Understanding Crawl Depth In SEO: How Deep Pages Affect SEO Performance

Achieving higher rankings and online visibility for your site in SERPs depends on various factors such as relevant content, technical SEO, website authority, and several other factors. However, SEO crawl depth is one of the essential yet overlooked factors. This is basically the level at which the search engine bots crawl and index a website. 

Having a clear understanding of the importance of crawl depth and how to control it makes a big difference in improving your SEO performance. In this blog, let’s learn more about the role of crawl depth in SEO and how you can optimize it with relative ease.

Defining What Is Crawl Depth in SEO

Crawl depth is referred to as the total number of pages, clicks search engine crawlers have to take to reach a specific webpage from the homepage of the site. The reason why crawl depth is crucial is that it directly influences how search engines discover and index your site.

Let’s explain the impact of crawl depth with the above image. In any site, the homepage is the starting point, and its crawl depth will be 0. The immediate pages under the homepage, designated with L1, will have a crawl depth of 1 because it takes one click from the homepage to get there. The subpages below will have a crawl depth of 2, as the pages are two clicks away from the main page. 

If your site has a crawl depth of 4 or above, it is considered a high crawl depth, and this can potentially affect indexing and online visibility for certain pages. In other words, if the specific webpages are farther away from the homepage and require more clicks for the crawler to reach, search engines might deem them less important, crawl them less frequently, or even fail to discover them entirely, affecting their ability to rank in search results.

Importance of crawl depth in SEO

Now that you have understood what crawl depth is in SEO, let’s learn its significant impact on ranking a website in the SERPs. As explained above, having a higher or deeper crawl depth isn’t recommended at all. It effectively buries valuable content and makes it harder for search engines to discover it, thus leading to reduced rankings. 

In contrast, maintaining a shallow crawl depth makes sure your entire site and pages are accessible, making it easy for crawlers to navigate and index the pages. The following reasons should give you an overall idea about the importance of crawl depth:

Improved Discoverability

A shallow SEO crawl depth increases the chances of your site and related pages being discovered with minimal clicks from the homepage. 

Increased Indexing 

Pages closer to the homepage always have increased chances of being indexed. If it takes more clicks from the homepage for crawlers to discover subpages, they might not be indexed.

Link Equity

As with indexing, pages that have minimal crawl depth often receive higher link equity or authority. This helps increase online visibility and trust.

Efficient crawl budget optimization

Crawl budget optimization means, in simple words, search engine crawlers have a limited budget and resources for crawling and indexing sites. A shallow crawl depth ensures that only minimal resources will be efficiently utilised, whereas a high crawl depth can cause Googlebot to allocate resources to less important pages, which results in lower rankings.

Crawl Budget vs Crawl Efficacy

As you get to learn more about SEO crawl depth, you’ll come across the terms crawl budget vs crawl efficacy. Despite having similar terms, both have their differences. Most search engine crawlers have limited resources for crawling and indexing websites. Crawl budget is the time and resources allocated by Google to crawling a site, and it is determined by two elements: crawl capacity limit and crawl demand.

So, what’s the difference between these two? Crawl budget is the no. of URLs that will be indexed by the search engine bot in a single crawl session. In contrast, crawl efficacy focuses on how search engines utilize the crawl budget to crawl and index webpages effectively.

SEO Crawl Depth Issues You Must Be Aware Of

Despite having a shallow crawl depth is beneficial for improved discoverability, indexing, and search engine rankings, there are certain deep pages SEO issues that you must be aware of to avoid such issues in your SEO efforts.

• Slow Page Load Times: A slow-loading site isn’t good for users and search engines, especially crawlers. Google assigns less crawl budget for sites that don’t load fast. This leads to crawlers indexing fewer pages and abandoning the rest.

• Complex Website Hierachy: Having a complex website structure intertwined with excessive subpages and navigational paths increases crawl depth and makes it harder for crawlers to find and index those pages. Always maintain a less complex site hierarchy for better discoverability.

• Unintentional Noindex Tags: The purpose of the “noindex” meta tag is to tell search engines not to crawl or index a particular webpage. If any high-ranking pages on your site have such tags placed unintentionally, those pages will be avoided, which can result in a negative impact on crawl depth.

• Less Internal Linking: Without proper internal linking, search engine bots find it difficult to crawl and index your site and related pages. This is an essential on-page SEO strategy that involves linking multiple pages with each other within your site. This process provides navigational paths that search engine crawlers can leverage with ease and discover newer pages.

Strategies To Increase Crawl Depth in SEO

Your knowledge shouldn’t stop at understanding what is crawl depth in seo, you must know the various strategies that can increase crawl depth. Do you want to learn how to improve crawl depth? You can achieve that by following the strategies detailed below:

Optimize Your Website Structure 

As we discussed in the above section, a complex website structure causes issues with crawling and indexing. If you have such a site hierarchy, start by streamlining it, which involves categorising subpages within the parent pages, using clear, descriptive names for URLs, implementing breadcrumb navigation, etc.

Identify Broken Links & Fix Them

If there are broken links on your site, it leads search engine crawlers to dead ends, leading to a waste of resources. To avoid such issues, you must identify any broken links and fix them so that crawlers can effectively navigate and index sites properly.

Do Regular XML Sitemap Updates

Updating your sitemap regularly makes it easier for Google to crawl and index the pages properly. Whenever you make any changes, such as adding new pages, updating existing content, the sitemap must be updated to reflect the changes. This makes sure that the search engines have access to the latest version of your site.

Focus on Internal Linking

Internal linking guides search engine crawlers to discover various connected pages on your site. Strategically placing internal links to various pages within your web content provides pathways for search engine bots to navigate and distribute the crawling process evenly.

Winding Up

Understanding what is crawl depth in seo, its benefits, and strategies helps you make necessary site optimizations and enhance search engine rankings. It is always recommended to maintain a shallow crawl depth, which improves discoverability and effectively manages crawl budget. By following the various strategies detailed above, you can easily improve crawl depth and make sure that all pages on your site are indexed properly.

To learn more about crawl depth in SEO, consult with GTECH Information Technology, where our qualified team of marketers will guide you through the fundamental concepts and implement the best tailor-made digital marketing and search engine optimization services that enhance your brand.