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Server Access Log

Definition

A ‘Server Access Log’ is a file, automatically generated by the server, that maintains a history of page requests. The log includes useful details such as: client IP address, request date/time, page requested, HTTP code, bytes served, user agent, and referring URL. Understanding these server access logs can yield vital insights into the behavior and interests of website users.

Server Access Log Relevance For SEO

Server Access Logs are rich resources that are highly relevant to SEO. By examining these logs, you can understand how search engines are crawling your site. Analyzing the server access log helps in identifying problems like crawl errors, slow loading pages, security issues, and broken links, among others. All these factors play a crucial role in the website’s search engine ranking. Furthermore, it can give insights into which pages are often visited and which are ignored by crawlers, allowing SEO strategists to rethink their content strategies.

Server access logs analysis is even more important for Enterprise SEO, when dealing with websites with hundreds of thousands of pages.

Server Access Log Best Practices for SEO

  • Regular Monitoring: It is crucial to regularly monitor and analyze the server access log files to identify the trends and nip the issues in the bud.
  • Utilize the Data: The server log contains valuable data. Use this to understand search engine bot behavior, identifying which pages are not crawled and improve crawling path/page visibility.
  • Solve the Errors: If errors such as 404 (Page Not Found), or 503 (Service Unavailable) are appearing frequently in the logs, it is important that these are fixed as quickly as possible to improve crawl rate and, therefore, search visibility.
  • Reduce the Server Response Time: A clear record of server response times can be found in the server logs. If the time is too high, working on reducing the response time will improve the site loading speed, thereby improving the user experience and the website’s SEO standing.