Do you ever feel like you’re living ahead of your time when you watch those world-conquering AI movies? The only reason such movies are gaining popularity with every passing day is because a similar reality is not too far away. The world today is living wire-free and digitally.
Online is the popular and future-demanding way of living. And for your business to prosper in this online world, mastering SEO is a necessity!
Now, to achieve optimal visibility, you need to understand the three most important concepts: crawlability, indexability, and mobile-first indexing. Why all of them? These three concepts are codependent, and they make the most crucial pillars to determining how search engines discover, understand, and rank your website. Your goal here is to make your website stand out in this ever-competitive online space; your tool: SEO.
In this blog, we focus on the what and why of all three concepts and the best practices to help your website rank higher on Google search results.
Introduction to Crawlability, Indexability, and Mobile-First Indexing
Each of these three concepts is connected to the other and therefore, can get confusing for the masses to understand the difference without proper analysis.
Crawlability refers to the process search engines like Google use to discover web pages easily. In simple words, Google discovers web pages by crawling, using computer programs called web crawlers or bots.
Indexing is the process that follows crawling. Indexability refers to the process where search engines can add pages to their index. Google indexes by analyzing pages and their content to add them to the database of zillions of pages.
Mobile-first indexing refers to Google’s crawling process as it prioritizes the mobile version of website content over its website version to inform higher rankings.
Why These Concepts Matter in Today’s SEO Landscape
With the continuous evolution of Google and other search engines, your SEO strategies need to be top-notch. With Google prioritizing mobile traffic, and hence, its mobile-first initiative, optimizing your website for both crawlability and indexability is the need of the hour.
Without proper measures implemented in these areas, your website may be heading towards stunted organic growth. And you don’t wish for that to happen, do you? So, go on reading till the end.
What is Crawlability in SEO?
Performed by crawler bots, crawlability is the ability of search engines to find and index web content. Google crawl bots are essential computer programs that analyze websites and collect their respective information. This information helps Google index websites and show relevant search results.
Google crawl bots follow a list of web page URLs based on previous crawls and sitemaps. As crawl bots visit a page, they detect links on each page and add those links to the list of pages to crawl. These new sites then become a part of SERP results and change to existing sites. Furthermore, dead links are spotted and taken in to update the Google index.
However, it’s important to know how to get Google to crawl your site. If your website is not crawlable, chances are, some of your web pages won’t be indexed, leading to a negative impact on your website’s visibility and organic traffic, thus, affecting your site’s SEO numbers.
Key Factors Affecting Crawlability
While crawlability is crucial for optimizing your site’s visibility, there are several factors impacting it. Learn about some of the most crucial ones are below:
Site structure – Your site structure plays a pivotal role in its crawlability. If any of your pages aren’t linked to any source, it won’t be easily accessible to crawl bots for crawling.
Internal links – Web crawlers follow links while crawling your site. These crawl bots only find pages linked to other content. To get Google to crawl your site, make sure to have internal linking structures across your website, allowing crawl bots to easily spot these pages in your site structure.
Robots.txt and Meta Tags – These two parameters are crucial to maximizing your crawl budget. Make sure to avoid commands that prevent crawlers from crawling your pages. Check your meta tags and robots.txt file to avoid common errors: ◦ <meta name="robots" content="noindex"/>: This robots meta tag directive can block your page from indexing. ◦ <meta name="robots" content="nofollow">: Although nofollow links allow your pages to be crawled, it exudes all permissions for crawlers to follow links on your page. ◦ User-agent: * Disallow: /: This particular code bars all your pages from getting indexed.
Crawl Budget – Google offers limited recommendations for crawl budget optimizations since Google crawl bots finish the job without reaching their limit. But B2B and e-commerce sites with several hundreds of landing pages can be at the risk of running out of their crawl budget, missing the chance of your web pages making their way to Google’s index for crawlability.
Tools to Check and Improve Crawlability
There are various tools in the digital realm that claim to improve crawlability. Let me highlight a few most popular tools you can use to improve crawlability:
Google Search Console
What better tool to analyze Google crawlability than its in-house tool? Although it’s not a surprise to know how often does Google crawl a site, i.e., once every 3 days to 4 weeks, there are no fixed times.
How to fix crawl errors in Google Search Console? You can analyze your page traffic, keyword data, page traffic broken down by device, and page rankings in SERP results.
Google Search Console also provides you with insights on how to rank higher on Google search results following Google algorithms. Submit sitemaps and provide comprehensive crawl, index, and related information directly from the Google index.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
This is the tool you want to use to take charge of two essential jobs at once: crawl your website and assist with SEO audits. This web crawler helps increase the chances of your web content appearing in search engine results. Analyze page titles, and meta descriptions, and discover duplicate pages – all the actions that impact your site’s SEO.
The free version can crawl up to 500 pages on a website and can find if any pages are redirected or if your site has the dreaded 404 errors. If you need more detailed features, the paid version brings many to the table, including JavaScript rendering, Google Analytics integration, custom source code search, and more.
XML Sitemaps
A roadmap for search engine crawlers, XML sitemaps ensure crawlers reach the important pages that need to be crawled and indexed. For better crawlability, ensure that the following requirements are met while creating sitemaps:
Choose Canonical URLs: Identify and include only your preferred URLs (canonical URLs) in the sitemap to avoid duplicates from the same content accessible via multiple URLs.
CMS-generated Sitemaps: Most modern CMS platforms can automatically generate sitemaps. For platforms like Drupal, you get to apply the benefits of the Drupal XML sitemap module that allows you to create XML sitemaps adhering to sitemaps.org guidelines. Check your CMS documentation for specific instructions on sitemap creation.
Manual Sitemaps for Small Sites: For websites with fewer than a few dozen URLs, create a sitemap manually using a text editor and follow standard sitemap syntax.
Automatic Sitemap Generation for Large Sites: For larger websites, use tools or your website’s database to automatically generate sitemaps. Make sure to split your sitemap into smaller files if necessary.Submit Sitemap to Google: Submit the sitemap using Google Search Console or the Search Console API. You can also include the sitemap URL in your robots.txt file for easy discovery.
Bear in mind that submitting a sitemap doesn’t ensure Google will crawl every URL. It serves as a hint to Google but does not guarantee URL crawling or indexing.
What is Google Indexing in SEO?
The process of adding pages of a website to a search engine’s database to display them in search results when relevant is called indexing. Search engines like Google, crawl websites and follow links on the sites to add new pages. They analyze their content to determine its quality and relevance. When search engines find quality and relevant content, they add those pages to their index.
One of the main processes of the Google search engine is indexing. Google Indexing allows it to discover and analyze web content and display them as search results to users, resulting in higher SEO ranks.
Factors That Influence Indexability
Given the importance of indexability for search engines to work properly, it is only understood that several factors can hinder or contribute to its influence. Below is a list of the common factors that influence the indexability of website pages:
Content Quality and Relevance - Search engine bots or bot crawlers are fonder of high-quality content. Well-written, original, informative, and content with clear headings and organized structure that is relevant to users make it to the list of indexed pages in search engines.
Canonical Tags and Duplicate Content - Search engines cannot index duplicate content. Duplicate content raises confusion during Google page indexing. Therefore, canonical tags are the counter activity here to solve duplicate content issues. These tags help search engines distinguish between original and duplicate content while indexing the relevant content pages.
Technical Issues – Technical issues like broken links, page load times, noindex tags or directives, redirect loops, etc., can contribute to a negative impact on SEO, preventing crawling or indexing your site content.
Using Google Search Console for Indexing Your Site
Various tools allow you to check whether or not your web pages are crawlable or indexed. However, Google being a giant search engine, it’s highly recommended to use Google indexing service to meet your SEO goals relatively easily. Let me walk you through a brief guide as to how you can use Google Search Console request indexing for your website.
Verify Website Ownership: Confirm ownership by adding an HTML file or meta tag.
Submit Your Sitemap: Submit your sitemap URL in the Sitemaps section to help Google discover your significant pages faster.
Use the URL Inspection Tool: Submit specific pages for re-crawling or direct indexing requests.
Monitor Coverage Issues: Use the "Coverage" report to identify and fix indexing issues like blocked pages.
Improve Internal Linking: Ensure proper internal links for better crawling.
Enhance Content Quality: Avoid low-quality or duplicate content to improve indexing chances.
Fixing Common Google Indexing Issues
Here are some common Google indexing issues (similar and in addition to those of crawlability issues) you may come across on your website that affect its visibility and performance in SERP results:
Low-Quality Content
Google always targets original and relevant content to rank highest in user search results. If your web content is low quality, scraped, or includes keyword stuffing, chances are, that Google won’t index your web pages.
Make sure to cater to the needs of your users and provide relevant information to them that is unique and aligned with the Webmaster Guidelines.
Not Mobile-Friendly
Google prioritizes mobile-friendliness while crawling web pages. If your website content isn’t mobile-friendly, Google is likely to not index it. Make sure to implement an adaptable design, improve load times, compress images, get rid of pop-ups, and keep finder reach in mind while curating your website.
Missing Sitemap
Without proper sitemaps, you cannot get Google to crawl your site. Make sure to use XML sitemaps instead of HTML. It helps enhance your website performance in search engines. Once you’ve created the sitemap, submit it with the help of Google Search Console or robots.txt file.
Poor Site Structure
Websites with poor navigability are often missed by crawl bots. Poor site structure negatively impacts your site crawlability and indexability. Make sure to use a clear website structure and good internal linking for SEO purposes.
Redirect Loops
Redirect loops block Google crawl bots from indexing your pages correctly, as these bots indulge in these loops and cannot crawl your website. Check your .htaccess or HTML sources of your website for unintentional or incorrect redirect loops. 301 redirects for permanent pages and 302 redirects for temporary pages should be used to prevent this issue from occurring.
What is the difference between crawlability and indexability
Since these two concepts are connected, oftentimes people mistake one for the other.Crawling is the process of search engines accessing and reading web pages. On the contrary, indexing is the process of adding pages to Google index.
Indexing comes after crawling. However, in selective cases, indexing website on Google or other search engine bots can take place without reading the content.
What is Mobile-First Indexing
As the name suggests, mobile-first indexing means Google crawl bots prioritize indexing the mobile version of website content over desktop. This Google mobile-first indexing is meant to inform rankings.
If your website content is not optimized for mobile devices, it could hamper your SEO ranks, even for desktop users. Having mobile-friendly content gives your website the edge for getting recognized for relevance and accessibility, thus improving visibility in search results.
Mobile-first indexing is highly prioritized today to meet the expectations of the growing number of mobile users. For a seamless mobile browsing experience, it is crucial to have relevant, navigable content to reduce bounce rates and improve the overall SEO performance of your website.
The Impact of Mobile-First Indexing on SEO
Mobile-first indexing is a necessity today. It highly impacts the implications of crawlability and indexability, necessary for SEO purposes.
Optimize your website for mobile devices using an adaptable design. You can develop your website specially for mobile devices using a responsive web design with a mobile-friendly theme or a completely separate mobile website.
Alternatively, you can develop app-based solutions or AMP pages to enhance your website performance on mobile devices.
Small businesses, e-commerce and B2B websites, and enterprise-level organizations stand highly affected by this shift to mobile-first indexing. It’s high time for these organizations to develop mobile-friendly websites to meet their customers’ expectations.
Additionally, SEO professionals have witnessed a surge in demand for mobile-responsive website design and development services. Therefore, aligning your SEO strategies to Google’s algorithm to stand alongside your competitors in this mobile-first landscape is key.
Are mobile-first indexing and mobile usability the same?
Definitely not. A website may or may not be usable on mobile devices, despite containing content that calls for mobile-first indexing.
Best Practices for Optimizing Crawlability and Indexability in a Mobile-First World
In a mobile-first world, it is important to optimize your web pages in the direction of gaining greater visibility and better performance in search engine results. Below are a few best practices supported by Google and other search engines that can help improve the crawlability and indexability of your website for Google mobile-first indexing as a priority in the present scenario.
Mobile-friendliness: Effective responsive designs serving the same HTML code on the same URL, irrespective of the device used, is key to optimizing mobile-friendliness. Your site should adapt to the screen size automatically. According to Google, adaptable web designs work best for ease and maintenance.
Navigation: Mobile users often use one hand to operate their devices and therefore, make sure to design your website with liquid navigation. Implement larger buttons, and menus, add ample spaces, and additional interactive elements for easy finger-friendly navigation. A pro tip: maintain a minimum tap target size of 48 x 48 px.
Content Consistency: Use the same meta robot tags for the desktop and mobile versions of your website. Ensure that your robot.txt file has not barred access to the main content, specifically on mobile devices. Google crawl bots can crawl and index content only when mobile-first indexing is enabled on your website.
Page Speed Optimization: Avoid lazy loading of web content. Slow loading times hamper user experience for mobile users. Make sure to optimize your web images without compromising quality. Minimize HTTP requests and leverage browser caching. Ensure faster loading times for your web content across the globe with the help of CDN distribution.
Tools and Techniques for Ongoing Optimization
With mobile-first indexing in mind, it only makes sense to stay updated with the ongoing trends to check your site for mobile-friendliness. Here are a couple of ways to do the necessary:
Use Mobile-Friendly Test Tools with Google Search Console
Open your account in Google Search Console and click on “Mobile-Friendly Test” in the Enhancements sections. Input the URL to be analyzed for mobile-friendliness and proceed with the “Test URL” button.
Review the report generated that presents you with the result of whether or not the page is mobile-friendly and also offers suggestions to address any issues found. If not mobile-friendly, the list of issues may include small text, appearance issues, content too wide for the size of the screen, or other similar and/or related usability problems. Once you’ve addressed these issues, re-test the page using the Mobile-Friendly Test tool.
Run regular audits like this on Google Search Console to ensure the mobile-friendliness of pages across your site.
Optimize Core Web Vitals
Pay attention to page speed, interactivity, and visual stability to align with Google’s Core Web Vitals. One of the ways to go about it is by utilizing the PageSpeed Insights tool by Google. It allows you to examine web pages and provides data based on both mobile and desktop content versions, along with improvement suggestions.
You can simply input the URL in the tool and click on “Analyze.” Proceed from here accordingly to generate a report that checks your website’s mobile-friendliness with a Core Web Vitals Assessment. Higher metrics mean greater mobile responsiveness!
Common Pitfalls to Avoid in Mobile-First Indexing
Ignoring the Mobile Version of Your Site: Make sure all content, inclusive of text and media, is accessible not only on the desktop version of your site but also on mobile devices. Maintain content parity and SEO rankings.
Overlooking Technical SEO on Mobile: Mobile content also needs indexing for SEO purposes. Ensure that both your mobile and desktop sites use the same structured data for consistency. Doing so helps search engines properly analyze your web content.
Slow Mobile Page Speed: Compress images, leverage browser caching, and minimize code to enhance the page loading speed for your mobile site. This way, you deliver a seamless user experience for mobile users.
Final thoughts
Crawlability and indexability are two significant entities that shape the SEO performance of your website. With Google prioritizing mobile-first indexing today, it’s time to roll up your sleeves and strategize a brand-new mobile-focused SEO strategy that aligns with Google’s algorithm and highlights your brand identity.
With AI and machine learning increasingly shaping SEO today, optimizing for mobile devices isn’t just about adapting to algorithms—it’s about meeting user expectations and staying competitive. A mobile-friendly site with fast loading times, responsive design, and consistent content will improve search rankings and user experience. As mobile usage grows, embracing mobile-first strategies ensures businesses stay ahead, enhancing both visibility and customer satisfaction in the evolving digital landscape.
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