Google’s ranking algorithm follows three steps in generating search results: crawling the internet, indexing the web pages it finds – which means understanding what a page is about – and serving the most relevant pages at the top of its search results.
It is key that Google can easily discover and read your business’ site in order for your company to get the results that you want. If your site is easily discoverable, you’ll increase your chances of appearing on the first page of search results, ultimately bringing more people to your site and generating leads or conversions. A page’s relevance to a search query is determined by 200+ factors, but crawlability is a great place to start.
What You Can Do
Is EMSC running your SEO program? Great! We are currently implementing the best SEO practices on your website. If our team isn’t managing your SEO program, continue reading to learn more about how to improve your website’s crawlability.
Establish a Sitemap
Google uses software to process all pages that it crawls and compile an index of all words and their locations on each page. Google finds new pages by following links from crawled pages and through reading sitemaps. The sitemap of a website is a semantic XML file that informs a search engine about all individual pages contained on that site. Submitting a sitemap is one of the most helpful things you can do to guide the crawling of your site. If you need help in creating or submitting a sitemap, our team is only a phone call or an email away!
Submit a Crawl Request
You can also submit a request directly to Google to have them crawl a new page on your website or recrawl a page that’s been recently updated. There are only positive benefits to making sure Google has crawled the most up-to-date version of your site.
Adjust How Page URLs are Structured and Named
Another way to improve your site’s crawlability is to ensure that logical pager URLs – also known as a ‘web address’ – are set up.
For example, a structure that reads www.example.com/locations/north-america-locations/usa-locations/illinois-locations/chicago-locations/ is poor and redundant compared to www.example.com/locations/north-america/usa/illinois/chicago/.
These are only a few options to bolster a site’s crawling ease. If you wish to discuss improvements that can be made to your business’ website to boost its crawlability, reach out to your EMSC account manager.
