What is Crawling, Indexing and Ranking in SEO?
Crawling and indexing are a very important part of SEO (Search Engine Optimization). If you want your website to rank well on search engines, then you must understand how crawling, indexing and ranking are effective and work for SEO. In this blog, you will get complete information about them, such as what crawling is, what indexing is in SEO and what ranking is in SEO. Along with this, how they are used to increase the visibility of your website and you will see what the crawling errors in SEO are and how they can be fixed.
What is Crawling in SEO?
Crawling is a process in which search engine bots or Google bots read or scan the pages of your website. These bots carefully read the content of every page, follow links and look for newly updated pages. Crawling and indexing is very important for every website. If you want your website to come on top in search results, then it is very important for you to first know about its crawling and indexing process.
How Does the Crawling Work?
- Bots Visit Websites: In this, Google and all other search engines crawl every page of the website through bots..
- Follow The Given Links: These crawlers go from one webpage to another through the internal and external links given on your webpage.
- Content Analysis: Crawlers perform a deep analysis of your webpage elements such as content, text, images, and meta tags.
- Store the Data for the Indexing Page: Pages that are well crawled by the crawler are submitted for indexing.
So these are some steps showing how Googlebot or a search engine bot works on a web page and submits it for indexing.
What is Indexing in SEO?
When a page is successfully indexed, its next step is indexing. Indexing means submitting any of your pages to Google’s database so that whenever a user makes a query, the related results appear first and your website appears in the ranking.
How Indexing Works?
- Data Store After Crawling: Whenever bots crawl a webpage, after the completion of this process, they store its data with them for indexing by Google or any other search engine.
- Checked the Relevance: The most important thing we need to keep in mind for indexing is to follow Google algorithms because Google checks how relevant and valuable the page is.
- Ignored the Duplicate and Low-Quality Page: If a page is duplicate or its content is low-quality, then search engines do not index it.
If you want your pages to be indexed, then you should use Google Search Console, through which you can request the search engine to index any page.
Related Article: What Is Robots.txt And Why Does It Matter In SEO? A Complete Guide
What is Ranking in SEO?
The next step after indexing is called ranking. Ranking means that when a page gets indexed on Google, Google ranks it based on its keywords and content and gives the top results. Google has many factors for ranking due to which your webpage gets ranked, such as:
- Content quality and relevance
- Domain authority
- Page loading speed
- Mobile compatibility
- User-friendliness and experience
If you want to improve the ranking of your page and appear on top in search engines, then you will have to pay attention to the SEO factors mentioned above.
Crawl Errors in SEO
Crawl errors occur when Googlebot or any search engine has trouble crawling your web page or is unable to access it. Some common errors you may encounter are:
- Site Errors: This error occurs when the bot is having trouble crawling the entire website.
- URL Errors: When a crawler has difficulty crawling a specific page, it is called a URL error.
Common Crawl Errors with Solution
1. 404 Not Found: When a web page gets deleted or its URL gets changed, then it shows 404.
Solution: Use 301 redirects or update the URL appropriately.
2. Server Error: When the server does not respond or there is an error..
Solution: Optimize the server well or get the content from the h-panel or a hosting provider.
3. Robots.txt Blocking: When robots.txt files prevent bots from accessing pages, the ownership is checked in Search Console.
Solution: Check the robots.txt files and indicate your ownership via the console and make the necessary changes.
You can easily detect and fix crawl errors on your website through Google Search Console.
Related Article: Meta Tags in SEO: the Ultimate Guide for Beginners
Conclusion
Crawling, indexing and ranking – these three are the pillars of SEO. If you want your website to appear in the top results of SERP, then for this you have to optimize crawling and indexing in SEO properly. What is crawling, indexing and ranking in SEO? It is very important to understand these terms because these are the things that directly affect the performance of your website.
Along with this, it is also very important to fix crawling errors so that your website can be crawled easily. SEO is a continuous process that is very important for your website. If you keep optimizing your website, then you can perform well in search engine rankings. You can also take the help of digital marketing company if you have too much difficulties in your website ranking.