Crawl stats play a crucial role in determining a website's visibility and ranking on search engines like Google. The more efficiently search engine bots can crawl your site, the better your chances of having your content indexed and ranked. In this blog, we will delve into what crawling is, how to measure crawl stats, and how to improve them to ensure that your website stays competitive.

Different Ways to Optimize Craw Stats of a Website

What is Crawling?

Crawling refers to the process where search engine bots, such as Google's bots, visit and read the webpages/content of your website hosted on an internet server. This is the first step in the indexing process, where search engines analyze and store information about your web pages to provide relevant search results to users.

Crawl Frequency

Crawl frequency is the measure of how often a bot visits your website. For example, if a bot visits your website three times a day, the crawl frequency is three. The more frequently your website is crawled, the quicker your new content will be indexed. Factors like the freshness of your content and the number of backlinks pointing to your site can influence crawl frequency.

Crawl Rate

Crawl rate measures the number of pages that a bot crawls during each visit to your website. For instance, if a bot crawls 300 pages in the morning and 250 pages in the afternoon, the crawl rate for those sessions would be 300 and 250, respectively. Enhancing your crawl rate ensures that more of your site’s content is indexed by search engines.

What Are Crawl Stats?

Crawl stats provide insights into how frequently and thoroughly bots are crawling your website. You can track crawl stats through tools like Google Search Console (GSC), which lets you monitor how Googlebot interacts with your site. With GSC, you can submit sitemaps, request URL indexing, analyze crawl errors, and more.

To enhance your website's visibility and improve its crawl stats, it's essential to focus on optimizing how search engine bots interact with your content. Here’s how you can do that:

• Natural Crawling: Bots naturally visit your website as they explore content across internet servers. This organic process is crucial for indexing your site in search engines.
• Google Search Console (GSC): You can actively communicate with bots and request them to crawl specific pages using tools like Google Search Console (GSC), formerly known as Google Webmaster Tools (GWT). This tool allows you to submit sitemaps, monitor crawl stats, and address any crawl errors.
• Backlinks: Building high-quality backlinks from reputable websites not only boosts your site's authority but also encourages bots to crawl your site more frequently. Strong backlink profiles signal search engines that your content is valuable and worth revisiting.
• Content Coverage: Ensure your website covers relevant topics and search terms comprehensively. The more content you have on important keywords and topics, the more likely bots will crawl and index your pages. This includes updating existing content and adding fresh material regularly.
• Publish Fresh Content: Regular updates with relevant content keep bots returning to your site, improving crawl frequency.
• Branding: Establishing a strong brand presence can also positively impact crawl frequency. Well-known brands are often crawled more frequently as search engines recognize their authority and relevance.

• Website Performance & Technical SEO: Enhancing your website’s technical aspects, such as load speed, mobile-friendliness, and overall performance, can significantly improve crawl rates. Faster, optimized pages allow bots to crawl more pages in a single visit, increasing your overall crawl frequency.
• Internal Linking Structure: Build a well-organized internal linking structure that connects every page you want to rank on Google. This internal linking mesh helps ensure that no page is left unvisited, preventing orphan pages and improving the likelihood of thorough crawling across your entire site.

How To Improve the Crawl Rate?

Bots visit your website with a certain bandwidth, either in terms of data or time. By optimizing your website's performance, you can help bots crawl more pages within the allocated resources. Below are examples of how to improve crawl rates by optimizing load times and page sizes:

Page Size as a Variable:

Load Time as a Variable:

Optimizing the page size and load times can significantly increase the number of pages crawled per visit.

Internal Linking Mesh:

By building an internal linking mesh, you can improve the crawl rate. Internal linking ensures that every single page on your website gets crawled, especially when the website is large and has thousands of pages. This strategy is one of the secret sauces for SEO success, as it prevents orphan pages and ensures efficient crawling.

Conclusion

Improving your website's crawl stats is essential for better indexing and higher search engine rankings. By focusing on website performance, content quality, internal linking, and leveraging tools like Google Search Console, you can ensure that your site is frequently and thoroughly crawled. These strategies not only enhance your site's visibility but also contribute to a more effective SEO strategy. Regular monitoring and continuous optimization will help you stay ahead in the competitive digital landscape. By implementing these strategies, you can effectively improve both the crawl rate and crawl frequency of your website, ultimately leading to better search engine rankings and visibility.

Manjunath Chowdary

Digital Marketing Consultant