Crawl Budget is an SEO term.
It’s the number of pages a search engine like Google will visit and index on your website over a certain period. It depends on two things: crawl limit and crawl demand.
For more on optimizing your crawl budget to boost SEO, check out this free guide: A Technical SEO’s Guide to Crawl Budget Optimization.
A crawl budget is critical for SEO as it affects how search engines find and index your site’s pages.
If Google doesn’t index a page, it won’t rank in search results. In other words, it won’t be in Google’s database.
Some pages won’t be indexed if your site has more pages than your crawl budget. These pages can be accessed directly but won’t attract search engine traffic.
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Most sites don’t need to worry about crawl budget, as Google is efficient at finding and indexing pages.
However, it’s important in these situations:
The crawl limit fluctuates based on several factors:
Google decides the crawl budget. It considers website size, page speed, crawl limit in Search Console, and crawl errors.
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Website structure, duplicate content, soft 404 errors, low-value pages, website speed, and security issues also affect the crawl budget.
Crawl budget refers to the number of pages a search engine will crawl over a specific time. The crawl rate, however, is the speed at which these pages are crawled.
Simply put, crawl rate is the frequency at which a search engine visits a page or directory within a specific time frame.
Here’s how crawl budget impacts SEO factors:
Effective crawl budget management helps your essential pages get crawled and indexed, boosting their search engine visibility.
Here are some strategies to manage and optimize your crawl budget effectively:
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To further optimize your crawl budget, follow these steps:
Noindex
is a directive to tell search engines not to index a particular page.
This can be a powerful tool for optimizing your crawl budget. Here’s how:
noindex
on less important or low-value pages, you can effectively guide search engine bots to focus their efforts on crawling and indexing your main, high-value content. This ensures that your crawl budget is spent where it matters most.noindex
on duplicate pages can prevent this, preserving your crawl budget.noindex
can help ensure that crawl budget is not wasted on pages that won’t be indexed.JavaScript enables dynamic web content, but it can complicate traditional web crawling.
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If JavaScript alters or loads content, crawlers may struggle to access or extract this data, leading to incomplete or incorrect data retrieval.
Optimizing JavaScript for SEO ensures search engines can crawl, render, and index JavaScript-generated content. That’s particularly important for websites and Single Page Applications (SPAs) built with JavaScript frameworks like React, Angular, and Vue.
Here are some JavaScript SEO tips:
JavaScript frameworks like React, Angular, and Vue.js help build complex web applications. They improve user experience and create interactive web pages.
These frameworks also enhance website performance and optimize rendering.
Using server-side rendering (SSR) or prerendering, developers can ensure search engine bots can easily access and index the content.
There are two main ways to crawl data from websites: the traditional way and the JavaScript-enabled way.
The traditional way parses the HTML structure of web pages to get the information we want.
But, it can struggle with JavaScript-heavy websites.
JavaScript-enabled crawling solutions fix this.
They act like humans by rendering JavaScript elements, which lets them access content loaded dynamically.
These solutions can reach more, especially websites that use a lot of JavaScript.
Dynamic rendering is a method that provides different versions of a webpage to users and search engine bots.
When a bot visits your site, it receives a prerendered, static HTML version of the page.
This version is simpler for the bot to crawl and index, enhancing your site’s SEO.
Dynamic rendering boosts your site’s SEO.
It enhances the crawlability and indexability of your site, quickens page load times, and improves mobile-friendliness.
It’s especially useful for JavaScript-heavy websites, as it ensures all content is reachable by search engine bots.
Prerendering is a form of dynamic rendering. It preloads all page elements for a web crawler.
Image source: Prerender.
When a bot visits, the prerender service provides a cached, fully rendered version of your site.
This method improves bot interactions.
Prerendering helps SEO in several ways:
Server-side rendering (SSR) and dynamic rendering are two methods used to present web content to users and search engines.
SSR involves rendering the entire page on the server before sending it to the browser.
This means all JavaScript is run on the server-side, and the user receives a fully rendered page.
It can improve performance and SEO but also put a heavier load on your server.
On the other hand, dynamic rendering provides a static HTML version of the page to search engines and a regular (client-side rendered) version to users.
This means that when a search engine bot visits your site, it receives a prerendered, static HTML version of the page, which is easier for the bot to crawl and index.
Meanwhile, users receive a version of the page that’s rendered in their browser, which can provide a more interactive experience.
Both methods have benefits.
The best choice depends on your specific needs and circumstances.
To set up prerendering, you need to add suitable middleware to your backend, CDN, or web server.
We’ve looked at crawl budget optimization and its effect on SEO.
We’ve discussed SEO challenges for JavaScript sites, best practices for JavaScript SEO, and how JavaScript frameworks affect SEO. We’ve also examined other ways to index JavaScript sites, focusing on dynamic rendering and prerendering.
To learn more about crawl budget optimization and how it can help your SEO, download Prerender’s free guide, A Technical SEO’s Guide to Crawl Budget Optimization.
Disclosure: I’m a growth consultant at Prerender.
Crawl budget optimization is often the unsung hero in the realm of SEO. In the dynamic landscape of 2024, where search engines play a pivotal role in online visibility, understanding and enhancing your site's crawl budget is paramount. Prioritizing factors like site speed, mobile friendliness, and content quality not only boosts your website's user experience but also earns favor with search engines, allowing for more efficient crawling and indexing. Keeping abreast of the latest SEO strategies ensures that your website remains a contender in the digital arena, harnessing the power of crawl budget to its fullest potential.
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Very helpful article! Thank you!
Crawl budget is a crucial concept in the field of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) that directly impacts how search engines index and rank your website. It refers to the number of pages search engines allocate to crawl on your site within a given time frame. Here's why crawl budget matters for SEO:
Indexing Efficiency:
Search engines have a limited amount of resources to crawl and index web pages. If your website has a larger crawl budget, search engines can index more of your content, increasing the chances of your pages appearing in search results.
Faster Updates:
With a higher crawl budget, search engines can more quickly discover and index new content or changes to existing pages on your site. This is especially important for time-sensitive information or regularly updated content.
Pro SEO here: Until anyone's website is not as big as nytimes etc, he shouldn't worry about the crawl budget. Websites with 1000 pages shouldn't care about this at all.
Hey, this tool is set to be the Big Thing in 2024. I'm sure you'll be an SEO rockstar if you can get ahead of the pack!