Optimizing your website is crucial for faster content discovery and indexing by Google. This, in turn, enhances your site’s visibility and boosts traffic.
For extensive websites with millions of web pages, effective management of your crawl budget becomes even more vital. By prioritizing Google’s crawl on your most important pages, you enable a better understanding of your content, further enhancing your site’s performance.
Google states that:
If your site does not have a large number of pages that change rapidly, or if your pages seem to be crawled the same day that they are published, keeping your sitemap up to date and checking your index coverage regularly is enough. Google also states that each page must be reviewed, consolidated and assessed to determine where it will be indexed after it has crawled.
Crawl budget is determined by two main elements: crawl capacity limit and crawl demand.
Crawl demand refers to the level of interest Google has in crawling your website. Pages that are popular, such as trending stories from reputable sources like CNN, as well as pages that undergo frequent and significant updates, will attract higher crawl rates from Google.
Googlebot wants to crawl your site without overwhelming your servers. To prevent this, Googlebot calculates a crawl capacity limit, which is the maximum number of simultaneous parallel connections that Googlebot can use to crawl a site, as well as the time delay between fetches.
Taking crawl capacity and crawl demand together, Google defines a site’s crawl budget as the set of URLs that Googlebot can and wants to crawl. Even if the crawl capacity limit is not reached, if crawl demand is low, Googlebot will crawl your site less.
Below are some essential tips to effectively manage crawl budget for large to medium-sized websites with a substantial number of URLs ranging from 10,000 to millions:
Identify important pages and less important pages to be excluded from crawling
To optimize your crawl budget effectively, it is crucial to differentiate between important and less important pages that Google should crawl less frequently.
Once you’ve conducted a thorough analysis to determine page significance, you can identify which pages are worthy of crawling and which ones can be excluded. By using the robots.txt file to instruct Google not to crawl certain pages, you can efficiently manage your crawl budget.
This strategic exclusion of non-essential pages allows Googlebot to focus its efforts on the most valuable content on your site. As a result, Googlebot might choose to prioritize crawling the essential pages or even consider increasing your crawl budget.
Additionally, remember to block Faceted navigation and session identifier URLs through robots.txt. This ensures that duplicate or session-specific pages are not needlessly crawled, contributing to more efficient use of your crawl budget.
Prevent the crawling of unimportant URLs using robots.txt and specify the pages that Google can crawl
Google suggests utilizing the robots.txt file to block the crawling of unimportant URLs for enterprise-level sites with millions of pages.
In addition, it is crucial to ensure that essential pages, directories containing valuable content, and money pages are allowed to be crawled by Googlebot and other search engines. This approach guarantees that the most valuable parts of the website receive proper attention and indexing, leading to improved visibility and search engine performance.
Long Redirect Chains
To maintain a smooth crawl process, aim to minimize the number of redirects on your website. Excessive redirects or redirect loops can cause confusion for Google and lead to a reduction in your crawl limit.
Google advises against long redirect chains, as they can adversely impact crawling efficiency. By keeping your redirects concise and well-organized, you can enhance Google’s ability to crawl your site effectively.
Manage Duplicate Content Effectively
While Google does not penalize websites for having duplicate content, it is essential to prioritize providing original and unique information to Googlebot, which ultimately satisfies the information needs of end users and remains relevant and valuable. Using the robots.txt file strategically can help manage this process.
Google advises against solely relying on the “noindex” directive, as it may still result in Googlebot requesting the content, only to find it marked as non-indexable. Instead, focus on delivering high-quality, unique content that adds value to users, and use appropriate robots.txt directives to guide Googlebot’s crawling behaviour effectively.
Use HTML
By employing HTML, you increase the likelihood of search engine crawlers visiting your website.
Though Googlebots have made strides in crawling and indexing JavaScript effectively, it’s important to note that not all search engine crawlers are as advanced as Google’s and may encounter difficulties with languages other than HTML. Therefore, prioritizing HTML content ensures better compatibility with various search engine crawlers, ultimately enhancing the visibility and indexing of your website.
Create content that is valuable and beneficial to users
Google emphasizes that content is evaluated based on its quality, regardless of its age. While it’s essential to create and update content as needed, merely making superficial changes to update the page date won’t add value.
The crucial factor is whether your content fulfils the needs of end users by being helpful and relevant, regardless of its age. If the content is valuable and satisfies users, its age becomes less relevant.
However, if users don’t find the content helpful and relevant, it is advisable to refresh and update it, making it more current, useful, and relevant. Promoting refreshed content via social media can also help increase its visibility.
Furthermore, linking your pages directly to the home page can signal their importance and encourage more frequent crawling by search engines.
Focus on providing high-quality and relevant content that caters to users’ needs, and when necessary, update and promote it to maintain its relevance and visibility.
Note Crawl Errors And Address Them Promptly.
When you delete pages from your website, ensure that the corresponding URLs return a 404 or 410 status, indicating that the pages have been permanently removed. A 404 status serves as a strong signal for search engines not to crawl that URL again.
On the other hand, if you block URLs, they will remain in the crawl queue for an extended period and will be recrawled once the block is removed.
Google advises against having soft 404 pages, as they will continue to be crawled and can waste your crawl budget. You can check for soft 404 errors by reviewing your Index Coverage report in Google Search Console.
If your site frequently returns 5xx HTTP response status codes (server errors) or experiences connection timeouts, crawling can slow down. To address this, monitor the Crawl Stats report in Search Console and work towards minimizing the number of server errors.
Note that Google does not respect or follow the non-standard “crawl-delay” robots.txt rule.
Even if you use the nofollow attribute on a page, it can still be crawled and consume crawl budget if any other page on your site or the web does not label the link as nofollow.
By adhering to these guidelines, you can manage your crawl budget more effectively and improve the overall crawling and indexing process for your website.
Ensure fast-loading web pages and provide an excellent user experience
Ensure that your site is optimized for Core Web Vitals. Faster loading times, preferably under three seconds, enable Google to swiftly deliver information to users. When users find the content favourable, Google will continue indexing your pages as it indicates good crawl health, potentially leading to an increase in your crawl limit.
Prioritizing these optimizations will help enhance your site’s performance and visibility on search engines.
Regularly Update Your Sitemaps To Keep Them Current
XML sitemaps play a vital role in helping Google discover your content and expediting the process.
To ensure their effectiveness, it is crucial to keep your sitemap URLs up to date. Utilize the <lastmod> tag to indicate updated content and adhere to SEO best practices, including the following:
1. Include only URLs you want indexed by search engines.
2. Add URLs that return a 200-status code (indicating successful access).
3. Keep a single sitemap file under 50MB or 50,000 URLs. If using multiple sitemaps, create an index sitemap listing all of them.
4. Ensure your sitemap is UTF-8 encoded for proper character handling.
5. Include links to localized versions of each URL (refer to Google’s documentation for details).
6. Regularly update your sitemap whenever there are new URLs or updates/deletions to existing URLs.
By adhering to these guidelines, your XML sitemap will effectively assist Google in finding and indexing your content, enhancing your website’s overall search engine visibility.
Build A Good Site Structure
An effective site structure is crucial for optimizing your SEO performance and enhancing both indexing and user experience. The site structure significantly influences various aspects of search engine results pages (SERP) results, such as crawlability, click-through rate, and user experience.
By maintaining a clear and linear site structure, you can utilize your crawl budget efficiently, facilitating Googlebot in discovering new or updated content on your website.
An essential principle to keep in mind is the “three-click rule,” ensuring that any user can navigate from one page of your site to another within a maximum of three clicks. This user-friendly approach enhances accessibility and improves overall user satisfaction.
Internal Linking
Simplifying the crawling and navigation process for search engines on your website has several advantages. It allows crawlers to readily identify your site’s structure, context, and crucial content.
Internal links that direct to a web page serve multiple purposes. They signal to Google the significance of that page, contribute to establishing a clear information hierarchy for your website, and aid in the distribution of link equity across your entire site. Emphasizing internal linking enhances the overall crawlability and ranking potential of your website.
Continuously Track and Monitor Crawl Stats.
Regularly reviewing and monitoring Google Search Console (GSC) is crucial to identify any crawling issues and improve overall efficiency. Utilize the Crawl Stats report in GSC to check for any problems encountered by Googlebot while crawling your site.
If GSC reports availability errors or warnings, examine the host availability graphs to spot instances where Googlebot’s requests exceeded the red limit line. Clicking into the graph will reveal which URLs were failing, helping you correlate them with specific issues on your site.
Additionally, leverage the URL Inspection Tool to test a few URLs on your website. If the URL inspection tool returns host load warnings, it indicates that Googlebot cannot crawl as many URLs from your site as it discovered. Addressing these issues promptly will help enhance the crawling efficiency and indexing of your website.
Finally
For large websites with their vast size and complexity, optimizing crawl budget becomes a crucial task. The abundance of pages and dynamic content poses challenges for search engine crawlers to efficiently crawl and index the entire site.
Crawl budget optimization allows site owners to prioritize the crawling and indexing of essential and updated pages, ensuring that search engines utilize their resources wisely.
This optimization process involves various techniques, such as enhancing site architecture, handling URL parameters, establishing crawl priorities, and removing duplicate content. By implementing these strategies, large websites can achieve improved search engine visibility, enhanced user experience, and increased organic traffic.
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