Crawl budget plays a crucial role in SEO, especially for large websites with millions of pages or medium-sized ones with thousands of pages that are updated regularly. For instance, eBay.com is a prime example of a website with millions of pages, while user-driven review sites like Gamespot.com feature tens of thousands of pages that change frequently. With the many responsibilities an SEO professional has to manage, crawl budget often takes a back seat.
However, optimizing your crawl budget is both necessary and achievable.
In this article, we will explore:
● How to effectively improve your crawl budget.
● Recent changes and updates to the concept of crawl budget.
(Note: If your website has only a few hundred pages and you’re facing indexing issues, check out our article on common causes of indexing problems, as it’s likely not related to crawl budget.)
Crawl budget refers to the number of pages that search engine crawlers, such as bots and spiders, visit within a given timeframe.
Several factors influence crawl budget, including Googlebot’s efforts to avoid overloading your server while balancing Google’s goal to crawl as much of your domain as possible.
Crawl budget optimization involves taking steps to improve the efficiency of crawling, increasing the rate at which search engine bots visit your pages.
Crawling is the initial step for a website to appear in search results. Without crawling, new pages and updates won’t be added to search engine indexes.
The more frequently crawlers visit your site, the faster updates and new pages are indexed. This leads to quicker results from your optimization efforts, ultimately impacting your rankings sooner.
Google’s index houses hundreds of billions of pages and continues to grow. Crawling each URL incurs a cost, and with the increasing number of websites, search engines aim to reduce computational and storage costs by minimizing the crawl rate and limiting URL indexation.
In addition, the drive for sustainability and reducing carbon emissions is becoming a top priority. Google has long-term plans to enhance sustainability and reduce its environmental footprint.
Given these factors, effective crawl management may become more challenging in the future. While small websites with just a few hundred pages might not need to worry much about crawl budget, large websites need to manage resources efficiently. Optimizing crawl budget ensures that Google crawls your website while using as few resources as possible.
Let’s dive into the strategies for optimizing crawl budget in today’s landscape.
When it comes to managing your crawl budget, there are a few proven strategies that can help you keep it in check. By implementing these practices, you can improve your crawl rate and enhance your website’s visibility in search engine results.
Search engine crawlers rely on the robots.txt file to know which pages to scan. By excluding backend resources or low-priority pages from being crawled, you can free up your crawl budget for more important content. For instance, if you have an “admin” section on your website, add the following to your robots.txt:
User-agent:* Disallow: /admin/
Your sitemap is a list of key pages on your website, helping search engine crawlers understand your site’s structure and prioritize pages accordingly. Updating your sitemap regularly ensures that crawlers are aware of new or modified content, allowing for more efficient crawling and indexing.
Duplicate pages waste crawl budget by causing crawlers to scan the same content repeatedly. This not only confuses search engine bots but also dilutes your site’s traffic. To avoid this, remove duplicate content or use canonical tags to indicate the preferred URL for indexing.
Site speed plays a crucial role in crawl budget optimization. Slow-loading pages reduce the frequency at which search engines crawl your site, directly impacting your crawl budget. Speed up your site by compressing images, minifying CSS and JavaScript, and implementing caching or lazy loading techniques. Faster load times lead to better crawl efficiency and improved SEO performance.
Redirect chains and orphan pages hinder crawl efficiency and waste crawl budget. To optimize your site, ensure internal linking is well-structured and limit redirects. Whenever possible, use direct links to the final destination instead of relying on redirects, helping crawlers navigate your site more efficiently.
Broken links lead crawlers to dead ends, wasting valuable time and crawl resources. Use tools like Google Search Console to identify and fix or remove broken links, improving both user experience and crawl efficiency.
HTML pages are easier for search engine crawlers to index than other formats. By converting pages to HTML, you make your content more accessible to bots, helping ensure your pages are crawled and indexed efficiently.
While URL parameters can provide additional context for page content, they can complicate crawling. Static URLs (e.g., example.com/page/123) are easier for search engines to index than dynamic ones (e.g., example.com/page.id=123). Simplifying URLs makes your site more accessible to crawlers.
Hreflang tags are essential for ensuring the right version of your page is shown to users based on their language or region. This can enhance your visibility in search results and make it easier for crawlers to index your pages according to user preferences.
If your site has multiple language versions, using hreflang tags helps direct users to the most appropriate content, optimizing your crawl budget and increasing traffic.
A well-organized content architecture ensures that information is distributed efficiently across your site, meeting user needs. Internal linking plays a key role in this structure, making your content more discoverable for both users and search engines. Pages with no internal links are harder to find and less likely to be crawled regularly. Effective internal linking can also improve rankings for related keywords, further optimizing your crawl budget.
By focusing on these practices, you can ensure that your website is efficiently crawled, indexed, and ultimately ranked by search engines.
If you're questioning whether crawl budget optimization remains relevant for your website, the answer is a resounding yes.
Crawl budget is, and will continue to be, a crucial factor for any SEO professional to consider.
By implementing the strategies discussed, you'll be on your way to optimizing your crawl budget and boosting your SEO performance. However, keep in mind that simply getting your pages crawled doesn’t guarantee they will be indexed.
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