When it comes to search engine optimization, crawl depth may be one of the most misunderstood and least understood facets of it. It’s one of those things that’s really important if you want to keep your website at the top of search engines, but most people don’t know what it is or how it works.
So today we’re going to demystify crawl depth in SEO, starting with what it actually means, how search engines use it, why you should care about it, and how you can use this information to help increase your rank in search engines.
Why is crawl depth important?
Crawl depth refers to how far down your page a search engine will crawl before it can be considered indexed by that engine.
A higher crawl depth is often desirable because it means that Google and other search engines are indexing more pages on your website, which in turn increases its chances of being seen.
However, there’s no magic number for what constitutes good or bad crawl depth—it all depends on your site’s structure.
For example, if you have many small pages with few links between them, then it might make sense for you to reduce your site’s crawl depth so that Google doesn’t waste resources crawling those pages.
On the other hand, if you have a large site with many internal links between different sections, then you may want to increase your crawl depth so that Google indexes everything it needs to.
Ultimately, it’s up to you to decide whether increasing or decreasing your crawl depth is right for your business. There isn’t necessarily one correct answer here; just be sure not to change something without knowing why.
Does the number of pages really matter that much?
Google doesn’t care about how many pages your site has, only that you have enough content for users to make an informed decision.
However, it does matter how many pages are on your site; crawl depth refers to how many links must be followed from one page before Google actually reaches another page.
You want Google to reach all of your pages as quickly and efficiently as possible by making sure your entire site is reachable through only a handful of links.
This helps you avoid situations where Google has to jump around between different parts of your site or even multiple domains.
It also helps ensure that there aren’t any broken links or missing pages that could cause problems with user experience and SEO ranking.
What are some solutions to high crawl depth issues?
The first step is determining whether crawl depth issues are affecting your rankings. If you don’t have any issues, you can move on; if you do have issues, read on.
Why is my page not ranking?
Sometimes it’s hard to tell if crawling and indexing is at issue. Tools like Google Search Console can help you determine how far down your pages are being crawled by Googlebot.
If you find that some of your content isn’t showing up in search results or has a low click-through rate (CTR), then your site may be suffering from crawl depth issues.
When should I worry about crawl depth?:
Crawl depth is a problem when there are too many links for Googlebot to follow within a certain timeframe. This could lead to poor user experience, as well as possible penalties for over-optimization or hidden text/links.
In addition, if your pages aren’t indexed properly, they won’t show up in search results. In general, you want to avoid having more than 30 links per page—and ideally fewer than 10 to keep things manageable.
What causes high crawl depth?
There are three main factors that cause high crawl depth:
- internal linking structure;
- external linking structure; and
- server response time.
1) Internal link structure:
Internal linking refers to links between pages on your website. Links pointing to deeper levels of your site will increase crawl depth.
For example, if you have an internal link leading from one page to another deep into your site, Google will need to follow all those links before returning back to its original location.
2) External link structure:
External links refer mainly to outbound links on other sites that point back to yours. These also contribute to crawl depth because Google needs to follow these links before returning to its original location.
3) Server response time:
A slow server response time means it takes longer for your site to load. Slow load times increase crawl depth because Googlebot spends more time waiting for webpages on your site to load rather than following additional links or indexing new content.
What can I do about high crawl depth?
You should focus on fixing any problems with internal linking, external linking and server response times that might be causing increased crawl depth.
To fix internal linking issues, add rel=canonical tags to duplicate pages. To fix external linking issues, remove unnecessary links or nofollow them.
And to fix server response time issues, optimize your images and videos so they load quickly, use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) and make sure your hosting provider doesn’t charge you extra for bandwidth usage.
Additionally, use tools like Fetch as Googlebot to test how fast Google can access each of your URLs.
How can I check my crawl depth?
There are a few ways you can check your crawl depth. First, it’s important to understand what crawl depth is. Crawl depth is how many pages on your site Googlebot has crawled and indexed so far.
If your sitemap is updated, which I highly recommend doing before checking your crawl, then you should have a decent idea of how many pages Googlebot has visited based off of how many URLs are listed on that XML file.
However, if your site hasn’t been around for very long or doesn’t have a lot of content yet (or if you don’t use XML sitemaps), then there may be more work involved.
To find out exactly how deep Googlebot has gone on your website, here are two options:
- Use Screaming Frog: Screaming Frog is an easy-to-use crawler that will tell you how many pages Googlebot has seen when crawling your site. Just install it on your computer and run a crawl. Then, export all of those results into an Excel spreadsheet or CSV file and do some quick math to determine how many pages Googlebot has seen thus far.
- Search Console: Google also offers a way to see how many pages Googlebot has visited on your site via its Search Console tool. In order to see these stats, however, you need to enable crawl errors tracking in Search Console first.
Conclusion
When looking at SEO, the crawl depth of your site is important to understand and maximize. Crawl depth refers to the number of pages on your website that search engines crawl before it gives up due to time constraints or other factors.
The crawl depth of your site will determine how well search engine algorithms index and rank your site, which in turn will determine how visible you are online and how much organic traffic you get as a result.