Understanding Crawlability in SEO: A detailed 10-point guide

by our SEO Agency Optimize 360

Crawlability

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La crawlability is a term often mentioned in the field of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), but what exactly does it mean?

In simple terms, crawlability refers to the ability of a search engine robot, such as Googlebot, to efficiently crawl and index a website.

In this article, we take a closer look at this concept, covering ten key points.

1. Search engine robots and their role

Robots (also known as spiders or crawlers) are automated programmes used by search engines to browse, analyse and index the pages of websites. Their main purpose is to discover new pages and update the search engine index based on changes and new features on existing sites.

2. The importance of crawlability for SEO

Good crawlability enables search engines to find and index the pages on your website quickly and efficiently. This makes it easier for them to understand your content and rank it correctly. In other words, poor crawlability can lead to incomplete or incorrect indexing of your website, limiting its visibility in search results.

3. The key elements of a website's crawlability

There are several factors that can influence the crawlability of a website. Firstly, there is the structure of the site and the ease with which a robot can navigate between the different pages.

a) The structure of internal links

The way in which internal links are connected to each other, particularly the depth of the tree structure (number of clicks to reach a page from the home page), plays an essential role in the ability of robots to explore your site. A good internal link structure makes it easier for robots to discover pages and ensures a more balanced distribution of SEO authority (the famous "link juice").

b) The robots.txt and sitemap.xml files

These two files have specific functions in the crawling process:
- The file robots.txt allows you to give instructions to robots about which sections or pages of your site they can or cannot explore and index. It is important to configure this file correctly to avoid accidentally blocking important content;
- The file sitemap.xmlprovides search engines with an organised and structured list of all the URL on your site. This makes it much easier for robots to crawl your site.

4. Optimising page load speed

Search engine spiders have a limited amount of time in which to crawler each site, called the "crawl budget". If your pages take a long time to load, the robots will be less able to explore your entire site in the time available. It is therefore crucial to improve the loading speed of your pages by optimising various elements such as image compression, the use of a cache system or file minification. CSS and JavaScript.

5. Ensure the quality of the content

Search engines seek to index quality content that is relevant and useful to users. Regularly publish original, informative and well-structured articles on your site to encourage crawlers to return frequently to explore your site and thus improve its indexing.

6. Making the site mobile-friendly

With the rise of smartphones and tablets, search engines are attaching increasing importance to the 'user experience'.user experience on mobile devices. A responsive site, which adapts correctly to all screen sizes, will also enable spiders to access all your content easily, thereby improving crawlability.

7. Use relevant SEO tags

The meta tagstags, such as title, description or keywords tags, give search engines information about the content of your pages. Make sure you optimise these tags for each page of your site and do not use duplicate or overly generic terms. This will make it easier for robots to understand your content and index it.

8. Avoid cloaking

Le cloaking is a prohibited technique that consists of presenting search engine spiders with content that is different from that of a search engine. visible by users, with the aim of manipulating rankings. Search engines severely penalise this practice, which damages both the crawlability and the ranking of your site.

9. Checking and correcting exploration errors

It is important to regularly monitor the crawl errors reported by search engines, in particular using Google tools Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools. These errors may include pages not found (404 error), problems accessing blocked resources or incorrect redirects (error 301/302). Correcting these problems will improve your site's crawlability.

10. Test crawlability with online tools

There are several free online tools available to quickly check the crawlability of your website, such as Screaming FrogXenu's Link Sleuth and DeepCrawl. By identifying potential obstacles to the exploration of your site, these tools will help you to optimise its crawlability and, consequently, its natural referencing.

In short, crawlability is an essential factor to take into account in any SEO strategy. By following the advice given in this article, you can optimise the ability of search engines to crawl and index your website correctly, improving its visibility and ranking in search results.