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If you run a website with 10,000+ pages and more, then you’re likely dealing with unique challenges. You should have known that search engines such as Google assign a crawl budget; the number of pages it crawls in your site per timeframe.
When your site becomes large, the search engine crawler is limited and will take a long to crawl through the site and as a result missing out on leads, opportunities, rankings and website traffic. In fact, the major pages that clearly convey your business and its relevance could never be indexed if search engines can’t easily crawl your site.
But the good news is that there is something that can alleviate this problem – crawling budget optimization.
Welcome to our Crawl budget optimization guide, where we will explore what it is and what you can do to guarantee the search engine will crawl your website’s most valuable pages.
So, are you ready? Let’s get started!
What is Crawl Budget?
Crawl budget means the amount of web pages that search engine bots like Googlebot crawl within a specific period. It is kind of like “assigning” crawling resources for your site. This budget depends on features such as website structure, size, server capacity, and overall health.
The two primary components determine your crawl budget:
1 Crawl Rate Limiter
The number of requests that can be made by a search engine bot to a particular server before the server is overwhelmed. In a situation where your server slows down or goes offlines for some time, the bot will slow down its rate at which it crawls.
2 Crawl Demand
Its relevancy and newness indicate the frequency with which the search engine will index a particular page. This means that high-value pages with frequent updates attract more web crawling activity.
Large websites must pay particular attention to the crawl budget to avoid resource misallocation that results in the wrong pages being indexed.
Why You Should Care About Crawl Budget Optimization?
To be visible in search, the first step is crawling. Due to this reason, new pages and page updates will not be incorporated to the search engines’ databases or lists if they have not been crawled.
For smaller sites, the crawl budget may not even be an issue to worry about. Search engines index all of the pages on their sites. But with thousands (or even millions) of pages, search engines may struggle to crawl everything efficiently. Here’s why crawling budget optimization matters:
Better Indexing: Makes sure your significant pages are crawled and indexed more often, which means they will be ranked higher in the search engines.
Improved SEO Performance: Helps search engines focus on pages that drive traffic and conversions while avoiding irrelevant or duplicate pages.
Faster Updates: Keep new or changes of content easy to be crawled and indexed by web crawlers.
Resource Efficiency: Prevents search engines from wasting resources on unimportant or broken pages.
Optimize your crawl budget and stay ahead in search rankings.
Techniques for Optimizing Crawl Budget on Large Websites
For large websites, advanced techniques can help manage crawl budget effectively:
1 Fix Crawl Errors
A crawl error is an error that occurs when the search engine bots are unable to crawl your site. These mistakes can spoil your crawl budget and consequently hinder your Search Engine Optimization process.
Pro Tip:
- Use tools like Google Search Console to identify crawl errors.
- Fix broken links (404 errors) and redirect chains.
- Ensure your server is configured to handle crawl requests efficiently.
2 Better Site Structure for SEO
Site structure is also important as well and it helps the bots to index your pages efficiently and easily.
Pro Tip:
- Create a clear hierarchy with categories, subcategories, and internal links.
- Use a logical URL structure to help bots understand your site’s layout.
- Limit the number of clicks required to reach any page ( ideally no more than three).
3 Optimize Robots.txt Files
The robots.txt file explains to the search engine bots or crawlers of your site which parts of your web page they should crawl and which are off limits. This option assists in saving your crawl budget as a proper configuration should apply.
Pro Tip:
- Block non-essential pages like admin panels, staging environments, or duplicate content.
- Avoid blocking important pages or CSS/JS files required for rendering.
- Regularly audit your robots.txt file to ensure it aligns with your goals.
4 Making the Most of XML Sitemaps
XML sitemap is a kind of navigation map for a search engine through which one can specify all the valuable pages they’d like the search engine to visit and index.
Pro Tip:
- Submit your XML sitemap in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster tools.
- Ensure the sitemap is updated regularly to reflect new or removed pages.
- Keep your sitemap clean by excluding duplicate or low-value pages.
5 Remove Duplicate Content
If a particular piece of content is duplicated and presented in different subdirectories, it can squander crawl budget by repeating a specific set of content.
Pro Tip:
- Use canonical tags to signal the preferred version of a page.
- Consolidates similar pages into one where possible.
- Set up 301 redirects for duplicate pages to their primary versions.
6 Give Priority to High-Value Pages
All the pages that you have on your website are not worth the same in terms of importance. Filter your crawl budget towards the likes of pages that generate traffic, leads, or perhaps match your business objectives.
Pro Tip:
- Use internal linking to guide bots to high-value pages.
- Regularly update key pages to signal their importance to search engines.
- Reduce the prominence of low-value pages, such as outdated blog posts or thin content.
7 Manage Pagination Effectively
Pagination is used mostly on big ecommerce websites or blogs, but can greatly affect your crawl budget if not set up right.
Pro Tip:
- Use rel=”next” and rel=”prev” tags to help search engines understand the relationship between paginated pages.
- Ensure key content is accessible without requiring bots to crawl through multiple pagination layers.
8 Compress and Optimize Media Files
Most media files will also add weight to your website and this will reduce the crawl rate limit.
Pro Tip:
- Compress images and videos without compromising quality.
- Use modern file formats like WebP for images.
- Host large media files on a CDN to reduce server load.
9 Use Crawl Budget Monitoring Tools
Monitoring crawl budgets ensures that your dear state is improving.
Software such as Screaming Frog, Ahrefs and SEMRush also offer features in the aspect of crawling.
Pro Tip:
- Analyze crawl stats in Google Search Console to understand how bots interact with your site.
- Identify and address pages that receive excessing crawling without adding value.
10 Use Structured Data
While unstructured data exists in a rather free-flowing form, it frees the search engine to better understand your content and place it at a more appropriate position regarding the crawling and indexing processes.
Pro Tip:
- Add schema markup to pages like products, events, or FAQs.
- Ensure your structured data is error-free by testing it using Google’s Rich Result Test tool.
11 Improve Page Load Speed
Another disadvantage of having a slow-loading website is that the number of pages that bots access within a particular session may be small.
Pro Tip:
- Optimize your site’s core web vitals (Largest Contentful Paint, First Input Delay, and Cumulative Layout Shift).
- Enable browser caching and use a Content Delivery Network (CDN).
- Minimize HTTP requests and reduce unnecessary scripts.
12 Remove Low-Quality Pages
Due to dynamic web content generation and evolution, large websites tend to develop numerous worthless or obsolete web pages. These pages waste the crawl budgets and degenerate the overall quality of your site.
Pro Tip:
- Conduct a content audit to identify low-performing pages.
- Consolidate, improve, or remove pages with little value.
- Use a 410 (Gone) status code for permanently removed pages.
13 Enable HTTPS
Search engines prefer crawling websites with HTTPS more than those with HTTP. Using HTTPS protects the users when browsing your site and can help with improving your crawl budget.
Pro Tip:
- Install an SSL certificate and redirect all HTTP URLs to their HTTPS counterparts.
- Update your XML sitemap, robots.txt, and canonical tags to reflect the HTTPS URLs.
14 Set Crawl Frequency for Dynamic Pages
If your site has pages that frequently change, adjust crawl frequencies so that bots crawl them more often than less popular ones.
Pro Tip:
- Use the “Change Frequency” and “Priority” settings in your XML sitemap.
- Avoid frequent updates to low-value pages that don’t need regular crawling.
Crawl Budget Mistakes to Avoid
Avoiding common crawl budget mistakes helps search engines efficiently index your most important pages. Here are common crawl budget mistakes to avoid:
1 Orphan Pages
Orphan page means pages on your site that have no other connected web page to it via internal link. Because search engine bots use internal links to identify and index the pages, the orphan pages remain hidden, wasting valuable content.
2 Non-optimized URLs
URLs with excessive parameters, random characters, or unclear structures can confuse crawlers and waste crawl budgets on unnecessary versions of the same page.
Tools to Track Crawl Budget
1 Google Search Console:
- Use the “Crawl Stats” report to see how often your site is crawled and identify any errors.
- Submit sitemaps and request indexing for specific pages.
2 Website Analytics Tools:
- Tools like Google Analytics can show which pages are visited and highlight areas that aren’t being crawled effectively.
3 Crawl Monitoring Tools:
- Tools like Screaming Frog and Botify provide detailed insights into how bots crawl your site, highlighting issues like slow-loading pages, errors, or excessive crawling of low-value pages.
How SEO Discovery Can Help?
When dealing with the best SEO company such as SEO Discovery, actioning the improvement to the crawl budget is a fast, efficient process especially for large sites.
The crawl budget is the rate at which the search engine bots are able to crawl through your website at any given time. In large sites, managing this budget ensures that your important pages get crawled and indexed to higher visibility to search engines and optimized results.
SEO Discovery offers highly customizable solutions that easily adapt to the needs of large websites that are continually growing. Hiring the agency means that as more pages are developed and your site grows. The agency is in charge of modifying the crawl budget optimization approach to make certain that search engines are indexing your most important content no matter the size of your site.
Start optimizing your crawl budget with SEO Discovery!
To Wrap Up
Stuck for where to start and how to optimize crawl budget? Don’t worry! SEO Discovery can help. Our talented team focuses on SEO and website care, providing custom solutions to optimize your crawl budget and improve your SEO game plan.
FAQs For Crawl Budget Optimization
To get the most out of this start by identifying crawl errors, enhance your site’s architecture, and eliminate redundant pages. Create lists of high-value pages, use correct internal links, and be sure that the robots.txt file and the XML sitemap are correctly set. Another is frequent observation of the site and modifying it according to the changes that occur when your site evolves further.
Issues like crawl error, 404 errors, or broken links waste valuable crawl budgets and do not allow the bots to crawl important pages. These errors can slow the indexing and miss opportunities for ranking. By fixing crawl errors, you can ensure that search engines focus their resources on crawling valuable content.
