Story Based Question
You’ve just launched a brand-new website for your photography business, and you’re eager to get it in front of potential customers. But despite all your efforts, you’re not seeing much traffic coming from search engines. You’ve done everything right—great content, optimized images, and fast load times. Yet, your site isn’t ranking as expected. After some research, you start wondering: Could there be an issue with how search engines are crawling my website? What is crawlability, and why does it matter for SEO?
Exact Answer
Crawlability refers to the ability of search engines to access, read, and index your website’s pages. It’s crucial for SEO because if search engines can’t crawl your site properly, they can’t index your content, and it won’t appear in search results.
Explanation
Crawlability is a fundamental aspect of SEO. It describes how easily search engines, like Google, can discover, access, and index the pages on your website. Search engines use bots or crawlers to visit websites, following links from one page to another and reading the content. If your site isn’t crawlable, search engines may miss important pages, meaning they won’t be indexed and won’t appear in search results.
For a website to be crawlable, several things need to be in place:
- Robots.txt file: This file tells search engine crawlers which pages or sections of your site they should or shouldn’t crawl. You want to ensure that critical pages are not accidentally blocked from being crawled.
- Sitemaps: A sitemap is a file that lists all the important pages on your website, helping search engines discover and index your content faster.
- Internal linking: The way your pages are linked together helps crawlers find and navigate through your site. Broken or missing links can make it harder for search engines to discover new pages.
- No broken links or redirects: Broken links or excessive redirects can block crawlers from accessing important content, harming your site’s crawlability.
- Mobile-friendliness: Since Google primarily uses mobile-first indexing, making sure your website is mobile-friendly helps crawlers access and index your content effectively.
By ensuring good crawlability, you help search engines find and index your content, which increases the chances of ranking well in search results.
Example
Let’s say you run a photography business, and you’ve just added a new blog post showcasing your recent work. You want this post to show up in search results, but you realize that it’s not being indexed by Google.
You check your robots.txt file, and it turns out you’ve accidentally blocked search engines from crawling your blog section. You fix this by editing the file and allowing access to the blog.
Next, you check your sitemap and find that it’s outdated, missing several new blog posts. You update your sitemap and submit it to Google Search Console, ensuring that crawlers can easily find your new content.
Lastly, you run a site audit and discover some broken links on your homepage, which might be stopping crawlers from navigating your site properly. You fix those links, ensuring everything is working smoothly.
After making these changes, Google can now crawl your blog and index your new post, making it appear in search results. This boosts your site’s visibility, bringing more potential clients to your photography business.
Crawlability is key for SEO because, without it, search engines won’t be able to index and rank your site’s pages. By improving crawlability, you ensure that search engines can access all your important content, which improves your chances of ranking higher in search results.