
Your content must be accessible to search engine crawlers if it will appear in search results pages (SERPs). This is one of the critical aspects of SEO strategy; your site needs to be found to appear on SERPs.
What Is The Search Engine?

Search engines carry out three primary functions:
- Searching: Look for information on the Internet, examining the content and code of each URL.
- Indexing: Store and organize content that is found through crawling. As soon as the page has been indexed, it can appear in response to queries.
- Ranking: Follow the content pieces that best respond to a users search query. This means results will be ordered from most relevant down to least relevant.
What Exactly Is Crawling By A Search Engine?
Crawling refers to a process by which search engine robots, also known as spiders and crawlers, are sent out to explore content of any form - pages, images and videos, PDF documents, etc - until something new comes their way through internal links.
Crawling allows search engine robots, also referred to as crawlers by some, to find new material of interest quickly and efficiently.
Whiteboard Friday: The Basics Of Crawling - SEO

What Is An Index Of Search Engines?
The search engines store all the information they have found in an index. This is a massive database of everything they consider good to provide to users.
Rankings Of Search Engines
Search engines search their index to provide users with highly relevant results for the queries they submit, ranking results according to relevance; generally, if a site ranks higher, it is considered more pertinent and helpful by search engines.
Crawlers may access and index parts or all of your site; you can tell search engines not to index certain pages for various reasons.
However, for searchability by users, it must remain accessible and indexable. Otherwise, its existence would remain invisible, and search engines would disregard it altogether.
Read More: Killer SEO Tips That Actually Work
Not All Search Engines In SEO Are The Same
Beginners often wonder about the relative significance of various search engines. Most know Google as the dominant search engine; however, do they understand its vital significance for optimizing websites for other engines like Bing and Yahoo? Even though more than 30 web search engines exist today, the Search Engine Optimization(SEO) community focuses heavily on Google due to its large users (over 90 searches a month on all three Google properties: Images (including Maps), YouTube videos, and Maps combined).
That figure surpasses Bing or Yahoo combined!
Search Engines Crawling: Can They Find Your Site?

Once again, indexing is vital to rank highly in search engine result pages (SERPs). Therefore, checking how many of your pages appear in an index should one exist and assessing if Google finds and indexes all or just some would be worthwhile.
Check indexed pages using "site:yourdomain.com," an advanced search operator on Google that returns all results related to that domain name.
Googles number of search results (see "About XX Results") may not provide exact figures. Still, it can indicate which pages on your website have been indexed and appear within their search results.
Monitor and utilize Google Search Consoles Index Coverage Report for more accurate results. If you do not already have one, sign up now - free registration allows users to submit sitemaps and track new pages added to Googles index.
There are several reasons you may not be appearing in search results:
- Its a brand-new site, and it has yet to be crawled.
- Your site has no external links.
- Your sites navigation makes it difficult for robots to crawl it effectively.
- You have some code on your site called crawler directives, preventing search engines from finding it.
- Your website has been penalized by Google for employing spammy techniques.
Tell Search Engines How To Crawl Your Site

Optimizes can help inform Googlebot how you want your content crawled by search engines - helping you control what appears in their index by telling Google how they should index it.
Moz Pro will quickly identify any problems your website has with crawl ability, from issues with Google being able to crawl it to content issues that impact its ranking and can lead to reduced SEO strategy performance.
Begin fixing them today with a trial offer!
People tend to assume Google will find all their essential pages; however, it can easily miss any that may not want it found, including old URLs with thin content or duplicate URLs such as sort and filter parameters in an online shop, promotional code pages with limited promotions for special promotional codes or test or staging pages - this includes old, obsolete websites which should remain hidden from its gaze and so should remain unknown to it.
Use robots.txt to direct Googlebot away from specific pages or sections on your website.
Robots.txt
The Robots.txt file is located at the root of a website (ex., yourdomain.com/robots.txt) and can use precise robots.txt directives to indicate which areas of your website search engines should and shouldnt crawl, as well as how quickly they should do so.
What Googlebot Does With robots.txt
- Googlebot crawls a website if it cannot find the robots.txt.
- Googlebot will generally crawl a website if it finds a robots.txt.
- Googlebot will not crawl a website if it encounters an issue when trying to read the robots.txt of a particular site.
Budget Optimization For Crawling!
Googlebot will traverse all pages on your website before leaving, with each crawl budget representing how many Googlebot will cover before leaving again.
Optimizing the crawl budget can ensure Googlebot doesnt waste its time or ignore important pages by crawling non-essential ones too long and inadvertently passing by important ones. It is especially crucial when dealing with large sites containing hundreds or even thousands of URLs, yet crawlers shouldnt gain access to content you do not wish them to; canonical tags and no index tags shouldnt prevent crawlers from crawlers being blocked as this may prevent Googlebot from seeing instructions that exist if prevented from accessing specific pages or blocking crawlers altogether - see How cannot cope - while blocking crawlers will keep Googlebot from seeing instructions that would otherwise help it determine how best it should interact.
All web bots may not always respect Robots.txt; maliciously designed (email scrapers, for instance) bots do not follow this protocol and could use robots.txt against you! Although crawlers should not access private pages such as administration and login pages to reduce search results visibility, placing these URLs directly in robots.txt makes finding them much more straightforward for those with malicious intentions - No Index them and use login gates rather than leaving the internal links easily accessible within Robots.txt or Robots.txt directories makes for better control by those unauthorized bots!
How Do Crawlers Access Your Content?
After youve learned some tips for keeping search engines away from unimportant pages, its time to learn how Googlebot can find essential pages.
Search engines can crawl your website and find specific pages, while other sections or pages may be hidden for various reasons.
It would help to ensure search engines can find all the content you wish to be indexed, not just your homepage.
Read More: What You Should Know About Search Engine Optimization?
Are You Hiding Your Content Behind Login Forms Or Other Barriers?
Search engines will not see protected pages if you ask users to log in and complete forms or surveys before they can access certain content.
Crawlers are likely to need help logging in.
Do You Use Search Forms To Find Information?
Robots cannot use search forms. Search engines cannot use search forms.
Search Engines Can Follow The Navigation Of Your Website.
As a crawler must discover your website via links, your site also needs links to lead it to the pages you want. You can make a web page invisible if it doesnt have any links to it.
Search engines need help accessing many sites navigation, making it difficult for them to appear in search engine results.
Have You Got A Clean Information Architecture?
The practice of information architecture involves organizing and labeling a sites content to increase users efficiency and discoverability.
Information architecture should be intuitive. This means your users should be able to navigate through the website and find what they want.
Are You Utilizing Sitemaps?
Sitemaps are precisely as their name implies - lists of URLs crawlers use to discover and index website content.
Create one to meet Googles standards, then submit it through the Search Console for publication. Please be mindful that a sitemap doesnt replace proper navigation; instead, it serves to help crawlers identify your most vital pages more quickly.
Submit an XML Sitemap to Google Search Console in order to index your website even without other websites linking back.
While Google cant guarantee they will include every URL submitted for indexing purposes, it is still worth trying!
When Crawlers Try To Access URLs, Do They Encounter Errors?
A crawler can encounter errors when crawling URLs from your website. Google Search Consoles "Crawl errors" report can help you identify URLs where this may occur.
This report shows server errors as well as not found errors. This information can be found in server logs and other valuable data, such as crawl frequencies. However, because this is an advanced technique, it will not appear in the Beginners Guide.
Knowing the difference between "not found" and server errors is essential before you begin using your crawl error report.
Search Engine Crawlers Cannot Access Your Site Due To Client Errors
Client errors include URLs that are invalid or have lousy syntax. The "404 Not Found" error is one of the more common 4xx Errors.
A URL error, a deleted page, or a broken redirect can cause them. Search engines cannot access URLs when they receive 404 errors. Users can become frustrated when they see a 404 and decide to leave.
Search Engine Crawlers Cannot Access Your Site Due To Server Errors
These errors occur when the server that hosts the website fails to respond to the request of the user or the search engine to view the page.
These errors are listed in the "Crawl error" section of Google Search Console. Googlebot abandons the URL request if the URL request timed out. Learn more by viewing Google documentation about how to fix server connectivity problems.
There is an easy way to inform users and search engines of your new location. This method is called 301 redirection (permanent).
Create Custom 404 Pages!
Be sure to link back to key website pages, the search function, or even contact details when adding links; do not do keyword stuffing and broken links, it will decrease visitors likelihood of leaving when encountering an HTTP 404 page error message.
Say you moved a page from example.com/young-dogs/ to example.com/puppies/. Both search engines and users require some way of moving between URLs; one such tool is 301 Redirects.
Redirecting URLs can lead to missing content for both pages that initially contained it and new URLs with different content that you are redirecting it from, potentially harming ranking in search engines as the page no longer contains relevant material for that search query.
Use redirect 301s wisely! Theyre powerful tools!
This option should only be considered when short-term moves or passing link equity matters less. A 302 is a detour - a temporary traffic diversion through one route, which will eventually change back.
Beware Of Redirect Chains
Googlebot may find difficulty reaching your website if they must navigate through multiple redirections; Google refers to these chains of redirects as "redirect chains" and recommends minimizing them as much as possible; to do this more efficiently, it would be better, for instance.com/1 to be directly forwarded over to instance.com/3 instead.
Learn about chain redirecting techniques here.
Once your website has been optimized for crawl ability, the next step should be ensuring search engines can easily index it.
Search Engines Index Your Web Pages

After ensuring that your website has been crawled and indexed, it is time to check if the site can be indexed. Its true -- even if a search engine crawls and discovers your website, it doesnt mean the site will appear in its index.
We discussed crawling in the section before. Your discovered pages will be stored in the index. The search engine will render a webpage after a crawler has found it, just as a web browser would.
The private search engine analyzes the page content as it renders the results. This information is all stored within its index.
Can Pages Be Removed From Indexes?
Pages can indeed be removed from indexes! The main reasons for removing a URL include:
- It could either be an accident (the URL was returned with a "not located" error) or a server error (5XX).
- No index meta tag was added to the URL. Site owners can add this tag to tell the search engine not to index the page.
- This URL was manually removed from the index because it violated the search engines Webmaster Guidelines.
- Visitors must enter a password to access the URL.
You can submit URLs individually to Google using Fetch As Google, which includes a feature called "Request Indexing." Bonus: GSCs "fetch" tool has an option to render your page, allowing you to see any problems with how Google interprets it.
Search Engine Rankings: What Is The Ranking System?

How do default search engines ensure users receive relevant search results when entering queries into search boxes? This process, known as ranking or ordering search results from most relevant to least, is known as relevancy ranking or ordering search results according to relevance.
Alternative Search engines utilize algorithms to establish relevancy. An algorithm is any formula or process that retrieves and orders stored data meaningfully, such as retrieving or ordering it into meaningful lists.
Over the years, algorithms have seen various modifications made in order to increase quality search results - for instance; Google updates theirs daily with various minor updates as well as considerable algorithmic modifications deployed against specific issues (Penguin for link spam fighting as an example of one such update) while our Google Algorithm History shows both confirmed and unverified updates since 2000
Does Google want to keep us guessing by keeping its algorithm constantly changing? While they might not always explain themselves when making algorithm updates, we know their goal in making such adjustments is usually improving overall search quality - their response when asked about algorithm updates usually includes statements like: "We make quality updates constantly".
Suppose your website was affected by algorithm updates. In that case, you can compare its performance against Google Quality Guidelines or Search Quality Rater Guidelines, as both will offer insight into what search engine algorithms expect of us.
Links Are Essential For SEO
Links may refer to two things. Internal or backlinks refer to links located within a website being linked.
Links have always played an essential part in SEO tools history. Search engines need help figuring out which URLs were more dependable early, helping them rank search results more accurately by counting hyperlinks pointing at an individual website.
Backlinks work similarly to Word-of-Mouth referrals. Lets say Jennys Coffee exists - using backlinks is much like spreading news of their business through word-of-mouth referral.
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Content Is Essential For SEO
Links would serve only purpose by leading searchers somewhere specific; this is known as a piece of content; not only text but video, images, and any other material meant for searchers is considered content strategies by search engines to answer queries about search history.
How do popular search engines select results that will provide value to their user? Video Content that matches up well with the intent of search queries will determine how well your page ranks, whether that means including specific relevant keywords, long-tail keywords searched for by the user and fulfilling their task on the page.
There is no universally agreed-upon standard for types of content for web pages, including how much, when, and how often crucial terms should appear and the formatting of header tags.
Web page content has an impactful influence on its searchability.
Of all of the factors influencing ranking today, three have proven most consistent: Links back to your site from third parties (as an indicator of credibility), On-page Content that fulfills user search intent, and RankBrain.
What Does It Mean To SEOs?
We must focus more than ever on satisfying searcher intentions because Google will continue to use RankBrain to promote relevant and helpful content.
You can start by providing the most relevant information to searchers that may land on your site.
Search Results Have Evolved
Popular Search engines were once much simpler; "10 blue hyperlinks" was commonly used to refer to the SERP structure.
Google typically returned ten organic search results per query with an identical format every time you conducted one.
Over time, SEOs holy grail has traditionally been to attain the top spot in brave search results pages (SERP pages).
Google then introduced what they refer to as SERP Features, which offered additional results on SERP pages - these features included but werent limited to:
- Advertisements that are paid
- featured snippets
- You Can Also Ask Boxes
- Local Map Pack
- Knowledge panel
- Sitelinks
Google continues to bring us more. Their team even conducted experiments involving zero-result SERPs. In this unusual phenomenon, one Knowledge Graph result was displayed on a SERP without other results and had just a "View more results" link below it.
Initial confusion stemmed from two main factors. The first was due to many new features displacing organic results further down SERP; consequently, fewer people clicked organic links because the SERP now answered more queries directly.
Why would Google take such an aggressive step? Everything revolves around search volume. User search target keyword, long-tail keywords by keyword research tool demonstrates how specific high-quality content formats perform more effectively when responding to certain types of searches than others; compare different SERP features against specific query types to better understand this dynamic.
Search localized

Google, for example, has a proprietary database of local listings from which to create local search results.
You can claim, optimize, and verify your free listing on Google My Business.
Google considers three factors when determining local search rankings:
- Relevance
- Distance
- Prominence
Relevance
Relevance refers to how closely a businesss local listing matches the users needs. Ensure that all the business information has been filled in accurately and completely.
This will help to ensure the searcher can find the relevant business.
Distance
Google will use your location to provide you with local search bar results. Local search algorithms results can be affected by proximity.
This refers to both the users location and the specified location in their query.
A users location can affect organic search results, but less than it does in the local results.
Prominence
Google rewards businesses with a high level of recognition in the physical world. Google considers several online factors besides offline popularity to establish local rankings.
Review
A business citation, also an online listing or directory entry for localized platforms, is used to index local businesses with their contact info (NAPs) listed therein.
Google relies on numerous data sources to continually build its local business database and "trusts" data when multiple references of a companys location, phone number, or name occur - this allows Google to display businesses more confidently on search volume for those particular businesses.
Other information sources used by Google include links and articles.
Rankings Of Organic Products
Local SEO is also affected by SEO practices, as Google considers the position of a site in organic results to determine local rankings.
Youll discover in the following chapter how to use on-page practices so that Google can better understand and appreciate your relevant content.
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Conclusion:
SEO continues to develop rapidly. SEO professionals aspire to discover an ideal approach to quickly propel their site up the SERPs and keep it there permanently.
SEO doesnt work that way. SEO goes beyond following rules or best practices - discovering which techniques work for your client and you and adapting or changing them as necessary.