What Is Crawl Budget & How to Optimise It For SEO
SEO practitioners have long known that optimising content for Google is essential for online visibility.
As content coverage grows and websites grow larger, crawl budgets can start to become an issue. Crawl budgets determine which pages search engines will crawl and how often.
This insight helps us to make better decisions about which pages to prioritise for indexing to improve a site’s SEO performance.
What is a Crawl Budget?
A crawl budget is the amount of time and resources Google allocates to crawling a website.
It represents how many pages Googlebot will scan and consider for search results each time they visit your website.
Crawl budgets are most important for large sites with many pages or sites with dynamic content that changes frequently.
Smaller websites typically face fewer issues with crawl budgets, but it’s still a good idea to be implementing best practices, especially if your site does grow to be large in the future.
How Crawl Budgets are Determined by Search Engines
Crawl budgets are influenced by two primary factors: crawl capacity and crawl demand.
1. Crawl Capacity: This refers to the maximum number of connections Googlebot can make to a site without overloading its server. Sites that load quickly and reliably will see an increased crawl capacity, allowing Googlebot to crawl more pages at once.
Conversely, slow-loading sites with errors will have their crawl capacity reduced to avoid performance problems.
2. Crawl Demand: This describes how “in-demand” a page is. Popular, frequently updated, and high-traffic pages tend to be crawled more often.
For instance, significant changes to a website, such as shifting to a new URL structure, may increase crawl demand as Google re-crawls the updated pages.
Together, these factors define the crawl budget. Google allocates more crawl budget to sites with unique, valuable content that can handle the load without compromising server performance.
How To Get The Most Out Of Your Crawl Budget
1. Audit Indexed Pages Regularly
A key step in optimising crawl budgets is checking which pages are indexed. Tools like Google Search Console, Ahrefs, or SEMrush can pinpoint indexed pages.
This helps identify and focus on the most valuable pages, eliminating irrelevant or outdated ones.
For example, e-commerce sites can remove old product pages to ensure that search engine crawlers focus on current inventory.
2. Remove or Update Low-Quality Pages
Low-quality or outdated pages waste the crawl budget. Outdated blog posts, for example, can be updated with fresh content or merged with similar posts to enhance relevance.
If a page no longer serves a purpose, it may be better to remove it and implement redirects to relevant content to avoid 404 errors and preserve link equity.
3. Optimise Website Speed
Faster websites enable Googlebot to crawl more pages in a shorter amount of time. Speed improvements, such as image compression and caching, enhance both SEO and user experience.
Using a Content Delivery Network (CDN) can also improve loading times, especially for global audiences. Caching can also do quite a bit of heavy lifting when it comes to improving page load efficiency – See our article on improving your page speed.
4. Strategic Internal Linking
An optimised internal linking structure helps Googlebot efficiently discover valuable pages.
High-traffic pages should link to lower-traffic, important pages to guide crawlers. Limiting the number of clicks to reach important content (preferably no more than three clicks from the homepage) can improve crawling efficiency.
5. Address Duplicate Content
Duplicate content confuses crawlers and can waste crawl budgets.
Implementing canonical tags ensures that Google knows which page to prioritise when similar content exists on different URLs.
301 redirects are also useful for consolidating content and preserving link equity, but be careful to avoid creating redirect chains.
6. Clean Redirect Chains
Redirect chains, where multiple redirects occur before reaching the final URL, slow down crawling. Simplifying redirects to a single step improves site speed and crawl efficiency.
An SEO tool like Screaming Frog or AHREFS can help you to monitor, detect and fix redirect chains if/when they occur.
Best Practices for Crawl Budget Optimisation
Manage Your URL Inventory
Google’s crawlers should focus on the most important pages. The Robots.txt file can be used to block non-essential pages, such as those with session IDs or filters that don’t add unique value.
Consolidate Duplicate Content
If similar content exists on different pages, combine them or use canonical tags to designate the primary version. This ensures that crawlers focus on unique content.
Use Proper Page Status Codes
For pages that no longer exist, returning a 404 or 410 status code instructs Google to stop crawling them, saving crawl budget for active pages.
It’s also essential to check for and fix soft 404 errors that appear in the Google Search Console.
Update Sitemaps
Ensure that sitemaps reflect the current state of the website by adding new URLs and removing outdated ones.
The <lastmod> tag signals when pages have been updated, allowing Google to prioritise fresh content.
Monitor Crawl Stats with Google Search Console
Regularly check Google Search Console for insights into crawl frequency and any potential errors.
A decline in crawl frequency may indicate a technical problem that needs immediate attention.
Reduce Server Response Time
Slow servers lead to fewer crawl requests. Optimising server performance and using a CDN can reduce response times and help increase crawl frequency.
Sometimes the only option here is to move to a higher quality web hosting service, especially if you are currently on a budget web host.
External Factors Influencing Crawl Budget
Crawl budget optimization isn’t entirely in the hands of the website owner.
Understanding how elements like backlinks, social signals, and domain authority impact crawl behaviour can help guide strategies to ensure efficient use of crawl budget.
Backlinks
One of the most significant external factors influencing crawl budget is the site’s backlink profile.
Websites with strong, high-quality backlinks from authoritative sites signal to search engines that they are trustworthy and valuable sources of information. As a result, search engines may allocate more resources toward crawling these websites, leading to better visibility and increased indexing of valuable pages.
Focus on building a relevant, high-quality backlink profile from reputable websites. Backlinks not only improve your site’s authority but also help search engines prioritise your pages for crawling.
Social Signals
Although social signals (such as likes, shares, and mentions on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn) are not direct ranking factors, they can indirectly influence crawl behaviour.
High social engagement increases visibility and can drive traffic to a site, signalling to search engines that the content is relevant and valuable. As a result, Google may allocate more resources to crawl pages that are gaining traction on social media.
Maximising Crawl Budget Efficiency for Better SEO Performance
Crawl budget optimisation involves understanding how Googlebot interacts with a website and making strategic adjustments to ensure that the most important content is crawled and indexed.
Simple steps, such as improving site speed, removing outdated pages, and cleaning up redirects can positively impact SEO performance by improving crawling and indexing.
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