What Is Crawling In SEO? A West Coast Rap Music Secret!

When most people think of SEO, they envision the written word – crafting compelling on-page content infused with glorious keyword placement that brings the clicks.

That’s part of it. But it’s the tip of the SEO iceberg – literally.

The real results-generating power of SEO lies behind the scenes, below the surface, in the technical processes that enable search engines to discover, understand, and index your website.

Like the structural work with your projects, it’s the foundational strength of your SEO strategy that will deliver killer results and the outcomes you’ve been dreaming of.

When SEO fails, it’s usually because the service provider is too intimidated by this hidden world of SEO and lacks the skills, desire, awareness, or integrity to implement it as part of a real SEO strategy.

Keywords and slogans and writing is sexy. Developmental work is not. But if we are to succeed – that is where the real SEOs have to play because before a reader ever falls in love with your content, it’s software that needs to fall in love with your coding frameworks.

Your website has to be crawlable – readable by search engine software or you know what happens?

Nada. No matter how good the writing is.

We can definitely get in the weeds on this one, but in the next section, I’ll simplify the details of crawling in SEO with the lyrics from an Oakland-born rapper’s song “Crawl before you ball.” Maybe that’s a little nuts – but it fits perfectly, so sit tight. From there, I’ll get my dork on and we’ll dive into:

• Why crawling matters
• Common crawl issues
• How to fix crawl issues
• Crawl algorithms
• Answering Indexation
• DIY Technical Mastery
• Knowing when to say no – and letting an architecture marketing agency help you

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll dive deep into the world of developmental SEO, crawling, exploring what it is, why it’s crucial for your website’s success, and how you can optimize your site for better crawlability.

West Coast Basics: Understanding Crawling in SEO

Crawling, in the context of SEO, refers to the process by which search engine software, otherwise known as “bots,” “spiders,” or “crawlers,” navigate and explore the pages of your website. These bots are programmed to identify URLs, methodically follow links, analyze the content and structure of each page, and then add that information to the search engine’s index.

That’s the key – right there. Your content needs to be organized so that search engines can know about it (and stores it in it’s index – like the card catalogs of old), and serve it up to a user’s query.

Without the right technical optimizations, your website would effectively be invisible to search engines. It’s the crucial first step that allows your content to be discovered, indexed, and ultimately, ranked in the search results.

Summing It Up With A Rap Song

Now, before we get into my dorky masterclass, I want to share some lyrics from a song by Saafir, which are definitely sexier than me just explaining an ugly AF HTML file:

Crawl before you ball

What you thought?

You was just gonna ball on the spot?

Let’s be real

You gotta stack dollar bills before you get a mil

Gotta handle business before you chill or you fall

Crawl before you ball

All the SEO and marketing strategy motivation you’ll ever need – right there. I’ll spell it out:

Crawl before you ball – If by “ball” we mean to do something awesome like end up on page 1 of Google, yeah, you better make sure the foundations of your SEO strategy are in place or you ain’t ballin’.

What you thought?

You was just gonna ball on the spot? – This calls out a common misconception that all SEO is about keywords. Most wannabe SEO vendors will promise you the world and instant results but have no idea what’s really involved. This is also the source of frustration for most AEC firms that try SEO and get crappy results.

Let’s be real – per the above.

You gotta stack dollar bills before you get a mil – Results take hard work. And yeah, the outcome of any marketing strategy should be the growth of your business in more ways than just revenue but it takes work. It takes a real marketing budget and a provider who knows what they’re doing.

Gotta handle business before you chill or you fall – There’s no easy way out. There’s no silver bullet or magic AI plugin. You’ve got to roll up your sleeves, put in the time and do it right if you want the results – or you fail.

Crawl before you ball – Make sure your site is crawlable to search engine software.

If you stop here, that’s enough to get the jist about why crawling in SEO is so important. Now that we’re all fired up, let’s dig into the nuts and bolts.

Why Crawling in SEO Matters

Crawlability is a measure of how easily search engine bots can navigate and understand the content on your website. A website with high crawlability makes it easier for search engines to find, index, and rank your pages, leading to better visibility and more organic traffic. This is a major ranking factor and if Google (mainly) doesn’t think your site is good enough from a technical perspective, you’ll struggle to get page 1 results.

Here are some of the key reasons why crawlability is so important for your SEO success:

1. Discoverability

If search engines can’t effectively crawl your website, they won’t be able to discover and index your content. This means your pages may never appear in the search results, even if they are high-quality and relevant to your target audience.

2. Indexation

The crawling process is the first step in getting your pages included in a search engine’s index. Without being indexed, your content simply won’t be eligible to rank for relevant searches.

3. Accurate Representation

Crawlers use the information they gather during the crawling process to understand the content, structure, and relevance of your website. If your site is not properly optimized for crawling, the search engines may not accurately represent your offerings in the search results.

4. Ranking Potential

Search engines use numerous factors to determine the ranking of web pages, and as we said, crawlability is a crucial component. A website that is easy to crawl and provides clear signals about the relevance and quality of its content is more likely to rank higher in the search results (more on that in a bit).

5. Recrawling and Updates

Search engines regularly recrawl websites to discover new content, updates, and changes. A website with high crawlability makes it easier for search engines to keep their index up-to-date, which is essential for maintaining your rankings over time.

Additionally, these algorithms change and is one of the major reasons why you need ongoing SEO support. The technical requirements of yesteryear might be obsolete tomorrow. If you don’t have an SEO manager looking out for you to make the necessary changes, your prized page 1 positions might be – gasp – on page two or worse!

Common Crawlability Issues and How to Fix Them

Now that we understand the importance of crawling in SEO, let’s take a closer look at some of the most common issues that can negatively impact a website’s ability to be crawled effectively by search engines. 

Some of these issues are readily visible to the user (called “user experience”) while others hide in the backend, in code, requiring special tools to discover.

1. Slow Loading Speeds

Everyone hates a website that takes too long to load. Search engines hate that, too. Slow loading speeds can be a major deterrent for search engine crawlers, as they indicate a poor user experience and may signal that the content on the page is not a priority. To address this, optimize your website’s images, minify CSS and JavaScript, and consider using a content delivery network (CDN) to improve loading times. There is a very high probability for things to go boom if doing this on your own so be sure to have a web developer on hand to help.

2. Broken Links

Broken links, or links that lead to 404 error pages, can confuse and frustrate crawlers, causing them to abandon your website altogether. Use a tool like Screaming Frog to identify and fix any broken links on your site. Knowing how to implement 3xx and 4xx redirects is an essential skill in the real SEO specialist’s toolbox and can help rescue a site with enormous page counts. This skill is also useful when, let’s say, you’ve purchased another business and want to siphon a stronger website’s SEO equity to your website.

3. Duplicate Content

Search engines have a hard time determining which version of your content is the most authoritative if they encounter duplicate content across your website. Implement 301 redirects, canonical tags, or other techniques to consolidate your content and eliminate duplication.

Also, this is why you don’t want to lean into generative content creation. Depending on how those LLMs are taught, your prized content might get spit out and plagiarized by the machine. Make sure you have someone on your side who knows how to shield you from this.

4. Lack of Internal Linking

Internal links help search engines understand the structure and hierarchy of your website, guiding them to your most important pages. Ensure that each page on your site has at least one internal link pointing to it to improve crawlability.

Not only is this good for search software, it’s great for the user, too. For example, let’s just say you are reading an amazing article about crawling for SEO, but you also might be interested in, oh, I don’t know, maybe how to calculate a marketing budget; you’ll want to hyperlink those pages together so that your users can find the information they need – faster.

5. Robots.txt Errors

The robots.txt file is used to communicate with search engine bots, instructing them on which pages they are allowed to crawl. Make sure your robots.txt file is properly formatted and that it’s not unintentionally blocking access to important pages. This is a pretty common mistake and usually occurs when a business has been “helped” by multiple SEO providers. No one ever really looks here and I’m not sure why. It’s literally a file that tells search software what your site is about.

6. Missing XML Sitemaps

An XML sitemap provides search engines with a roadmap of your website, listing all the pages they should crawl. Submit your sitemap to Google Search Console to ensure search engines are aware of all your content. If that sounds intimidating, there are loads of sitemap creation plugins available. All of them come with a button that says something like “submit for indexing.” Boom. Done. 

7. Poor Website Architecture

The structure and navigation of your website can have a significant impact on crawlability. Ensure your site has a flat hierarchy, with clear and intuitive navigation, to make it easy for crawlers to explore and index your content.

Remember those outlines you used to make in school for book reports? The main idea, the supporting idea, a quote or two, then another supporting idea, then a counterpoint maybe, then a conclusion? Search software loves to see that. From the navigation bar all the way down to the page level and HTML code.

So if you are a modern architect in Wisconsin, it’s not really the best thing to have a blog dedicated to underwater basket weaving.

Keep it logical. You’d be amazed by how many miss that. 

8. Mobile Optimization Issues

Depending on the source, the current reported ratio of internet users by device is about 60/40 in favor of mobile over desktop. And sure, desktop users still spend more time on the page, but if you are not optimized for mobile, Google is going to kick your rankings butt!

It’s essential that your website is optimized for mobile devices, so make this a priority. On WordPress, page builders like Elementor or Oxygen make this process fairly straightforward. 

By addressing these common crawlability issues, you can significantly improve the ability of search engines to discover, understand, and index your website, ultimately enhancing its visibility and ranking potential in the search results.

Deeper Down The Crawling in SEO Rabbit Hole

We’re doing it. So let’s do it.

If you have to get up to pee, now would be the time.

We’ve covered the importance of crawlability and what common issues are. Let’s delve deeper into the actual crawling process and how it works.

How Search Engines Discover New Content

The crawling process typically begins with a search engine’s discovery of a new website or web page. This can happen in a few different ways:

1. Seed URLs: Search engines start with a set of “seed” URLs, which are typically high-authority websites that serve as entry points for the crawling process. You can optimize URLs by the way. Instead of having /qwpo3rhc13489012384-gf0234890c123r blah blah blah – you can have something like the image to the left (note the sample SERP listing in blue).
2. Links: As search engine bots crawl the web, they follow the links they encounter on web pages, discovering new content and adding it to their index.
3. Sitemaps: XML sitemaps provide search engines with a clear roadmap of a website’s content, making it easier for them to discover and crawl all the relevant pages.
4. Submissions: Website owners can directly submit their URLs to search engines, such as through Google Search Console to ensure their content is added to the index. Now, it should be noted here that indexation will happen on its own. But as a budding webmaster, you have the ability to kick Google in the shins and let it know your new page is ready.

How The Crawling Algorithm Works

Once a search engine has discovered a new web page, its crawling algorithm springs into action. As we’ve said, this algorithm is responsible for systematically following links, analyzing the content and structure of the page, and determining whether it should be added to the search engine’s index.

The specific details of the crawling algorithm are closely guarded by search engine companies, with leaks being made available from time to time. But regardless, search algorithm functions are a crucial part of the overall ranking and indexing process. Since the beginning (even though it’s evolved considerably over the last 20 years) Google has favored sites with adherence to: 

• Link Structure: The number and quality of internal and external links pointing to a page – but don’t cannibalize and 57M links. 3-10 will do.
• Content Quality: The relevance, depth, and usefulness of the content on a page – kinda like this page. Crawling in SEO is a pretty awful topic. But taking the time to explain things in a not-so-horrible way takes time, a good word count, and guess what, Google picks up on that.
• Technical Factors: Elements like page loading speed, mobile optimization, and structured data.
• Crawl Budget: Google kinda has ADHD. Even though it can – amazingly – read a bazillion pages in less than a second, it can’t read them all. I’ll dive into crawl budgets in another article because there is a lot to review. But given it’s limited attention span, the takeaway here is that it’s essential that your website be organized from a technical perspective.

If The Card Isn’t In The Catalog, You Can’t Find The Book

Once a search engine has crawled a web page, the next step in the process is indexation. Indexation is the act of storing the page’s content, structure, and other relevant information in the search engine’s index, which is a massive database of web pages.

The index acts as the backbone of the search engine, allowing it to quickly retrieve and display the most relevant results when a user conducts a query. Without proper indexation, your web pages simply won’t be eligible to appear in the search results, no matter how well-optimized they may be.

Ensuring your website’s content is properly indexed involves several key steps:

1. Don’t Change Your URLs: You can seriously mess with Google’s head if you change your URLs as frequently as you update images in your portfolio. 
2. Eliminate Crawling Obstacles: Address any crawlability issues, such as slow loading speeds, broken links, or poor site architecture, to make it easier for search engines to crawl and index your content.
3. Provide Clear Signals: Use on-page optimization techniques, such as optimizing title tags, meta descriptions, and header tags, to give search engines a clear understanding of your content’s topic and relevance.
4. Submit Sitemaps: Regularly submit XML sitemaps to search engines, which provides them with a roadmap of your website’s content and structure.
5. Monitor Indexation: Use tools like Google Search Console to track which of your pages have been successfully indexed, and identify any pages that may be missing from the index.

Ok. Let’s switch gears for a second. Hopefully you’ve gotten a pretty good sense of what crawling in SEO is all about. But let’s get practical. Is this something you can do? Do you need to hire an SEO manager? Should you just run away and move to a tropical island and forget you ever read this article?

When to Tackle Crawling in SEO In-House (And When to Seek Professional Help)

While the crawling and indexation processes may seem daunting, there are steps that architecture firms and general contractors can take to improve their website’s crawlability on their own. 

You crunch a lot of numbers. You work with BIM modeling. You understand some pretty advanced math. You can probably handle some of this. Assuming you have the time.

DIY Crawlability Optimization

For architecture firms and contractors with some technical know-how, there are several areas you can focus on to improve your website’s crawlability:

1. Conduct Regular Site Audits: Use tools like Screaming Frog or Google Search Console, to regularly scan your website for common crawlability issues, such as broken links, duplicate content, and indexation problems. Address these problems as quickly as possible to ensure search engines can seamlessly crawl and index your content.

2. Optimize Site Structure and Navigation: Ensure your website has a logical, flat hierarchy with clear internal linking. This makes it easy for both users and search engine bots to navigate your site and discover all your important pages. Using a basic tool like SEO Meta (shown below) will keep your HTML hierarchy in line and also show you where tons of other technical elements are out of whack.

3. Implement a Robust XML Sitemap: Create and submit an XML sitemap to Google which provides search engines with a roadmap of your website’s content. This can significantly improve the crawlability of your site, especially for pages that may not be well-connected through your internal linking structure. Jetpack is a great tool – get the paid version.

4. Review and Refine Your Robots.txt File: Carefully review your robots.txt file to ensure you’re not inadvertently blocking search engines from crawling important pages. Make sure your robots.txt file is properly formatted and only disallows access to pages that shouldn’t be indexed, such as admin areas or thank-you pages. 

5. Enhance Page Speed and Mobile Optimization: Optimize your website’s loading speed and ensure it provides a seamless mobile experience. These technical factors are crucial for both user experience and search engine crawlability. There are loads of plugins to help with this but SMUSH is a really user-friendly one.

By addressing these core crawlability elements in-house, architecture firms and general contractors can make significant progress in improving their website’s visibility and ranking potential. 

But all that said, how many times have you gone to a site where the homeowner took “upgrading the electrical” into their own hands – creating a disaster for you and the reno team? 

When to Partner with a Professional SEO Agency

While tackling basic crawlability issues in-house is a great starting point, there are several scenarios where partnering with a professional SEO agency, like our architecture marketing firm, can be highly beneficial.

Complex Technical Challenges: If your website has more advanced technical issues, such as complex URL structures, legacy CMS systems, or extensive duplicate content, an experienced SEO agency will be better equipped to identify and resolve these problems effectively. We’ve got proven protocols, processes and procedures in place – designed to save you time, minimize hassle, and drive results.

Lack of In-House Or Vendor Expertise: Not all architecture firms and contractors have dedicated technical SEO experts on staff. Let your poor intern off the hook. They don’t know. Trust me. Or maybe you tried working with an SEO copywriter who believes they know what they are doing – but, in the end, falls short and doesn’t deliver. Collaborating with a specialized agency stops the mistakes before they start and let’s your team do what they do best – designing and building amazing things.

If It’s Been A While: If your site was built three years ago or more – it’s not only time for a refresh, but it’s time to upgrade dead files. Maintaining a high level of crawlability is an ongoing process, as search engine algorithms and website requirements are constantly evolving. A professional agency can provide the continuous monitoring, reporting, and optimization necessary to keep your site ahead of the curve.

Ambitious Growth Targets: This is probably the most important. No one wakes up in the morning saying “Ya know… I need an awesome SEO strategy.” There’s usually a need in place and that need is usually the desire to outpace a competitor, win more awards, book at higher prices, and many others. 

If Failure Is Not An Option: It sucks when things go boom. There’s no shame in trying. But today, your website is one of your most important sales assets and the consequences of getting crawlability wrong can be severe. Even a single misstep, such as accidentally blocking search engines from accessing a critical page, can mean the difference between appearing prominently in search results or disappearing entirely. The risk of lost visibility, leads, and revenue is simply too high for many firms to manage on their own.

By partnering with a specialized architecture marketing agency like ours, architecture firms and general contractors can ensure their websites are optimized for maximum crawlability and indexation, setting the stage for long-term SEO success. With your expertise and guidance, they can focus on what they do best – designing and building exceptional structures – while you handle the technical complexities that drive discoverability and growth.

Crawling in SEO & 5 O’Clock Somewhere

If you’ve made it this far, my hat’s off to you, and it’s definitely time for a cold drink with a colorful umbrella. But there it is. The secret sauce between an SEO strategy that works – and the ones that don’t.

Crawling may not be the most glamorous aspect of SEO or as sexy as all those amazingly branded on-page slogans and headers and custom graphics, but when it comes to search engine optimization done right, the real magic happens behind the scenes, where the crawlers are hard at work, discovering and indexing your content.

If you’d like to hear more about a custom SEO strategy for your AEC firm, drop us a line.