Crawl Error
Definition
Crawl errors occur when a search engine crawler cannot access or render a web page while crawling a website. This prevents the page from being indexed and appearing in search results.
Crawl Error Relevance For SEO
Crawl errors negatively impact a website’s SEO performance. When crawl errors exist, search engines cannot fully explore and understand a site’s content and structure. As a result, pages with crawl errors will not get indexed or ranked in search results. This leads to lower organic traffic and visibility. Fixing crawl errors is therefore critical for healthy SEO.
The most common crawl errors include server errors, blocked pages, redirect loops, etc. Site-wide crawl errors tend to be more severe as they prevent the entire site from being crawled. URL specific errors are less damaging but still problematic. Monitoring and quickly resolving crawl errors is an important ongoing task for SEO success.
Crawl Error Best Practices for SEO
- Monitor: Regularly check for crawl errors in Google Search Console and other SEO tools. Set up alerts for critical issues.
- Prioritize: Work on fixes by severity – site errors first, then URL errors. Address redirect loops, server issues, blocked resources.
- Use Redirects: When pages go offline or change URLs, implement proper redirects so search engines can find the new locations.
- Learn to Use 404s or 410s: For removed/deleted content, return proper 404 or 410 status codes or consider replacing with new content.
- Deal With Duplicate Content: Eliminate duplicate content issues that confuse search engine crawlers. Implement canonical URLs as needed.
- Improve the Website Structure: Optimize site architecture with a simple internal linking structure so search bots can easily crawl all pages.
- Search Bot Directives: Check for problems with robots.txt file blocking important pages. Tweak settings if needed.
- Optimize PageSpeed: Monitor site speed and server health to ensure crawlability. Address hardware limitations and software bottlenecks.