Crawl Budget SEO: How to optimize it to improve your positioning

El Crawl Budget, or crawl budget, is an essential metric in the world of SEO. In the digital environment, search engine visibility is a fundamental pillar for any online business. To achieve effective positioning, it is essential to master certain key concepts, and one of them is Crawl Budget.

This term refers to the number of pages that a search engine, such as Google, can crawl on a website within a specified period. Understand how it works and how to manage it is key to optimizing the visibility of your site.

In this article, we'll explain to you what the crawl budget is, why it's crucial for your SEO strategy and how you can optimize it to maximize the performance of your website in search engines.

What is the Cudget Crawl

El Crawl Budget represents the number of URLs that search engines visit on a website over a given time. This is crucial for the search engine positioning, since it influences how efficiently a site is indexed.

There are two main factors that determine the crawl budget:

1. Tracking capability: Indicates how many pages a search engine can explore without overloading the server.
2. Tracking demand: Refers to the engine's interest in certain specific URLs, based on the relevant content or its popularity.

Optimizing this resource involves having a link structure efficient, ensuring that the pages of High quality are accessible.

Importance of the crawl budget in SEO

Although you should already have an idea of why the crawl budget is a key factor in the SEO strategy, we want to tell you about the benefits it brings if it is properly managed:

• It speeds up the indexing of important pages.
• Avoid unnecessary tracking, maximizing resource usage.
• It prioritizes relevant and high-quality content, improving crawling efficiency.
• Minimizes tracking errors that can affect positioning.

It's as simple as: ensure that relevant content is available when needed.

Which companies need it

If your website has a high volume of pages, managing the crawl budget should be a priority in your SEO strategy.

On the other hand, if your domain has a limited number of URLs, this aspect will most likely not be a significant problem for you.

QWhat is considered a “large number” of pages

Google provides certain clear guidelines in its guidelines, which we can summarize in three main cases:

1. Very large websites: Those with more than one million unique pages, such as e-commerce platforms or marketplaces.
2. Medium or large websites with dynamic content: Sites with more than 10,000 unique pages that update their content daily, such as news portals or digital media.
3. Unindexed pages: Sites with a significant part of their URLs marked in Google Search Console as “Discovered, but not indexed”.

If your website doesn't fit any of these scenarios, it's likely that the Google's tracking budget Allocate is sufficient to meet your needs, so you should not worry about this aspect.

How Google determines the crawl budget for websites

Although Google doesn't publish exact details on how it calculates the crawl budget for each site, several factors are known to influence this allocation:

1. Website size: Sites with a larger number of pages are often given a larger budget to ensure they can be crawled in their entirety.
2. Relevance and authority: Domains with the highest traffic, quality external links, and strong authority in their industry tend to be prioritized.
3. Refresh rate: If a site updates its content on a regular basis, Google increases the frequency of crawling to keep the information up to date.
4. Charging speed: Sites that load quickly allow Googlebot to crawl more pages within the same available time.
5. Technical quality of the site: Problems such as frequent 404 errors or poorly optimized code can reduce the allocation of the crawl budget, as Google prefers to prioritize sites with strong technical structures.

Optimizing these aspects is key to maximizing the efficient use of the allocated crawl budget and ensuring that the most important pages are crawled and indexed correctly.

Factors affecting the crawl budget

Inefficient management of this resource can result in lost opportunities to position relevant content. We'll tell you about some of the factors that can affect the crawl budget:

1. Server errors (404, 500): They make it difficult for bots to access content and affect their ability to crawl.
2. Duplicate content: It causes bots to waste time reviewing similar pages instead of unique content.
3. Dynamic URLs: They can cause confusion in bots, reducing tracking efficiency.
4. Site speed: A slow site consumes more crawl time, limiting total page coverage.
5. XML sitemap and robots.txt file: These elements help bots identify the most relevant pages and avoid those that don't need to be crawled.

Optimizing these factors is essential to maximize the impact of your crawl budget, improve indexing and, ultimately, boost the positioning of your website.

7 strategies to optimize your crawl budget

A well-managed crawl budget translates into better SEO performance and greater visibility in search engines.

Inefficient management of this resource can result in the loss of opportunities to position relevant content. We'll tell you about some strategies to optimize the crawl budget:

1. Improve the loading speed of your website
   A slow site limits Googlebot's ability to crawl. Optimize images, minify code, use an efficient server and configure a CDN to accelerate the loading of your website.
2. Fix technical problems
   Errors such as 404 pages, unnecessary redirects, and code problems consume tracking resources. Use tools such as Google Search Console to quickly identify and resolve these issues.
3. Generate an optimized XML Sitemap
   A well-structured sitemap makes it easy for Googlebot to discover the key pages on your site. Make sure to include only relevant URLs and update the file regularly.
4. Reduce low quality and duplicate content on your website
   Delete or redirect low-value pages, duplicates, or thin content. Use canonical tags to consolidate similar content and focus tracking on what really matters.
5. Increase domain reputation
   Building authority through quality backlinks helps Google prioritize your site. A domain with a good reputation tends to receive a higher tracking budget.
6. Optimize internal links within your website
   Check that the most important pages are correctly linked within your site. A well-designed internal link structure guides Googlebot and improves the distribution of the crawl budget.
7. Keep content up to date
   Regularly update key pages with fresh and relevant content. This increases the demand for crawling and improves the indexing of your site.

Implementing these strategies allows you to efficiently allocate the crawl budget, improve indexing and, ultimately, increase organic traffic.

Using Google Search Console

Google Search Console is an essential tool for improve traceability and managing your website's crawl budget. Through its statistics and reports, it is possible to understand how Googlebot interacts with your page, identify areas for improvement and prioritize tracking resources.

One of the key features of this tool is the access to data on Googlebot behavior, such as the number of pages scanned per day or the kilobytes downloaded. These metrics allow you to detect technical problems that could limit the efficient crawling of your content.

In addition, Google Search Console helps to optimize the structure of the site by providing detailed information on page coverage and indexing. This makes it possible to highlight key content and ensure that the most important pages receive adequate attention from search engines.

When analyzing the historical tracking data for the last 90 days, you can identify patterns or anomalies that affect Googlebot's efficiency, such as recurring errors, incorrect redirects, or uncrawled pages.

In short, using this tool strategically not only improves the use of the crawl budget, but it also contributes to a stronger positioning in search engines by ensuring that relevant content is crawled and indexed correctly.

The essential role of the sitemap in SEO

El sitemap.xml represents a crucial file in the web positioning.

Prioritize the most prominent and important URLs on a site, and improves crawling and indexing by search bots. Keep the sitemap.xml updated and send it to Google Search Console is essential. This practice ensures that Googlebot efficiently crawl the key URLs of a site.

The integration of sitemap.xml with the file robots.txt it also has a positive effect on the use of the crawl budget. This link ensures that search engines receive clear instructions and avoid wasting resources on irrelevant or unnecessary pages.

In short, the sitemap is a key component for optimizing the crawl budget, improving the visibility of relevant pages and strengthening the overall SEO performance of a website. A good sitemap strategy not only benefits crawling, but it also ensures that search engines value and prioritize content that really matters.

5 Common Myths About the Crawl Budget

Although the Crawl Budget is a key issue in the Technical SEO, there are several misconceptions about how it works:

Myth 1: Google crawls every page on my website
Google's tracking resources aren't infinite, so not every page on a site can be explored in every session. The tracking budget ensures efficiency on small and medium-sized domains, but for large sites, full coverage isn't always possible.

Myth 2: The more pages you crawl, the better your SEO
Allowing Google to crawl irrelevant or low-quality pages can be counterproductive. It is more beneficial to concentrate the budget on the key pages of the site. Configure the file properly robots.txt and use labels Noindex helps to focus tracking efforts.

Myth 3: Tracking statistics determine positioning
Although crawl metrics are useful for optimizing the site, they are not a direct indicator of ranking. Other factors such as content quality, domain authority, and inbound links weigh more heavily in search results.

Myth 4: Only new content is prioritized
Google doesn't just search for recent content; it also regularly updates existing pages to make sure they're still relevant. The freshness of well-optimized old content can be just as important as new posts.

Myth 5: More crawling means better indexing
The goal is not to maximize the number of pages crawled, but to ensure that the most important pages receive adequate attention. The crawl budget reflects Google's ability to explore a site, but it doesn't guarantee better rankings if quality isn't prioritized.

Optimize the Crawl Budget it doesn't simply mean increasing crawling, but rather directing efforts towards what is really relevant to improving efficiency and performance in search engines.

The key is to understand the crawl budget

Understanding this metric is essential for the success of SEO strategy. Recognizing limitations in the resources that search engines allocate, strategic decisions can be made to maximize their impact.

The key is to prioritize what is relevant: ensuring that important pages are accessible, remove items that consume resources unnecessarily and maintain a clear structure. These settings ensure that bots' efforts are concentrated where it matters most, improving both visibility and positioning.

Understanding this metric is not only about knowing what affects the crawl budget, but also how to adapt it to the needs of the site to boost its performance.

And remember: Optimizing the crawl budget must be a continuous effort within the SEO strategy.

We're here to help

In Novicell, our team of experts in Technical SEO is available to answer your questions about your SEO strategy. Write to us and we'll be happy to help.

‍