Website Crawling: The Benefits for SEO
Website crawling, or the process where search engines or crawling services discover content on a website, is essential when it comes to SEO. If you are a small business owner, you likely had a new website created. However, did you know that if your website is set up poorly in the beginning, it will impact your website’s traffic and visibility for as long as errors go unfixed? In this blog, we will discuss the benefits of an initial website analysis as it pertains to SEO.
There are many elements that will be identified by crawling your website: content, structured data, images, and more. For each element, there are many sub-elements that are specific to the page links. For example, did you know a missing meta description or proper H1 title tag can prevent your blog content from being properly indexed? This is but one of many minor changes to make that will have a large impact on your page’s search ranking. Below, find some of the items worth paying attention to:
H1 Title Tags: This is one of the more frequent errors when it comes to building out your website. Pages which have a missing <h1>, the content is empty or has a white space. This should describe the main title and purpose of the page, and it is one of the more important elements that must be present on each page. Make sure that these pages have concise, descriptive headings to help users find the page for relevant content.
Low Content Pages: Make sure your pages have above the default word count or 200 characters. Consider conducing thorough keyword research to add extra descriptive content to help your web users find the page, and spend longer amounts of time on it.
Page Titles: Page titles should be descriptive and keyword dense. The titles are how users and search engines determine the page’s content and if it is relevant to the search.
Internal Outlinks: Make sure all pages on your website are connected to other internal web pages. This can be a matter of not including it in menu items, or it could simply be that these internal outlines are not included in the HTML code. Consider linking the pages together to ensure a seamless user navigation of your website.
Meta Descriptions: Like H1 tags, meta descriptions are used to communicate the purpose of the page’s content to search engines and users alike. Meta descriptions should typically be 180 characters, and should be keyword dense. Note that your page’s meta descriptions show up as a sort of preview under your page url and title on search engines. In other words, this is a sort of a preview of the page’s content.
So there you have it! Just a few examples of the many elements crawling your website can identify to help you organically boost your page’s search engine optimization. Interested in learning more about having your website crawled? Schedule a FREE 30-minute call to learn how Helm & Stern Branding can help your business.