What is webpage indexing? When searchbots crawl a website looking for new webpages, if all guidelines are met, the new webpage is then indexed and shown to people searching for keywords that were associated with the webpage content. Each time search engines crawl and index a website, the website is reshuffled into the elaborate algorithm that is called ” RankBrain ” and is given a score.

This score weighs the website against other websites for key phrases that are searched for. The higher the score, the better a website ranks, however the score is part of a proprietary system that is not fully known. Whenever technical SEO is talked about, a lot of times, indexing optimization is at the heart of the topic.

Crawl Errors Slow Crawl Budget

Using Google search console or Bing’s Webmaster tools, webmasters can find all the crawling errors and warnings holding back website indexing. Since search engine crawlers will delay or even stop crawling a website with too many crawling issues. Anytime a webpage changes, searchbots will crawl and notice this change, when a change is noticed and guidelines are met, indexing is done.

This is why using an organized url structure where sub folders of deeper topics are located inside parent keyword folders to provide a content relevancy structure to searchbots. And how new content shows up for websearches and where SEO shines, for organizing all the factors and variables that go into SEO like a conductor at a symphony.

Depending on website health, and previous efforts of searchbots to crawl a website, the speed and depth at which searchbots will crawl is affected. If a website has more problems and aren’t fixed often, web crawling budget will not be as much as a website in good health and search engine standing.

Stagnant Websites Aren’t Indexed As Often

Search engines thrive on content, if content isn’t fresh or a website doesn’t update, search engines have no need to bother with such websites. Often called website crawl budget, searchbots will simply stop crawling a website, if too many errors block their way. This is why websites that don’t update content or optimize website health don’t send activity signals to search engines and thus, searchbots don’t crawl as deeply, since nothing has changed since last time it crawled.

When lack of search engine crawling occurs, websites see a drop in keyword rankings, since competitors who are keeping websites up to date, are having new content that they add, rank for new keywords. New keywords ranking, mean more organic user traffic and thus more opportunity to have a call, or other goal complete.

Website Routine Maintenance Promotes Indexing

Search engines determine a website’s activity from a few ways, either adding new content to a website monthly or fixing the health of the website by solving any errors or warnings in webpage crawling. 404 errors are one of the biggest culprits to search engines reducing a website’s crawl budget.

Simply because once a searchbot runs into a page not found, it looks for other urls, that simple, enough of these in one crawl and the crawl budget was wasted then. Healthy websites will not hinder searchbots in any way when crawling a website. With each new indexing, it’s also another website measurement in the algorithm, which could mean a higher keyword rank if efforts were better than competitors.

URL Structure Can Affect Website Indexing

If a websites url structure is not organized, a website runs the risk of not accounting for all pages, when it comes time to change a parent url, 404 pages can be created. If these aren’t found, website crawl budget will be affected and thus keyword ranking will eventually begin to drop. This can be a snowball effect for SEO, since it’s a chain reaction, one playing off the other, because of how interdependent SEO factors can be.

Don’t Confuse Search Engine Crawlers

Confusion is also another way to prevent crawling and thus website indexing. If the website url structure is not organized and unformed, or worse, it’s always changing, searchbots will not be able to understand what urls to keep coming back to crawl and check for new content. It will be like crawling a new website everytime the url structure is changed. That’s why it’s best to pick a url structure and stick with it, and make sure organization remains a priority.

If you’re concerned about the indexing of your website,

Contact SEOByMichael for a Google search console audit and Bing webmaster tools audit, and let’s develop a strategy for website success!

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