Want to improve your search engine optimization (SEO) and inch higher up the search engine results pages? While content quality and backlinks play a significant role, you may be overlooking the hidden importance of crawlability.
Crawlability problems make it harder for Google to assess your site, slowing down or even preventing you from achieving the rankings you deserve. Read on to discover the most common issues and how to prevent them from sabotaging your SEO.
What Are Crawlability Problems?
Think of search engine indexes as libraries. When you enter a query, it’s like asking the librarian for a book recommendation. However, just like an actual librarian, Google can’t recommend information it doesn’t know about.
While web admins could simply submit their sites to search engines, this would lead to indexes that miss much of the internet. That’s why Google takes a more active, automated approach, directing Googlebot and its friends to crawl the internet. Other major search engines use similar methods.
Googlebot automatically finds new pages not listed in Google’s index, but it also helps the search engine keep track of content updates and site architecture changes that affect pages it already knows about. It does this by following internal links across each page on a site and outbound links that lead to other sites.
Anything that prevents Googlebot from finding new pages or moving swiftly across your entire site is a crawlability problem. One common issue is blocked URLs in your robots.txt file, which prevents bots from accessing specific pages. Another is the noindex tag, which tells search engines not to index specific pages. However, there are many more potential mistakes to avoid.
How Do Crawlability Problems Impact SEO?
Given how important crawling is to Google’s index, anything that impacts the process can negatively affect SEO. In fact, some crawlability mistakes are so damaging that they might prevent new pages from ever ranking or even cause Google to drop your highest-ranking content from the index, destroying all your hard work!
The worst ways crawlability problems may affect SEO include:
- Incomplete indexing. Whether it’s due to broken links, errant noindex tags, or incorrectly blocked URL pathways in your robots.txt file, incomplete indexing has one outcome: Unindexed pages never appear in search. This is the SEO equivalent of hoping something will grow out of a garden without seeds.
- Dropped pages. Search engines tolerate occasional server downtime and errors. However, if 404 or 5xx errors happen too frequently, Google may drop affected pages from its index. The worst outcome is for high-ranking pages to suddenly lose their search positions and all the traffic they’re generating as a result.
- Delayed SEO feedback. SEO is a constant process, but you can’t assess how page or site changes affect your rankings until search engines recrawl everything. Poor crawlability drags this process out longer, making it more difficult to make time-sensitive optimizations.
9 Common Crawlability Issues & How To Address Them
Crawlability problems take many forms, but these nine are some of the most common and damaging, so it’s crucial you understand how to fix each.
1. URLs Blocked by Robots.txt
Located in the root directory of your website, the robots.txt file provides instructions for various bots, including those used by search engines, advertising services, and performance optimization services. These instructions allow you to limit the pages specific bots can access. You can also block entire URL pathways.
Naturally, if your robots.txt blocks URLs you didn’t intend to block, search engines may have trouble indexing your site. Fortunately, you can detect potential issues in a few ways through Google Search Console, including:
- Checking the list of Search Console indexing errors on the Pages tab under Indexing.
- Checking robots.txt validity in the settings section.
- Entering any URL into the URL inspect bar at the top.
Other search engines, such as Bing, offer similar tools. Third-party software, such as Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider, also lets you check for robots.txt errors affecting many kinds of bots. When you find issues, delete the mistaken URLs manually, just like when editing any other text file, or use a robots.txt generator to create a new file that works as intended.
2. Noindex Tags
Although you can prevent crawl bots from reaching specific pages with robots.txt rules, search engines may still find and index these pages through other means. However, the noindex tag in the HTML head tells them not to index the page, regardless. This is great when you don’t want non-canonical or admin content indexed, but the tag occasionally ends up on pages that shouldn’t have it.
Luckily, you can find mistaken noindex tags in several ways, including:
- Entering URLs in Google Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools.
- Entering a directive in Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider to find all noindex pages.
- Conducting a site audit through certain SEO tools.
- Using a browser extension to check for noindex tags while debugging other issues.
If you encounter many pages with unintended noindex tags, a plugin or automated tool is usually to blame, so it’s worth checking any you’re using. You can fix the issue by removing the noindex tags from individual page publishing settings or altering settings in the third-party tools you’re using.
3. Redirect Chains
Redirects are useful for temporarily or permanently leading traffic to different pages, such as when a site changes domain. You might also want to redirect people away from a product that no longer exists, sending them instead to the storefront or a category page.
However, redirects also sometimes occur by mistake, and when a page transfers a visitor to another page that also redirects, you end up with a redirect chain. Not only does this cause frustration to the humans using your site due to slow loading, but it can also use up the limited crawl budget search engine bots allocate you. Google usually only follows up to five redirects during one crawl. Then, it aborts the task to save crawl resources and avoid potentially getting stuck.
You can check specific URLs for redirects using Search Console, but you’ll need a site audit tool like the ones offered through Ahrefs or Semrush to efficiently check a whole site. If you find redirect chains, consolidate them into single redirects using your site’s usual method for handling redirects (typically .htaccess, nginx.conf, or plugins).
4. 404 Errors
A 404 error indicates that a page wasn’t found, which could occur due to deletion, a URL error, or the content being moved without a redirect. Whatever the cause, it’s bad news for SEO because crawl bots can’t find and index the content either, and bots that follow broken links may get stuck without a way to reach other pages across your site that need index updates.
Like other page-level crawling problems, you can detect 404 errors when checking individual URLs in Search Console, and you may also find several under the Pages tab. However, site audits offer the best way to scan your whole site in its current state.
To fix 404 errors, you’ll need to address the cause by:
- Redirecting deleted or moved content.
- Fixing URL typos.
- Contacting other sites to correct backlinks.
You can also create custom 404 pages that act as catch-all solutions to help users navigate elsewhere when they reach your site through a bad link.
5. Slow Page Load Speed
Search engine bots allocate limited amounts of crawl time to each website, as well as limited page budgets per session. When pages load slowly, this cuts into your site’s crawl budget, and the bot may leave well before it reaches your page limit, drastically slowing down the indexing of recent site updates.
You can check page load time using tools like PageSpeed Insights and Lighthouse. PageSpeed Insights offers several recommendations to improve specific issues. However, some general things you can do to speed up any site include:
- Minifying CSS and JavaScript files.
- Enabling browser caching.
- Optimizing images.
- Using a CDN.
- Using lazy loading.
- Using asynchronous CSS and JavaScript loading.
Of course, different things slow down crawl bots compared to humans browsing your site, so consider the following, too:
- Optimizing site architecture and interlinking
- Submitting sitemaps to search engines
- Using robots.txt to optimize crawling and noindex tags to block access to irrelevant pages
6. Duplicate Content
Content that’s identical or incredibly similar can confuse search engine bots, as they may not know which version of a page to index. One common example of this is when ecommerce sites use URL parameters for color or size variations of the same product. Another occurs with archive, tag, or category pages used by content management systems such as WordPress.
To fix duplicate content issues that result from URL variations, add canonical links to the head section of the HTML to tell search engines which URL to index. Other things to do include:
- Blocking access to printer-friendly versions of pages through robots.txt.
- Adding noindex tags to archives, tags, and categories.
- Setting up 301 redirects to consolidate pages with and without the www prefix or to redirect HTTP pages to the HTTPS version.
- Using internal links that point to preferred page versions only.
7. Bad Site Architecture
Bad site architecture impacts navigation both for humans and crawl bots. To improve the user experience and eliminate crawling problems, follow these rules:
- Ensure all important content is accessible within just a few clicks from the homepage.
- Follow a strategic linking strategy to avoid orphan pages and direct the flow of traffic and crawl bots where you want.
- Avoid using too many deeply nested subcategories.
- Use consistent navigation menus.
- Fix broken links.
- Use breadcrumb navigation and structured data.
Even if you’re already doing all of this, you should still check for crawl issues in Search Console and run occasional SEO site audits, as this can help you spot anything you’ve missed.
8. 5xx Errors
A 5xx error indicates that your server couldn’t fulfill a user’s request. For crawl bots, this prevents them from crawling or indexing the affected page. Here are some typical 5xx errors:
- 500 Errors: These are generic server errors. They usually indicate issues with code or permissions, so check server-side scripts, configuration files, and memory limits.
- 501 Not Implemented: This error occurs when your server can’t complete the type of request a browser makes. You might need to update the server software.
- 502 Bad Gateway: This error occurs when other servers between yours and the visitor don’t function correctly. An overloaded CDN is a common cause of 502 errors.
- 503 Service Unavailable: This error indicates overloading or temporary maintenance outages. You might need to upgrade your server capacity if it happens frequently.
- 504 Gateway Timeout: This error indicates slow responses from upstream servers. Check CDNs and other services for issues.
- 505 HTTP Version Not Supported: This error typically happens when your server software is outdated, so check that everything is current.
9. Internal Broken Links
Internal broken links occur when the internal links on a page direct users or bots to deleted or moved content. The best way to find these links is to perform regular site audits (especially after changing the URLs of any content).
If you do find internal broken links, there are two simple ways to fix them:
- Adjust the link to the page’s new URL.
- Redirect the old URL to the new URL.
Option one is quick and convenient enough for one link, but you’ll probably want to use a redirect if you need to adjust several. Another alternative when using a CMS like WordPress is to employ an internal linking plugin for site architecture management. That way, you can simply adjust the URL in the plugin to change all old links at once.
Catch Crawlability Issues With a Comprehensive SEO Audit
Don’t let crawling errors keep your site from ranking. Take advantage of our comprehensive site audits and technical SEO services to monitor broken links, site structure, and overall performance. When your website functions like a well-oiled machine, visitors will keep returning, giving you the engagement and credibility needed for long-term growth. Schedule a free consultation today and learn more about how our SEO and web maintenance services can keep your site in tip-top shape.
