A crawl budget is the number of pages that a search engine is willing to crawl on your website in a given period of time.
Have you ever wondered how Google crawls and indexes the billions of pages on the internet? It all starts with the crawl budget. In this blog post, we will explore what a crawl budget is, how it works, and why it’s important for SEO. However, Google has already said that sites with less than 1 million pages didn’t care about the crawl budget!
We will also provide some tips on how to optimize your website’s crawl budget. By the end of this post, you should have a good understanding of what a crawl budget is and how it can impact your website’s SEO.
What is a crawl budget?
A crawl budget is the number of pages that a search engine is willing to crawl on your website in a given period of time. This number is determined by the search engine based on a number of factors, including the size of your website, the speed of your server, and the frequency with which you update your content.
The crawl budget is important for SEO because it determines how often the search engine will index your content for site with more the 1 million pages. If you have a large website with fresh content, you will want to make sure that your crawl budget is high enough to cover all of your pages. Conversely, if you have a small website with static content, you shouldn’t worry about.
How to optimize your crawl budget
Assuming you already have a website up and running, the first step to take in order to optimize your crawl budget is to ensure that your website is well-structured and easy for Googlebot to navigate. This means creating a sitemap andRobots.txt file, and using clear and concise URL structures (specially without parameters).
In case you need to use URLs with filters, which generate parameters in the URL, don’t forget to have the canonical tag on those pages. That way, Google will know that it doesn’t need to index that page, or access it frequently.
Finally, you’ll want to make sure that your website is free of any technical errors which could prevent Googlebot from crawling it effectively. This includes things like broken links, 404 errors, and duplicate content. By taking care of these issues, you can help improve your crawl budget and ensure that Googlebot can easily access and index your site’s content.
Crawl budget myths
It’s a common misconception that crawl budget is solely determined by the number of pages on a website. However, there are many factors that contribute to how often a website is crawled by search engine bots. Crawl budget is also affected by website architecture, server performance, and external factors such as backlinks.
There are a few popular myths about crawl budget that should be debunked:
Myth #1: Crawl budget is determined by the number of pages on a website
Fact: While the number of pages on a website does play a role in determining crawl budget, it’s not the sole factor. Website architecture, server performance, and external factors such as backlinks can also affect how often a site is crawled.
Myth #2: More pages equals more crawling
Fact: Just because a website has more pages doesn’t necessarily mean it will be crawled more often. If a website has poor server performance or an inefficient architecture, search engine bots may avoid crawling it as much as possible.
Myth #3: Crawling can be increased by adding new content frequently
Fact: Adding new content to your website won’t necessarily result in increased crawling. In fact, if your site isn’t set up in an efficient manner, adding new content could actually decrease the amount of crawling that occurs.
Conclusion
Crawl budget is an often overlooked but essential component of SEO. By understanding what crawl budget is and how it works, you can make sure your website is being crawled efficiently and effectively by search engines. In turn, this will help improve your website’s visibility and traffic.