So I keep hearing about website crawlers and how important they are for SEO… but how do they actually work? Anyone using tools like Ahrefs Site Audit to crawl their site?
Yeah, I’ve been using Ahrefs Site Audit for a while now. It’s basically like having your own bot that checks your site for SEO issues. It goes through your structure, metadata, page speed, all that good stuff.
@Evans
So, how does it know which pages to crawl first?
Godfry1 said:
@Evans
So, how does it know which pages to crawl first?
Good question! It starts by crawling your sitemap or any URLs you give it. It then follows links from one page to another, kinda like how Googlebot works.
@Evans
Interesting… So does it also help you find broken links and stuff like that?
Godfry1 said:
@Evans
Interesting… So does it also help you find broken links and stuff like that?
Yep! It flags broken links, missing meta tags, and even tells you if you’ve got pages that aren’t getting crawled often enough. It’s great for fixing things that might hurt your SEO.
I’ve been using ScreamingFrog instead. It’s a desktop crawler, so you run it locally, but it’s super customizable. You can crawl specific sections of your site and get reports in real time.
Rowen said:
I’ve been using ScreamingFrog instead. It’s a desktop crawler, so you run it locally, but it’s super customizable. You can crawl specific sections of your site and get reports in real time.
Is ScreamingFrog better than Ahrefs for crawling?
@Kyrie
Depends on what you’re looking for. ScreamingFrog is great if you want more control and run everything locally. Ahrefs, on the other hand, is cloud-based, so you don’t need to use your own resources, and you get other SEO data too, like rankings and backlinks.
@Rowen
That makes sense. I might try both and see which one fits my needs better.
I love how Ahrefs Site Audit gives you visual breakdowns and lets you track issues over time. You can fix things like missing meta descriptions and broken links without needing a developer.
ArticleAuthority said:
I love how Ahrefs Site Audit gives you visual breakdowns and lets you track issues over time. You can fix things like missing meta descriptions and broken links without needing a developer.
Wait, you can fix things without a developer? How?
@LizCampbell
Yeah, they’re rolling out this feature called Patches, where you can directly fix issues like meta tags or broken links in the tool. No need to touch any code, and you can even roll back changes if needed.
@ArticleAuthority
That’s super useful! I’m always waiting on devs to make changes… might have to try this.
If you’re just starting out, I’d say use Google Search Console first to get the basics down. It’s free, and you can see how Google crawls your site. You can also submit your sitemap and ask Google to recrawl specific pages.
@LillyGrace
GSC is great, but doesn’t it take a while for Google to crawl new content?
GuyBolding said:
@LillyGrace
GSC is great, but doesn’t it take a while for Google to crawl new content?
True, it’s not instant. But you can speed things up by keeping your content fresh and making sure your site structure is clean. Google tends to revisit sites with updated content more often.
@LillyGrace
Yep, updating old content has definitely helped my site get crawled more often. GSC shows you your crawl stats too, so you can see how often Googlebot is visiting your pages.
For anyone dealing with larger sites, Ahrefs also lets you track crawl budgets, which is super important. You want to make sure Google is using its crawl budget efficiently on your most important pages.
@OptimizeOrchard3
Crawl budget? What’s that?