How To Plan For SEO Crawlability So Your Business Can Run

Search engines use bots or spiders to understand web content. These spiders crawl through web pages and index them, making them easier to retrieve in a query.

An experienced SEO agency will recommend improving site crawlability to help your pages show up in search results. This guide focuses on ways to improve SEO crawlability, such as

• Using a sitemap
• Improving internal link building
• Updating underperforming content

Are you ready to enhance your website's crawlability?

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Use a Sitemap

A sitemap is a web file containing all your web pages, files, and content arranged in a way that shows their relationship. You can compare it to a map that guides search engines as they crawl and index your content. With it, you can improve your site's crawlability and conserve your budget.

Here are the types of sitemaps:

• HTML sitemap is a page on your website with clickable links to lead visitors to various pages. Although this is an old technique, Google recommends HTML sitemaps to quickly understand the hierarchy of your pages and links. Also, people can refer to your HTML sitemap to quickly find topics and pages on your site.
• XML sitemap is a text file that contains a list of the URLs in your website so that search engines can easily find your pages and crawl them. XML sitemaps are not meant for humans but for search engines to effectively find, crawl, and index your pages.
• RSS sitemaps or feeds help your readers access information in a simple and readable format. This is especially helpful for news sites or blog sites that publish many articles daily.
• Text sitemap is a simple sitemap recommended for small sites with fewer pages.

A sitemap generator can help you make a sitemap. You can choose from tools like Yoast, WordPress, Screaming Frog, and XML-Sitemaps.com. When your sitemap is ready, submit it to Google through the Google Search Console.

Improve Internal Link Building

By improving your site’s internal linking, you also enhance crawlability. Google’s bots can easily crawl through your content and recognize the relationships between your pages.

Aside from increasing crawlability, good internal links promote your authority. Your users will see your site as a good source of comprehensive, well-researched information. Here are some great tips to improve your internal link-building strategies.

• Identify pillar pages to build topic clusters. Pillar pages are the main pages regarding a broad topic. These help you create topic clusters or groups of content regarding specific topics. A site about home security as a pillar page will have various types of home security equipment as topic clusters. And this equipment links to more specific products.
• Use internal links to create your topic clusters. Create specific topic clusters for each of your topic pillars and link these pages back to the pillar page to show relevance and site authority. Strengthen your link-building by mapping your topic clusters while you develop topics for your relevant supporting web pages.
• Utilize a relevant anchor text. This is the clickable text that looks like a hyperlink. An anchor text helps your users and search engines understand what your page is about even before they visit it. Keep your anchor text brief, relevant, and optimized using your main keywords.
• Pass authority to other pages using internal links. High-authority pages come with valuable backlinks, which earn a vote of confidence from search engines. Pass this authority using internal links. Find high-authority pages using an SEO tool like SEMrush and link these to your newer or less authoritative site to transfer link equity.

Update Underperforming Content

Updating underperforming content or adding new content encourages bots to crawl through your web pages. They can quickly and effectively crawl and index your site more frequently when you edit your pages.

But before you can update your underperforming content, you first need to find them. Use the search results in Google Search Console to find these pages or pages with content problems. You will get a keyword ranking report. Adjust this to filter the report for terms with an average ranking of four or higher to look for subpar pages.

Skim through the list of topics you are targeting to find blog posts that need updating. SEMrush only provides an average ranking for keywords. To get more accurate ranking data, use Ahref’s Site Explorer to see posts with the highest search traffic. Find and update your underperforming pages with these tips.

• Align your posts with user search intent. Ensure that you meet the three types of search intent: informational, comparative, and transactional. Imagine you are a customer to grasp the search intent concept.
• Take cues from your high-ranking pages. Visit your relevant pages and find critical points for inspiration.
• Check the backlink profile. Do not remove link-worthy sections of your posts but analyze their backlink profile using Ahrefs Site Explorer. A page with many unique pages linking to it is worth keeping in your republished content.
• Do not update new pages. It takes time for a post to gather backlinks and for Google to determine its rank. So, do not republish recent posts. Check the age of your post from its publish date.
• Remove duplicate content from your site. Aside from fixing subpar content, you must also remove similar content. This can cause ranking issues as Google cannot figure out which site it needs to rank. Use the search widget on your site to look for duplicate content. Set up a canonical tag on your relevant page and delete duplicates.

Summing Up

Improve site crawlability and grow your business through SEO strategies: using a sitemap, strengthening internal link building, and updating underperforming content. These strategies will help you boost your online presence and visibility, which can help you reach your marketing goals.

Do you want to boost SEO crawlability? Contact the experts at Digital Authority Partners today.