The web crawler is a large part of search engine optimisation.
So, with technical SEO, you need to know how it all works.
And to reach wider audiences, we must get as much knowledge as possible on optimising our websites.
In this post, we will learn:
- what web crawlers are
- how they work
- why they should crawl your site.
Let’s get straight into it.
What are web crawlers?
Web crawlers, also referred to as web spiders, are search engine bots that analyse and index your website’s content on search engines.
A web crawler’s job is to understand the content on your web page so when someone searches for topics related to it, the web crawlers can find it.
Search engines operate web crawlers and have algorithms that tell web crawlers how to find information based on a search query.
A web spider searches, also known as crawling, all web pages on the internet in order to sort them into categories for indexing.
If you don’t want a web page from your website to appear on search engines then you can even instruct a web crawler not to crawl that web page by uploading a robots.txt file.
Robots.txt files tell search engines which web pages to crawl and index and which pages not to crawl and index.
For example, A company could have certain pages that aren’t meant to be searched, such as:
- Thank you pages (after signing up to a newsletter for example)
- Policy pages
By web crawlers not searching and indexing these pages means they won’t affect the optimised pages that help the company’s website rank in search engines.
How do web crawlers work?
Web crawlers work by finding URLs, understanding their content and putting these web pages into categories.
When web crawlers find hyperlinks to other webpages, they add them to a list of pages to crawl next.
Instead of a search engine’s web crawler searching the whole internet, it decides how important each webpage is using factors like:
- Internal and external links
- page views
- authority
Using these factors a webpage then decides:
- which pages to crawl
- what order to crawl them in
- how often to crawl for updates
For example, when you create a new web page, you can request search engines to crawl your website.
Or, if you want to change something on a current web page, then web crawlers update the index.
When your web page is being crawled, the web crawler stores the copy and meta tag information then indexes it so Google can go through the keywords.
But, before doing this, the web crawler reads your robots.txt file to see the pages to crawl.
That’s why web crawlers are an important part of technical SEO.
Web crawlers analyse your web page to decide if it will rank on a search queries search results page.
But not all web crawlers behave the same.
Some use different factors when picking important web pages to crawl.
Why is website crawling important?
Websites that rank on search engines have been crawled by web spiders and indexed.
If web spiders don’t crawl your website then it can’t be found on search engines like Google.
Basically, your website cant be found organically, even if you look up a paragraph directly taken from your website’s content.
It has to be crawled once before it comes up on search engines.
Having your website crawled:
- reaches the audience it’s meant for
- increases your organic traffic
How to Crawl Your Website and Why?
Websites with errors make it difficult for search bots to crawl and your webpage falls lower in SERP rankings.
Your hard work on your content and business will go to waste if searchers can’t find you online.
Crawling tools can help your website’s ability to be search bot friendly.
Crawling tools to audit your website include:
Using a crawling tools for a website audit helps find errors and issues including:
- Broken links: Links to a page that doesn’t exist provide a poor user experience and negatively affects SERP rankings.
- Duplicate content: Different URLs with the same content makes it harder for Google, and other search engines, to pick the most relevant version for a user’s search query. Fix this issue by merging them with a 301 redirect.
- Page titles: Title tags that are duplicates, missing, too long and too short affect your page rank.
A web crawling tool helps you know what the problems are and fix them.
Types of Web Crawling Tools
All the tools on the market with various features are divided into two categories which are:
- Desktop: Tools that are installed and stored on your desktop computer.
- Cloud: Tools that use cloud computing and are not stored locally on your computer.
Your team’s needs and budget will deter the type of tool you pick.
Like, with a cloud-based tool, you can collaborate with others on your team because the program isn’t stored on any one person’s device.
And, once it has been installed, crawlers can be set to run at certain intervals and generate the reports you need.
Benefits of Web Crawling Tools
It is essential in SEO that you find all your website’s errors by a search bot crawling your website effectively.
The other benefits of web crawling tools include:
Site Performance is not affected
Website crawling tools don’t slow down your website.
Meaning they can run in the background and won’t interfere with your daily tasks or even affect user’s browsing your website.
Reporting
Website crawling tools have built-in reporting and analytics features.
These reporting features save you time by allowing you to quickly analyse the results of your audit.
You can even export these reports into an excel spreadsheet or other formats for later use.
Automation
Automation is a key feature with website crawling tools so you can perform regular website audits.
The automation feature also allows you to track your website’s performance without having to download a website crawl report manually each and every time.
You can even schedule the tool to crawl your website at a specific time.
This helps make sure your website is healthy and ranking.
Conclusion
Web crawlers search and index your content for search engines.
They sort and filter through your web pages to help search engines understand what your web pages are about.
Although web crawlers are a part of technical SEO, understanding them improves your website’s performance.
So, now it’s your turn.
Tell me how you have benefitted from learning about web crawlers or what you think I missed out on.
Let me know in the comments below.