In the ever evolving landscape of the web, where every click counts, your website’s visibility on search engines like Google is paramount – considering how organic search is the primary source of traffic.
That traffic largely depends on visibility from how Googlebot see you. The web crawler used by Google to gather the information needed to build a searchable index of the web – navigates your website to crawl and index its pages. If there are issues in crawlability or indexability, your website and its important pages may not rank optimally or even become invisible on the SERP.
Thus, you need to think of Googlebot as your primary customer, because understanding its journey and behaviour is the key to outranking your competitors. That’s where technical SEO and crawl budget optimisation not only comes into the picture but becomes critical. The flowchart below illustrates how your websites pages get crawled and indexed by Googlebot, and then ultimately ranked.
Understanding the Fundamentals of Google Bot (for SERPs Growth)
In this post, you’ll learn how to understand Googlebot’s behaviour, make friends with Google and outperform your competitors on Google search results.
1. Optimise for Crawl Budget
Just like a store manager needs to allocate shelf space wisely, Google allocates a finite amount of time and resources (i.e. budget) to crawl your website. Wasting this crawl budget on unimportant pages can hinder the indexing of vital content.
Thus, you need to know exactly where the Googlebot goes on your e-commerce website, where it does not, and what to change. For this, performing a log file analysis helps uncover vital aspects like:
- Crawling frequency
- Pages being visited and crawled
- Crawl budget waste (spent on Orphaned pages that are not in site structure)
- Pages ignored by Googlebot
- Slow-loading pages (which not only hurts the UX but also consumes more crawl budget)
Armed with this data, ensure that:
- Your cornerstone content, product pages, and key categories are accessible and well-structured.
- You don’t allow crawling to pages with “infinite” results, like an infinite product search results page. Block them with robots.txt or nofollow tags.
- You trim the excess by deleting duplicate, thin, irrelevant, and low-value content. This streamlines the crawl process and enables Googlebot to focus on what truly matters.
- You aim for a load time between 500 milliseconds to 2 seconds to enable an efficient crawling and indexing process. Use Google PageSpeed Insights to understand your page load time and get guidance on how to fix your site’s speed and Core Web Vitals.
Furthermore, factors like the distance from index (DFI) and the internal linking structure strongly influence which pages are prioritised by crawlers. That is, pages closer to the homepage and ones with a higher number of quality internal links are more likely to be crawled frequently. Conversely, pages buried deep in the site structure or with few internal links would see far fewer Googlebot visits.
2. Visualise Googlebot Behaviour on Your Website
Googlebot’s journey through your website is not random; it follows patterns and algorithms. Visualising this behaviour allows you to anticipate its actions and tailor your site accordingly.
When you know where Googlebot spends its time, you can make informed decisions to enhance the indexability of essential pages, ensuring they are prioritised for crawling and indexing.
Tools like Google Search Console (GSC) can help you gain insights into Googlebot’s crawling behaviour. For instance, the Crawl Stats report shows how many requests were made and when, what your site’s server response was, and any issues faced. You can use this report to detect whether Google encounters serving problems when crawling your site.
But it shows just general trends, without the possibility to dive deeper into categories, or page level. That’s the field where log analysis helps to get the proper insights for further optimisation.
3. Use Insights to Multiply Positive Results
Gaining insights into Googlebot’s behaviour through log file analysis and GSC visualisation is not just about collecting data — it’s about turning that data into actionable and recurring improvements for your e-commerce site.
Looking at your site’s logs and visual data, pinpoint technical SEO issues that might be hindering your site’s performance. Whether it’s addressing crawl errors, optimising site speed, reorganising your site structure, or resolving indexability issues, insights from tools like log analyzers and Google Search Console guide you in making precise fixes and determining the most effective pages of your site.
For instance, when you identify and rectify crawl errors, you can ensure that critical product pages are crawlable to maximise the visibility of your products and thus boost sales and revenue. When you speed up your e-commerce site by optimising images, leveraging browser caching, and using Content Delivery Networks (CDNs), those faster loading times translate into a better user experience and reduced bounce rates, thus increasing the likelihood of converting visitors into customers — directly impacting sales and revenue.
When you streamline and reorganise your site’s structure to enhance user navigation, you make it easier for customers to find products and ensure that search engines can crawl and index your pages effectively, again contributing to increased sales and revenue.
To assess the impact of your technical SEO fixes, it’s crucial to establish a baseline by measuring relevant metrics before implementing changes. Track key indicators such as crawl ratio, indexation status, Googlebot’s visits, organic traffic, and keyword rankings.
This way, you take action based on the data, implement changes, and check your overall SEO performance again, thus having a better understanding of what’s improved. So, after implementing fixes, compare metrics to gauge the effectiveness of your optimisations.
Ultimately, effective SEO is an iterative process. Focus on problem areas identified through your insights and make continual improvements. Frequently monitor the data, make tweaks, and track progress. This iterative approach leads to gradual but substantial improvements in site visibility over the course of a few months.
Summary
By using insights derived from log file analysis and Google bot visualisation, you can now transform raw data into a roadmap for your e-commerce website optimisation.
It’s not just about getting noticed by Google; it’s about staying relevant and growing sustainably in the highly competitive e-commerce landscape. This strategic approach allows you to multiply positive results, ultimately outperforming competitors and achieving long-term success. It makes your SEO visualised, predictable and growing!
