how do you get google to crawl your website

How Do You Get Google to Crawl Your Website?

Web crawling – a factor that helps you land on SERPs is crucial. But how do you get Google to crawl your website and achieve SEO goals? To get the answer to your question it is important to know what is crawling and how Google does it and then explore the effective ways to get Google to crawl your site.

What Is Google Crawling, And How Does It Work?

Google web crawlers, or what we commonly call Google bots, are tasked with a very important job. It is to roam endlessly throughout the internet from one page to another via links and check the new and updated content on sites.

Whenever they find new and updated content, they examine and evaluate it. The entire process is called crawling.

Once crawling is completed, the bots will index the page accordingly. While doing so, it also processes some more information, including key tags and attributes that are helpful in indexing.

The first part of the job is called crawling, and the second part is indexing. Both are interlinked and deeply connected, as one is not possible without the other.

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Factors That Impact Google To Crawl Your Website

We cannot tell exactly when bots crawl the site. It is something like an unplanned visit by the neighbours.

However, a few factors increase the frequency of the Google bots crawling. Let’s have a look

A Website With Many Pages:

A large website having a hefty number of pages gets more crawling just because of the frequent addition of content

Reputable Site More Crawling:

A popular website with a huge number of interlinks from reputable sources gets more visits.

Website Speed:

The fast website speed is a sign of its user-friendly features. As the site loads quicker the easier it is for the bot to crawl. As a result, crawlers visit more (however do not think the site speed o=alone can increase the bot visits).

Fresh Content:

Sometimes we witness content decay, it is because certain pages’ content is not updated for a long time. By adding relevant content the Google bots keep visiting more and more. You can read our blog about content decay and how to deal with the issue.

How Do You Get Google To Crawl Your Website?

So, that was a tiny brief on Google bot crawlers and the factors that affect crawling frequency. You can read more about it in our blog; what is a web crawler?

Coming back to the point, let’s indulge in the nitty-gritty about how to get your site crawled more by Google

Google Search Console:

To get Google to crawl your website, you can start using Google Search Console – GSC and set the game up. GSC helps to play a more active role in increasing website crawling.

Use the URL inspection tool to check the indexing and request Google to crawl it. Here is the brief on the process:

  • Log in to the Google Search Console. If you do not have a GSC account you can set a new one to get things started. To know more about it visit our blog “How to set up a Google Search Console Account.”
  • You will see URL Inspection on the left sidebar
  • Enter the URL you want to inspect
  • Once the inspection is complete, you will see whether the page has been crawled or not. If it is not crawled yet, click on the request indexing tab.

XML Sitemap:

By submitting an XML sitemap through Google Search Console, you can increase the chances of crawling by Google bots. An XML sitemap is like giving bots your site map in code, so they can easily discover the page and crawl it. Here is how you can submit the sitemap:

  • Log in to the Google Search Console account and choose your options
  • Click on the Sitemap tab on the left sidebar.
  • Now enter the URL of your site page into the ‘add a new sitemap’ and click on ‘Submit.’

To know more about sitemap read our blog; what is a sitemap?

Robots.Txt:

The use of robots.txt in a proper way can boost bot crawling. A robts.txt is like a traffic director or an indicator for the bots to redirect them to the right pages to crawl. Make sure no tag or robots.txt is blocking your site’s way to crawl. Blocking resources often wastes the crawl budget.

Maintain Logical Site Structure:

A logical site structure makes sites more user-friendly and also helps to increase the frequency of crawling. A hierarchical site structure especially for large websites can help navigation easy and increase the efficiency of page crawling. You can learn more about website structures in our blog; what is SEO page structure?

Mobile-First Indexing:

Prioritising mobile-first indexing means making your site more user-friendly. People now search more on devices in their hands rather than on laptops and desktops. An optimised site for mobile phones and prioritising mobile-first indexing can increase crawling frequency.

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Conclusion:

So, you see, the answer to the question of how you get Google to crawl your website is not very complicated. All you need to do is focus on the factors that can increase the frequency of crawling. For instance, focus on maintaining logical structure, submitting XML sitemap, using Google Search Console, or adding robots.txt. Moreover, adding fresh content regularly and updating the old ones also increase bot crawling frequency.

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