Crawl budget, a crucial concept in SEO, is frequently neglected despite its significance. Due to the numerous tasks and considerations faced by Enterprise SEO experts, it often takes a lower priority. However, optimizing crawl budget is essential and should not be disregarded. This article will provide insights on enhancing your crawl budget and discuss the recent developments in the concept over the past few years.
What is a Crawl Budget?
Crawl budget refers to the frequency at which search engine crawlers (spiders and bots) scan the pages on your website. This frequency is a delicate balance between Googlebot’s attempt to avoid overwhelming your server and Google’s overall intention to crawl your entire domain.
Crawl budget optimization involves implementing specific steps to increase the rate at which search engine bots visit your pages. By encouraging more frequent visits, your updated pages will be included in the index more quickly. Consequently, your optimization efforts will yield results faster and have a direct impact on your rankings.
Furthermore, when a search engine spider examines a website, it assesses various aspects such as site speed, server errors, crawl budget, and internal linking. These factors influence the number of pages the search engine will scan. The crawl budget represents the limit imposed by search engines on the number of pages they will scan on a website.
For instance, a website with 10,000 pages and frequent content updates may be scanned daily, but it is still constrained by the time and resources available to the spider. Let’s assume Google crawls 500 pages of your website per day; it would take 20 days to scan the entire site. However, if Google’s crawl budget for that site is set at 1000 pages per day, it would take only half the time. The presence of poor-quality content or broken links can slow down the crawling process and may require intervention.
By optimizing your crawl budget, you can improve your crawl rate, which is the speed at which search engines scan your site. This, in turn, increases your chances of achieving higher rankings in Google’s search results.
Why Is Crawl Budget Optimization Ignored?
To address this question, refer to Google’s official blog post, which provides clear insights. According to Google, crawling alone does not directly impact rankings. This statement alone is enough to discourage certain SEO professionals from considering a crawl budget. For many, the phrase “not a ranking factor” translates to “not my concern.”
However, I strongly disagree with this perspective. Furthermore, Gary Illyes from Google has explicitly mentioned that managing a crawl budget makes sense for large websites with millions of pages. If you have a moderately-sized domain, you need not excessively worry about the crawl budget. In fact, Illyes suggested that if you do have millions of pages, it may be beneficial to consider reducing some content on your domain.
Nevertheless, SEO is not merely about changing one significant factor to achieve desired results. Instead, it involves a process of making incremental improvements while paying attention to numerous metrics. Our role as SEO professionals is to optimize thousands of small elements as much as possible.
Furthermore, although the crawl budget may not have a significant impact on crawling itself, as highlighted by Google’s John Mueller, it can positively influence conversions and overall website health. Considering these factors, it is crucial to ensure that nothing on your website actively hampers your crawl budget.
How to check Website Crawl Budget?
To initiate crawl budget optimization, it is essential to determine the amount of resources allocated by Google and other search engines to your website. Here are some methods you can employ to obtain this information:
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By accessing Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a free tool that offers valuable insights into how Google indexes your website. By accessing the “Coverage” report, you can view the number of pages crawled and identify any errors that might impact your site’s crawl budget. Additionally, within the “Settings” section, you’ll find a dedicated “Crawl stats” panel where you can access further information related to crawling activities.
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By monitoring the crawl status through log files
Log files offer comprehensive information regarding how search engine crawlers interact with your website, including the specific pages they access and the frequency of their scans. By monitoring your log files, you can readily detect any errors or problems that could impact your crawl budget. This valuable insight enables you to address these issues promptly and optimize your crawl budget effectively.
How to Optimize Your Crawl Budget
Certain aspects of website management remain highly important, while the significance of others has drastically diminished or become irrelevant. It is crucial to focus on what I refer to as the “usual suspects” of website health, which are the fundamental elements that continue to play a significant role in maintaining optimal website performance.
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Allow Crawling of Your Important Pages in Robots.Txt
This step is straightforward and should be your initial priority. Managing robots.txt can be done manually or by utilizing a website auditor tool.
Personally, I find using a tool more convenient and efficient whenever possible. It simplifies the process and offers better results. By adding your robots.txt file to the tool of your choice, you can easily allow or block the crawling of specific pages on your domain within seconds. Once you make the necessary modifications, simply upload the edited document, and you’re good to go!
While it is possible to manage robots.txt manually, based on my personal experience. I highly recommend using a tool, especially for larger websites that require frequent adjustments. It saves time and makes the process much smoother.
As an example, suppose you have an “admin” section on your website. To exclude it from being crawled, you can include the following line in your robots.txt file:
User-agent:* Disallow: /admin/
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Do not Ignore Redirect Chains
When optimizing your crawl budget, it is important to address the issue of redirect chains and orphan pages. These can confuse search engine crawlers and consume valuable crawl budget resources. To mitigate this, it is crucial to establish appropriate internal linking and minimize the number of redirects on your website. Instead of using a series of redirects, it is best to provide a direct link to the final destination. This approach saves the search engine spider’s time and maximizes the efficiency of your crawl budget.
Adopting a common-sense approach to website health involves minimizing the occurrence of redirect chains across your entire domain. Ideally, it would be best to have no redirect chains at all, but for large websites, it can be nearly impossible to completely eliminate 301 and 302 redirects.
However, it is important to note that having multiple redirect chains can significantly hinder your crawl limit. In such cases, search engine crawlers may cease crawling before reaching the desired page for indexing.
While a few occasional redirects may not cause substantial harm, it is still crucial for everyone to prioritize minimizing them and maintaining a well-optimized website structure.
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Use HTML Whenever Possible
When it comes to Google’s crawler, it’s worth noting that it has made significant advancements in crawling JavaScript, as well as improved its capabilities in crawling and indexing Flash and XML. However, it’s important to recognize that not all search engines have reached the same level of proficiency in these areas.
Therefore, from my personal perspective, whenever feasible, it is advisable to prioritize using HTML. By adhering to HTML, you can ensure that your website does not compromise its crawlability across any search engine, thus maximizing your chances of optimal indexing and visibility.
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Avoid HTTP Errors Eating up Your Crawl Budget
From a technical standpoint, it is important to note that 404 and 410 error pages can negatively impact your crawl budget. Moreover, these error pages also have a detrimental effect on user experience, which further emphasizes the need to address them.
Fixing all instances of 4xx and 5xx status codes is a win-win situation. By resolving these errors, you not only improve your crawl budget but also enhance the overall user experience on your website. When it comes to conducting a website audit for this purpose, using a tool is highly recommended. SE Ranking and Screaming Frog are examples of excellent tools that SEO professionals often utilize for website audits.
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Take Care of Your URL Parameters
It’s crucial to remember that search engine crawlers consider separate URLs as distinct pages, which can deplete your crawl budget unnecessarily.
To optimize your crawl budget and prevent concerns about duplicate content, it is advantageous to inform Google about these URL parameters. Adding them to your Google Search Console account is a win-win situation that helps conserve your crawl budget.
By taking this step, you can ensure that search engines understand the purpose and structure of your URLs, leading to a more efficient crawling process and better overall website performance.
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Update Your Sitemap
Once again, prioritizing the maintenance of your XML sitemap offers a significant advantage. By ensuring that your XML sitemap contains only canonical URLs, search engine bots can effortlessly comprehend the destinations of your internal links.
Additionally, it is crucial to ensure that your XML sitemap corresponds to the most recent version of your uploaded robots.txt file. This alignment guarantees that search engines have the most up-to-date information regarding your website’s crawling directives.
By taking these measures, you create a win-win situation. The clarity provided by an optimized XML sitemap enables search engine bots to navigate your site more effectively, resulting in improved crawlability and enhanced indexing of your web pages.
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Hreflang Tags Are Vital
Crawlers utilize hreflang tags to analyze localized pages on your website. It is essential to inform Google about the localized versions of your pages in a clear and explicit manner. By implementing hreflang tags correctly, you provide search engines with the necessary information to understand and appropriately index your localized content. This helps improve the visibility and accessibility of your website to users in different regions or languages.
Therefore, ensuring the accurate implementation of hreflang tags is crucial for optimizing your website’s localization and enhancing its performance in global search results.
First off, use the <link rel="alternate" hreflang="lang_code" href="url_of_page" /> in your page’s header. Where “lang_code” is a code for a supported language. And you should use the <loc> element for any given URL. That way, you can point to the localized versions of a page.
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Take care of your content architecture and internal linking
Ensuring a proper content architecture is essential for efficiently and effectively distributing information that meets the needs of your target audience. As users increasingly seek well-structured and meaningful content, it becomes crucial to deliver information that is easily accessible and comprehensible.
Another key practice to emphasize is internal linking. Internal linking offers benefits to both users and search engines by enhancing the discoverability of your pages. When pages are not linked within your content, they become more challenging to find and are less likely to be regularly crawled. Additionally, internal linking can contribute to better rankings for terms related to the linked pages.
By prioritizing content architecture and implementing effective internal linking strategies, you can improve the accessibility, visibility, and overall performance of your website, satisfying user expectations while optimizing for search engine rankings.
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Remove broken links
Broken links have a negative impact on your crawl budget as they direct search engine crawlers to dead ends, resulting in wasted time and resources. To address this issue, utilizing tools such as Google Search Console can be highly beneficial. These tools can help identify broken links on your website, allowing you to take corrective actions by either fixing or removing them. By proactively managing and resolving broken links, you can optimize your crawl budget, ensuring that search engine crawlers efficiently navigate your website and prioritize indexing relevant and accessible content.
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Reduce Load Time
The load time of your website is another critical factor that influences your crawl budget. Slow site speed not only affects user experience but also has a direct impact on search engine rankings, leading to a reduction in your crawl budget. To improve load time and optimize your crawl budget, there are various strategies you can implement.
One effective approach is compressing images to reduce their file size, optimizing them for web delivery without compromising quality. Additionally, minifying CSS and JavaScript files can remove unnecessary characters and spaces, making them more lightweight and faster to load. Implementing caching mechanisms and lazy loading techniques can also contribute to improved load times by efficiently managing the delivery of website content.
By taking steps to reduce load times, you can significantly enhance your website’s crawl budget and overall SEO performance. Prioritizing fast and efficient page loading not only benefits search engine crawlers but also provides a better user experience, resulting in improved rankings and increased organic traffic.
How To Increase Website Crawl Budget?
For website owners, increasing the crawl limit is crucial, especially during periods of high crawl demand. The more pages search engines crawl, the greater the chance of indexing more content, resulting in improved rankings and increased organic traffic.
To optimize your site’s crawl budget, several methods can be employed. Enhancing site speed is paramount for achieving a higher crawl budget. This can be accomplished by compressing images, streamlining code, and enabling caching.
Internal linking plays a vital role in assisting search engine crawlers in navigating your site and discovering important pages. It is essential to incorporate internal links on every page to guide crawlers to relevant sections. Creating an XML sitemap serves as a roadmap for search engine crawlers, aiding them in efficiently crawling your website. Submitting this XML sitemap to Google can contribute to improving your site’s crawl budget.
Monitoring server logs and promptly addressing server errors is crucial as such errors can impede search engine crawlers from accessing your website. Additionally, duplicate content can confuse crawlers and waste the crawl budget. To address this, it is important to use canonical tags to specify the preferred URL for search engine crawlers to crawl and index.
If you want to ensure that your SEO adheres to all of these criteria, we recommend exploring our technical SEO audit services. Our services can provide you with comprehensive insights and recommendations to optimize your website’s crawl budget and overall SEO performance.
Conclusion
If you were questioning the significance of crawl budget optimization for your website, the answer is a resounding yes. Crawl budget remains a vital consideration for every SEO professional, both now and in the foreseeable future.
By implementing the tips provided, you can effectively optimize your crawl budget and enhance your overall SEO performance. Remember, taking proactive steps to manage and optimize your crawl budget can have a significant impact on your website’s visibility, indexing, and rankings in search engine results.
So, prioritize crawl budget optimization and leverage these suggestions to maximize your SEO efforts and achieve better outcomes for your website.
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