There is no doubt that website crawling is one of the most effective ways to index your website and get it ranked on search engines. According to an SEO professional, website crawling can benefit your business in many ways. But let’s say your website’s crawl budget is finite. You only have so many resources to allocate to crawling your website. But if you’re not careful, you can easily use them all up and wind up with a blocked site. That’s why today, we’ll share tips for making the most of your crawl strategies and avoiding getting blocked by search engines.
Utilize the robots.txt File
One of the most important files on your website is the robots.txt file. This file signifies search engine crawlers which page on your site they are allowed to access and index. If you don’t have a robots.txt file, or if it’s not configured correctly, you could inadvertently tell crawlers to stay away from essential parts of your site. As a result, those pages may never get indexed, and you’ll miss out on the traffic and potential customers they could bring you. To avoid this, ensure you have a robots.txt file on your site and that it’s properly configured.
Steer Clear of Duplicate Content
Duplicate content is one of the most common reasons websites get penalized by search engines. When you have multiple pages on your site with the same or similar content, it’s hard for crawlers to know which page is the original and which ones are duplicates. As a result, they may choose to index only the original page or none of them at all. To avoid this, ensure all your site content is unique. If you have to reuse some content, like product descriptions, be sure to tweak them enough, so they’re not considered duplicates.
Make Use of Schema Markup
Schema markup is a code you can add to your website to help search engines understand your content better. This code provides additional information about your sites, like your business type, reviews, and more. Adding schema markup to your site gives crawlers more data to work with, which can help them index your pages more accurately. As a result, your pages are more likely to show up in relevant search results, which can lead to more traffic and customers for your business.
Run an Audit of Your Website’s Backlinks
It’s common sense that high-quality backlinks result in a better site. Not only do backlinks help improve your search engine ranking, but they also show crawlers that your site is popular and relevant. However, it’s not just the quantity of backlinks that’s important, but also the quality. If you have a lot of low-quality backlinks, it could actually hurt your ranking. That’s why it’s important to regularly audit your website’s backlinks and remove any spammy or low quality.
Simply put, your website crawling doesn’t have to end with getting blocked. Following the tips above, you can make the most of your crawl budget and ensure that your site is properly indexed by search engines. As a result, you’ll enjoy higher rankings, more traffic, and more customers for your business. So, put these tips above into action now.