SEO Crawling explained: How Google finds your website, crawls your pages, and boosts rankings

If Google can’t crawl your site, it’s invisible, no matter how great your content is. Crawling is a crucial process that helps your pages show up in search results.

Think of Google as a digital spider weaving its way through the web, scanning every corner of your site to discover and index its content.

But how does this process actually work? And more importantly, how can you ensure that Google finds and ranks your pages effectively?

In this guide, we’ll explain what is crawling, how the Googlebot crawl works, what indexation et crawl mean for SEO, and how to make Google crawl your website efficiently.

What is crawling in SEO, and why does it matter?

Crawling is the essential first step before a page can appear in Google’s search results. It’s the process by which search engine bots, also called crawlers (automated programs that browse the web) or spiders (software agents that systematically explore websites) discover, explore, and index new web pages to match user search intent.

Also known as spidering (the act of following links to find and catalog content), this process allows crawlers like Googlebot (Google’s web crawler) and Bingbot (Bing’s web crawler) to navigate your site and collect valuable information.

They move through the web by following links between pages, automatically jumping from one piece of content to another.

Think of Googlebot as an explorer in a massive library, flipping through books (web pages) and taking notes (indexing: the process of adding pages to a searchable database) to help users find the most relevant information.

If your site isn’t crawlable, it’s like having a book that’s missing from the library catalog, no matter how valuable its content, no one will ever find it!

Using a blogging platform optimized for SEO, like InBlog, ensures that your content is easily crawlable and indexed efficiently by search engines.

How Google crawler works

To understand how does a search engine find results, you need to know the SEO crawling process. To explore and index web pages, crawlers rely on multiple factors, including:

• Links: Both backlinks (links from other websites that point to your site) and internal links (links within your site that connect different pages) help guide crawlers.

• Content quality: The depth, relevance, and freshness of your site’s content impact how well it’s indexed.

If you want to ensure you’re creating valuable content, see The ROI of blogging: Are you creating valuable content?.

• Domain name: A well-structured and trustworthy domain can aid crawling efficiency.

• XML sitemap: A file that lists all the pages of your website (an XML sitemap: a roadmap for search engines) to help them understand your site's structure and prioritize pages for crawling.

• SEO elements: Meta-tags, canonical URLs, and structured data are key to visibility, and avoiding mistakes like keyword stuffing can protect your rankings.

Since crawling happens before a site can be ranked in search results, optimizing your site for effective crawl SEO is a critical step in achieving success.

Crawl budget: Important factor for SEO

Crawl budget refers to the number of pages Googlebot is willing to crawl on your site within a given timeframe. If Googlebot wastes time on low-priority pages, it may not reach your most valuable content, leading to the dreaded Google crawled but not indexed status.

Several key factors influence crawl budget:

• Site authority (based on backlinks and trust signals)

• Page speed

• Duplicate content

• Internal linking

Use Google Search Console to analyze crawl stats and ensure Googlebot focuses on your most important pages.

How does crawling impact SEO?

Here’s the thing about search engine crawling: bots don’t know what’s important unless you guide them. Without clear instructions, they might crawl irrelevant pages (examples: old subdomains, parameter-based URLs), which wastes crawl budget.

By guiding crawlers toward the right pages, you ensure they focus on SEO-relevant content. This keeps things efficient, avoids unnecessary errors, and makes your site look better to search engines.

What you should let search engines crawl:

• Homepage

• Product & service pages (including variations)

• Landing pages (that work across different channels)

• Blog articles

• Resources & templates

• Image & script URLs (including JavaScript & CSS)

What you shouldn’t let search engines crawl:

• Pages with private information (business or user data)

• Checkout pages

• Login-protected URLs

• Plugin or API URLs (not meant for content)

• Temporary admin pages (like T&Cs for a one-time giveaway)

• Duplicate content (if crawl budget is a concern)

• Site search URLs (to avoid cluttering the index)

This tweet of Gary Illyes highlights the importance of blocking access to pages that don’t directly serve the purpose of indexing and SEO:

By managing what gets crawled, you optimize your website’s efficiency and SEO impact. 

Key factors for a good crawl experience

Want Google to crawl and index your site effectively? Here’s what you need to optimize:

1. Internal linking

Googlebot navigates your site like a tourist using a map, internal links guide it to important pages. A solid internal linking strategy ensures search engines find and prioritize key content.

Example: If your homepage links to a major product page, Google sees it as important. But if a page has no internal links (an orphan page, a page with no inbound links), it may never get crawled.

2. Sitemap & Robots.txt

• XML Sitemaps (a file listing all your website’s pages) tell search engines which pages to crawl.

• Robots.txt (a file that gives crawling instructions to bots) helps block unnecessary pages, like admin or duplicate content pages.

  

Quick fix: Submit your sitemap in Google Search Console to speed up indexing.

3. Canonical tags (avoid duplicate content issues)

If similar content appears on multiple URLs, canonical tags (HTML tags that specify the preferred version of a page) help prevent Google from splitting ranking power between duplicates.

Example: An e-commerce site selling the same product in different colors should use canonical tags to tell Google which URL to prioritize.

4. Optimized meta tags & structured data

• Meta tags (HTML elements like title and description) give search engines a summary of your page.

• Structured data (schema markup, a special code that helps search engines understand content) improves visibility in search results.

Example: A recipe site using schema markup can tell Google the exact ingredients and cooking time, increasing the chances of appearing in rich snippets (enhanced search results with extra details).

Check out blogging statistics : Key metrics you need to know for blog growth for insights on blog performance.

5. Fast & mobile-friendly site

Google prioritizes mobile-first indexing (ranking based on the mobile version of a site). If your site is slow or difficult to navigate on a phone, Googlebot may struggle to crawl it efficiently.

How to check if Google is crawling your site

1. Google’s "site:" Command: Type site:yourwebsite.com in Google to see what’s indexed.

2. Google Search Console: Check the “Coverage” report for crawling issues.

3. SEO Tools: Use Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Screaming Frog to analyze crawl data.

What is the difference between crawling and indexing in seo ?

Here’s something kind of strange about SEO that you might not know:
Google can index a page without crawling it.
Sounds weird, right? But it’s true. Let me break down the difference between the two.

Crawling and indexing are often confused in the SEO world, but they actually mean two very different things.

• Crawling is when Googlebot (Google’s bot) checks out the content and code on a webpage to analyze it.

• Indexing is when Google decides if that page is eligible to show up in search results.

Now, the tricky part is that crawling doesn’t always lead to indexing. Let me explain this with an example:

Think of Googlebot as a tour guide walking down a hallway with a bunch of closed doors.

• If Googlebot is allowed to crawl a page (open the door), it can look inside and see the content (this is crawling).

• Once inside, there might be a sign that says "You’re allowed to show people this room" (this is indexing, the page shows up in search results). But if there’s a sign saying "Don’t show anyone this room" (like a “noindex” meta tag), Googlebot won’t show it in the search results even though it can see the content.

But here’s where it gets interesting:

• If Googlebot isn’t allowed to crawl a page (imagine a "Do not enter" sign on the door), it won’t go in and look at the content. So, it doesn’t know if the page has a “noindex” tag or not. But, it can still list the page in the index, even though it couldn’t check the content.

This is why blocking a page through robots.txt means it could still be indexed (even if there’s a “noindex” tag inside the page itself). If Google can’t crawl the page, it won’t see the “noindex” tag and will treat the page as indexable by default.

But, since Google couldn’t analyze the page’s content, its ranking potential is reduced (since all ranking signals would come from off-page factors and domain authority).

You’ve probably seen a search result that says something like, "This page’s description is not available because of robots.txt." That’s exactly what’s happening.

Summary concerning difference between crawling and indexing :

Final thoughts:

Crawling is the first crucial step in helping your website get discovered and ranked by search engines.

By understanding how Googlebot navigates your site, you can optimize your pages to ensure they’re crawled effectively and indexed correctly.

Remember, crawling is just the beginning. Once Googlebot visits your site, it still needs to find the content relevant to users' queries and decide whether it's worth ranking.

So, managing your website's crawl efficiency is not just about making sure Googlebot gets the information, it’s about giving it the right information to rank your pages higher in search results.

Make sure Googlebot doesn’t just visit, make it stay. Here’s your Blog SEO Checklist !

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