structure shows the crawlers where to go on the site, and helps them find pages deeper in your site’s structure.
To improve your website crawlability, create a strategy for linking between your pages. Link to services pages when you talk about them in blogs. And link to old blogs related to the topic at hand.
Use up-to-date technology and tools
If the technology you use on your site is bad or has errors, it can make it difficult for the Bots to crawl. Make sure your tools are up-to-date with SEO in mind, and make sure they allow bots to crawl your links.
Submit a sitemap to Google
A sitemap contains links to every page on your site. You can submit this file to Google through Google Console. When you submit a current sitemap to Google, it helps the Bots better understand your website and start crawling it.
Publish new content regularly
When you consistently add new content to your site, the Bots visit your site for a crawl more often. New content also helps online users to find and read more of your content—and potentially become customers.
However, you should avoid publishing duplicate content. If the crawler finds content on your site that was published other places around the Internet, you could lose rankings and possibly lower the frequency of visits from our Bot friends.
Increase site speed
Google Bots have a “crawl budget,” which basically means they can only spend so much time on your site. This means the Bots could reach and index fewer pages if your site is too slow. Make sure your pages load quickly to prevent the bots from leaving without seeing your whole site.
All this SEO stuff may seem a little daunting, but there are plenty of tools online to help you get started. Try these:
- Google Search Console helps you monitor your site. It provides information on errors about indexability and crawlability.
- SEMRush Site Audit scans your site for errors and issues causing problems for SEO. It will give you a report that includes website crawlability and indexability.
SEO Help from Post Launch
Post Launch is home to the most talented SEO experts in Las Vegas. Contact us today to learn more about our technical SEO services and how we can help improve your business’s search rankings.
