When launching a new website, one of the most important steps you need to take in your digital marketing strategy is making sure that search engines can discover, crawl, and index your content. If you’re new to SEO, these terms might sound a bit technical, but they’re critical for getting your site visible in search engine results pages (SERPs). Simply put, without crawling and indexing, your website won’t show up in search engine results, meaning potential customers won’t find you.
In this post, we’re going to break down what search engine crawling is, how it connects to the indexing process, and the steps you can take to ensure that search engines like Google can easily discover and rank your new website.
What is Search Engine Crawling?
Imagine the internet as a vast network of interconnected web pages. Crawling is the process that search engines use to explore these pages. Search engines deploy automated bots (sometimes called spiders or crawlers) that visit web pages, follow the links on those pages, and gather data about their content.
Think of search engine bots as digital explorers: they start from one page and follow links to other pages, continuing this process until they’ve explored all the pages they can find. They do this to better understand what each page is about, so they can serve the right results when users search for something online.
During crawling, these bots gather important information, including:
- Page content (text, images, etc.)
- Meta tags (title, description, keywords)
- Links (both internal and external links)
- Robots.txt file (which tells bots which pages to crawl or avoid)
Once the bots gather this information, they hand it off for the indexing process, which is the next step in getting your website into search results.
What is Indexing and Why Does it Matter?
After a search engine crawls your website, the next step is indexing. Indexing is essentially the process of organizing and storing the data the crawlers have gathered from your pages. This information is saved in the search engine’s index, which is like a huge library of all the web pages that the search engine knows about.
If your website isn’t indexed, it won’t show up in search results—no matter how great your content is. So, indexing is crucial for visibility. When a user performs a search query, search engines pull relevant information from the index and display it in the results.
In short, for your website to be discoverable by people through search engines, it must first be crawled and indexed. Without indexing, your website might as well be invisible to search engines.
How Search Engine Crawling Affects Indexing
Crawling and indexing go hand-in-hand. For your new website to show up in search engine results, it first needs to be crawled, and then indexed. Here’s how these two processes are connected:
- Discovery of Pages: Crawling allows search engines to discover the content on your website. Without crawling, search engines wouldn’t even know your site exists. This is especially important for new websites since search engines need to find your pages before they can even think about indexing them.
- Crawl Budget: Search engines like Google have a crawl budget, which is the amount of time and resources they allocate to crawl your site. If your website is large or has many pages, crawlers may take longer to visit every page. This means it’s essential to ensure that your important pages are easy to find and don’t get lost in a sea of less important content.
- Frequency of Crawling: Websites that regularly update their content (with new blog posts, articles, etc.) tend to be crawled more frequently. If you’re regularly adding fresh content to your site, search engines will visit your pages more often, which leads to faster indexing.
- Handling Duplicate Content: If your website has duplicate content (like multiple pages with similar or identical text), crawlers might only index one version of that content. This is where tools like canonical tags come into play, helping search engines know which page to prioritize and index.
How to Ensure Your New Website is Crawled and Indexed
If you’ve just launched a new website and want to make sure search engines find and index your pages, here are some steps you can take to improve the crawling and indexing process:
1. Submit Your Sitemap to Search Engines
When you launch a new website, it’s essential to make it easy for search engines to find your pages. One of the best ways to do this is by submitting your sitemap. A sitemap is essentially a map of all the important pages on your website that you want search engines to discover and index.
- For Google, you can submit your sitemap through Google Search Console. Once you’ve created your sitemap (which is typically an XML file), you can upload it directly to Google to help the crawlers find your site’s pages faster.
- Similarly, you can use Bing Webmaster Tools to submit your sitemap for Bing.
A sitemap helps search engines discover your pages faster, especially when your site is new and there aren’t many external links pointing to it yet.
2. Optimize Your Robots.txt File
Your website’s robots.txt file is a critical component for guiding search engine crawlers on which pages they should visit and which they should ignore. If this file is incorrectly set up, it can prevent search engines from crawling important pages, which could affect indexing.
Here’s an example of a simple robots.txt file:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /admin/
Allow: /
In this example, the robots.txt file tells search engine crawlers to avoid the admin pages but allows them to crawl the rest of the site. It’s important to double-check this file to ensure you aren’t accidentally blocking pages that you want indexed.
3. Use Internal Linking to Improve Crawlability
Search engines use links to navigate your website. By strategically linking to your important pages from other parts of your site, you make it easier for crawlers to find and index these pages. For example, if you have a new blog post, linking to it from your homepage or other high-traffic pages helps the crawler discover it faster.
An optimized internal linking structure not only helps with crawling but also improves user experience and keeps visitors engaged on your site longer.
4. Focus on Site Speed and Mobile Optimization
Crawlers have limited time to spend on your site, and if your site is slow or not mobile-friendly, it could hurt the crawling process. Google and other search engines prioritize sites that offer fast loading times and smooth mobile experiences.
- Optimize images: Compress large images to reduce load time.
- Use caching: Speed up the loading process by storing copies of frequently accessed files.
- Mobile responsiveness: Ensure your site works well on mobile devices, as search engines now prioritize mobile-first indexing.
5. Create High-Quality, Fresh Content Regularly
Search engines favor websites that regularly update their content. Fresh, high-quality content signals to search engines that your website is active and should be crawled more frequently. This is especially true if your site includes a blog or resource center where you can add new posts, articles, or updates regularly.
How to Check if Your Website Has Been Crawled and Indexed
Once you’ve taken steps to ensure your website is being crawled and indexed, it’s important to verify that it’s actually working. Here’s how:
- Google Search Console: If you’ve submitted your sitemap through Google Search Console, you can track your site’s crawling and indexing status in the Coverage report. This report shows how many pages have been indexed and if there are any issues preventing pages from being indexed.
- Site Search: To check if specific pages have been indexed, you can search for them directly in Google by typing
site:yourdomain.comin the search bar (e.g.,site:yourdomain.com/blog). If the page shows up in the results, it means it has been indexed. - Crawl Reports: Use tools like Google Search Console to review crawl reports and see how search engine bots are interacting with your site. This can help you identify issues like slow-loading pages or blocked content.
Conclusion
Crawling and indexing are fundamental processes that determine how your website gets discovered and ranked in search engine results. Without crawling, search engines wouldn’t know about your website, and without indexing, they wouldn’t be able to display your pages in search results.
To make sure your new website is crawled and indexed, submit your sitemap, optimize your robots.txt file, improve your site’s internal linking, and focus on delivering fresh, high-quality content. By following these steps, you’ll improve your chances of appearing in search results and making your website visible to potential customers.
