How does a site crawlability help SEO?
What does the term Crawlability refer to?
Crawlability refers to when search engines use bots to crawl and index your site. Technical SEO includes ensuring that these bots can access and crawl all of your site’s pages, including any hidden or dynamically generated content.
When a website has good crawlability it means that the ability for search engine bots to crawl and index the pages on your website are easily indexable.
A site that is easily crawlable can have a positive impact on SEO in many ways:
- Indexing: Search engine bots use crawlers to scan and index web pages. If your website is not crawlable, search engines may not be able to index all of your pages, which can negatively impact your search engine visibility.
- Discoverability: Search engines rely on links to discover new pages and content on your site. If your site is not crawlable, bots may not be able to follow links to new pages, and these pages may not be discovered or indexed.
- Site structure: A well-structured site with a clear hierarchy of pages and URLs is easier for search engine bots to crawl and understand. A crawlable site can ensure that bots can access all of the important pages on your site and understand how they relate to each other.
- Duplicate content: A crawlable site can help avoid duplicate content issues. If search engines find multiple versions of the same content on your site, they may not know which version to index, and this can negatively impact your search engine rankings.
- Page speed: Site crawlability can also impact page speed. If search engine bots are unable to crawl your site efficiently, it can lead to slower page load times, which can negatively impact your search engine rankings.
To improve your website crawlability, you can take steps, such as:
- Ensuring that your site has a clear hierarchy of pages
- Using descriptive URLs
- Avoiding duplicate content
- Optimizing page load times
- Using a sitemap to help search engine bots navigate your site.
By making your site easily crawlable, you can improve your search engine visibility and help your pages get discovered and indexed by search engines.