Crawler

A software program designed to automatically discover and index web pages by following links from one page to another.

Crawlers are used by search engines to collect information about websites for their search indexes.

Importance in SEO

Crawlers are essential for SEO because they are how search engines discover and index web pages.

Without crawlers, search engines would not be able to find and rank websites, making it crucial for webmasters to ensure that their sites are crawlable and indexable.

Example

Googlebot, one of the most well-known crawlers, visits websites and follows links to gather information about the site’s content, which is then used to determine its relevance and ranking in search results.

Do

• Submit a sitemap to major search engines to help crawlers find all your web pages.
• Ensure that your website has a clear hierarchy and internal linking structure.
• Avoid using robots.txt to block important pages or entire sections of your site.
• Keep your website’s content fresh and updated to encourage frequent crawling.
• Use header tags (H1, H2, etc.) effectively to help crawlers understand the structure of your content.

Don’t

• Overuse or misuse meta robots tags to prevent crawlers from accessing essential pages.
• Create pages with little or no content, as crawlers may deem them low-quality and ignore them.
• Use aggressive pop-ups or interstitials that can hinder the crawling process.
• Ignore crawl errors or warnings reported by search engine webmaster tools.
• Fail to monitor your site’s crawl stats to understand how crawlers interact with your website.