{"id":4132,"date":"2023-11-07T02:46:33","date_gmt":"2023-11-07T02:46:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/singularity.digital\/?p=4132"},"modified":"2026-05-01T14:25:52","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T14:25:52","slug":"crawlability-indexing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/singularity.digital\/pt\/insights\/crawlability-indexing\/","title":{"rendered":"Guide: Improving Your Site’s Crawlability and Indexing for SEO"},"content":{"rendered":"

In SEO, crawlability refers to how easily search engines can find and access pages and resources on your website. Since only crawled and indexed pages can appear in the search results, this is a major factor in SEO and the reason it\u2019s the first tier in Maslow\u2019s hierarchy of SEO needs<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Modern SEO, crawlability problems will hold your entire website back from achieving strong rankings, not just the pages that can\u2019t be crawled. If you block Google from seeing the value you offer, then they have no choice but to assume your website is weak \u2014 you\u2019ll be ranked accordingly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TL;DR: If search engines can\u2019t crawl your website, they can\u2019t index or rank your content. Excessive crawl errors <\/i><\/b>will <\/i><\/b>lead to poor search rankings.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Crawling vs indexing<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

A quick clarification before we go any deeper. You\u2019ll come across a lot of references to \u2018crawling\u2019 and \u2018indexing\u2019 in SEO and they\u2019re often used interchangeably. Although they\u2019re similar, it\u2019s not quite the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Crawling:<\/b> This is when a search engine (or other bot) accesses the pages and resources on your website. The crawler will \u2018look at\u2019 those pages, \u2018crawling\u2019 from one page to another via your sitemap and internal links, hence the name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indexing: <\/b>Indexing is when search engines take a snapshot of each page and store it in their database (index) for future reference. When your website is ranked and shown in search results, it\u2019s this indexed snapshot that their algorithm references.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a page to be ranked, it must be both crawlable and indexable. If either of these are blocked in some way, that page(s) cannot appear in search results until the problem is resolved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How to check for crawlability and indexing problems<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

There are 2 main tools that most SEOs use to check for crawlability and indexing problems, and both of them are free.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Screaming Frog SEO Spider<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Screaming Frog is an OG SEO tool that essentially acts like a search engine\u2019s crawler. It\u2019ll crawl from one page to another, using internal links and your sitemap(s) and report back on its findings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For this topic, what we\u2019re interested in are the Status Codes and Indexability Status columns. Let\u2019s take a closer look at how to set up one of these crawls and check the status:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. Download and install Screaming Frog SEO Spider<\/a> (note: A paid license will be required if you have >500 URLs)<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Type your URL into the address bar at the top and click Start
    \"A<\/figure><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. Wait for the crawl to run<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    As the crawl runs, you\u2019ll start to see the results populate one row at a time. Once the progress bar in the bottom right corner shows 100% complete, start by clicking the Indexability column header to sort results by that column.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    What you\u2019re looking at now is every URL (page, image, CSS file, PDF etc) on your website, sorted to show non-indexable URLs at the top. In the case of this report, anything marked as \u201cnon-indexable\u201d is also not crawlable \u2014 in other words, search engines don\u2019t know it exists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    In the next column, you\u2019ll see the reason for each URL being non-indexable. Generally, it\u2019s going to be at least  one of these:<\/p>\n\n\n\n