When the topic of SEO is discussed, people tend to mention only keywords, content, and backlinks. These efforts can only work if search engines are able to discover and understand how the website works. This is where crawlability and indexability become important, as they are essential SEO factors that help search engines to find, process, and store the needed content.
The whole process starts with search engine crawling. It is where search engine bots visit websites and follow the links present to discover other pages. Effective crawling is necessary, or else valuable content will remain hidden and won't appear in search engines.
Understanding How Crawlability Works
Crawlability is the ability of search engines to access and go through the pages on the website. Search engines depend on links, sitemaps, and website structure to move from one page to the next. If these pathways are locked or aren't organised properly, crawlers will have a difficult time reaching necessary content. There are various factors that affect crawlability. Some of them are the following:
- Internal links that are broken
- Poor website architecture
- Slow page loading speeds
- Redirect loops and chains
- Blocked resources in robots.txt
- Pages with no proper internal links that direct to it
A website with strong crawlability will make it easier for search engines to find new pages, identify updates, and discover the relationships between different sections of the website. This has a direct impact on improved search engine visibility, as search engines can easily access and dive deep into more of the content.
Importance Of Indexability
After a website is made crawlable, the next step to take is indexability. It is the ability of a page to be stored in the search engine’s index. It is a huge database of web pages. Only pages that are indexed would appear in search results.
Most of the website owners believe that if the page is crawled, that means that it'll be automatically indexed, but this is not the case. Search engines will check out various factors before deciding if it should be added to their index. Some of the common indexability issues are the following:
- Noindex tags preventing inclusion in search results
- Duplicate content across multiple pages
- Canonical tags that are not accurate
- Content that is thin or of low value
- Server errors and accessibility problems
If a page is impossible to index, it won't be able to rank for relevant searches. Make sure that there is proper indexability, as it is essential to improve organic search visibility and to help users to find the content through search engines.
