Digital marketing’s most dynamic field is SEO because Google frequently updates its ranking algorithm to enhance the user’s search experience. This implies that marketers can reassess the SEO trends that are influencing the search engine landscape on a yearly basis. Having said that, let’s dive into the top 12 SEO trends to keep an eye on in 2023 and how to align your approach with them.
What is Crawler?
A search tool such as Google is comprised of three key elements: a spider, a directory, and a formula. A spider navigates the internet by following links incessantly. This process occurs continuously! Upon reaching a website, the spider stores the HTML edition in an enormous database known as the directory. This directory is refreshed every time the spider visits your website and detects a new or modified version of it. The frequency at which the spider visits your site is determined by its perceived significance to Google and the frequency of your website updates.
What is crawlability?
The crawlability of your website pertains to Google’s ability to browse through it. Fortunately, you have the option to hinder crawlers from accessing your site. By blocking your website or a specific page, you are essentially instructing Google’s crawler to refrain from visiting that particular area. Consequently, your site or the corresponding page will most likely not appear in search results.
Now, how exactly can you block crawlers? There are several measures you can take to prevent Google from crawling (or indexing) your website:
• In case the crawler is obstructed by your robots.txt file, your website or a specific web page will not be visited by Google.
• Prior to crawling your website, the crawler will inspect the HTTP header of your page. This HTTP header has a status code which, if indicating that a page does not exist, will prevent Google from crawling your website.
• If the robots meta tag on a particular page prevents the search engine from indexing that page, Google will crawl the page but will not include it in its index.
So, how can crawlers impact your environment?
That’s correct, crawlers indeed have a significant impact on the environment. How so? Crawlers tend to visit your website several times a day in search of fresh content or updates. During each visit, they crawl any link that resembles a URL, resulting in multiple crawls of the same URL in one day.
This practice is unnecessary since it’s unlikely for a URL to undergo multiple changes in a day. Furthermore, most CMS produce URLs that are irrelevant and can be safely skipped by crawlers. However, crawlers still crawl these URLs repeatedly every time they encounter them. This needless crawling consumes a significant amount of energy, which is detrimental to our planet. While crawlability is a fundamental aspect of technical SEO (pertaining to all the factors facilitating Google’s indexing of your website), it is fairly intricate for the general public. Nonetheless, it is imperative that you grasp the concept of crawlability. Unknowingly, you might be obstructing crawlers from your website, resulting in poor Google rankings. Therefore, if you are committed to SEO, you must prioritize crawlability.