When it comes to crawl-first SEO, it means crawling and indexing. According to an article published on https://www.searchenginejournal.com, if all the web pages of your business website cannot be crawled, they cannot be indexed either. It is as simple as that. It means crawl-first SEO is an essential concept. That is because when your web pages are not indexed, your website will rank in the search engine results pages (SERPs). You should build a site that should be crawled, indexed, and rank in the search pages of Google.
Crawl-first SEO will let you figure out how Google will crawl your site, detect incompatibilities, help the search engine access the informative pages of your site, and understand the content. So you see it is not a simple process and a business owner, you need to read a lot of stuff on the internet to get a clear understanding of crawl-first SEO. If you are new to SEO, ask your friends and associates who have a website and what they know about crawl-first SEO. Note the ideas down and implement those for your website. The process is not easy and is time-consuming. Therefore, you must research before you proceed. To make your job a tad easy, here is a simple guide to help you:
Start by sending a questionnaire to clients
It is an important document, which has questions, which you cannot answer. It is not possible to know how many products clients have in their database or how many items are available online. Your client knows the answer to these questions. So they will answer what you ask. However, you should know about your client’s products because that is the first information you must know before crawling the client’s site. That is the reason you should conduct a crawl-first SEO audit on your client’s website. DO not take this casually. It is very important to send the questionnaire across to them.
You might be wondering what questions to draft and include in the document. Ask the following questions:
· Will the crawler access all the pages of the client’s site?
· Is the crawler crawling more pages than necessary?
· Do the web pages on the site return diverse content depending on user-agent or perceived content?
· Is the crawling affecting access to your site?
· Ask about the server bandwidth.
· Do your site has preferred crawl hours or days?
You should add these questions in the questionnaire before sending it to your client.
Ask for sample URLs
Ask for URLs from your client’s website with different languages, user-agents, and geo-located IPs. It is essential. Initially, avoid relying blindly on what your clients answered in the questionnaire. We are not saying that your clients will lie, but they may not know everything about their sites. To be on the safe side, run site-specific tests on the site before crawling the client’s website. It is very significant because the site content may be changed by IP, language, or user-agent. Some sites can do cloaking. When you run the tests, check whether Google bot user-agent changes the site content or not. You can learn more about these tips and tricks from prpostin an SEO expert company that has been in business for more than two decades and have a reputation in the market.
A few sites send content on various URL depending on geo-located IPS and languages. Google likes to call them local adaptive pages. In the days to come, Google bot’s crawling behavior regarding local-adaptive pages is changed again. Watch out for this very carefully. Know whether the content is modified on a client’s site by the preferred language of the internet visitor or perceived country. Study how Google bots deal with these aspects at that point of time and adjust the crawlers for that reason. These tests will also help you detect crawl issues on the website before crawling. It is an essential finding in an SEO audit process.
Study and collect optimization data
Request your client to get proper access to web analytics tool, web server logs, and Google search console. Make sure you also download the sitemaps of the client’s websites, if available. You need to spend some time and effort to achieve success while collating SEO data.
Know more about the server
It is one of the essential things to remember. Collect additional information about the server. Do not procrastinate. Take it seriously. Make sure that you know what type of server you want to send the crawl request to and gather details about the crawl efficiency of the site before you proceed. If you have any questions about this process and the steps involved, ask any SEO professional. It is very important to learn about the optimum crawl rate so that you can define in the configuration file. The most challenging task is setting up a proper crawl rate. Therefore, read online literature and SEO books before you proceed.
Take note of Google Bot’s HTTP headers
If you have sound knowledge of SEO, take note of HTTP headers. It is an essential aspect to succeed. If your audit concerns the bot, make sure you know what HTTP headers the bot is requesting from HTTPS server or HTTP server. It is important because you promise your clients that you will scan their sites. The received information and data you collate from the server depend on what things you have requested in your crawler HTTP headers. When the audit ends, you say to your clients that there are crawl issues on their site, which may not be true.
Pre-detect crawl waste
Before you create a proper crawl configuration file, make sure you pre-detect the crawl waste on your client’s business website. It is very important. You must not forget about it. You can spot crawl waste on the client’s website. You might be wondering how. You can do so from the collated SEO details from Google Analytics, web server logs, sitemaps, and Google search console.
Conclusion
Read this guide and other materials online to get a complete understanding of crawl-first SEO, its importance. You try to improve your client’s website efficiency. Best Seo Company UAE.
