Optimizing the crawl budget

Crawl budget optimization refers to the process of improving the interaction of a search engine robot (such as Googlebot) with a website to maximize the number of pages viewed and indexed. “Crawl budget” is a term used by Google to describe the number of pages a robot is able and willing to browse on a given website in a given amount of time.

    For what purpose do we perform crawl budget optimization?

    Crawl budget optimization aims to make sure that search engine robots are effectively going through the site, paying attention to the most important pages and content. This process can include improving site speed, optimizing internal link structure (link to internal link optimization), making sure the most important pages are easily accessible to bots, managing duplicate content, and checking that robots are not blocked by robots.txt files or noindex metatags.

    Optimizing the crawl budget is a key element of technical SEO, as it affects how effectively search engines can index a site, which has a direct impact on its visibility in search results.

    What do we analyze during optimization?

    Pages that load quickly allow robots to browse more pages in less time. Improving page speed can include optimizing images, minimizing JavaScript and CSS code, using caching technologies.

    A good internal link structure helps bots navigate the site more easily and find important pages. This includes creating a logical hierarchical page layout (e.g. home page > category > subcategory > product page), as well as ensuring that important pages are easily accessible from the main pages.

    Duplicate content can direct bots to unnecessary pages, wasting crawl budget. This is especially important for large eCommerce sites, which often have many similar product pages.

    These techniques are used to block bots from indexing certain pages. However, if used improperly, they can lead to the blocking of important sites or cause bots to waste their crawl budget trying to access blocked sites.

    Some websites use a lot of JavaScript, which can slow down robots and limit the number of pages they are able to view. Optimizing these resources, such as delayed JavaScript loading, can help improve the crawl budget.

    Do you have questions or are you already decided?