What Are Crawl Errors & How Do They Affect SEO?

If you also want your website to rank higher in search engine result pages then the priority should be the comfortable crawl of the website. Why so? Well! Because it’s the first step in getting your website’s content discovered by search engines. If a website isn’t crawled, it can’t be indexed, and thus won’t appear in search results.

What are crawl errors, and how do they affect the SEO of your website? Let us find out in this guide.

What are Crawl Errors?

What is the main aim of creating a website? Most probably to reach most of the potential customers and invite more sales and profits, right? What if the website is not doing what it was supposed to do? Reaching potential customers is the first and foremost step to increase sales.

Crawl errors are issues that prevent search engines from successfully crawling and indexing web pages. Google Search Console (GSC) provides reports on crawl errors, allowing website owners to identify and fix them.

Crawl errors occur when search engine crawlers, like Googlebot, face problems while trying to access and index your website’s pages. These errors can stop search engines from properly crawling your site, leading to reduced visibility in search results. Essentially, if Googlebot can’t access a page, it can’t index it, and your page won’t appear in search results.

How Crawl Errors are Affecting Your SEO?

It is essential for search engines to crawl your website comfortably because crawling is the first step in getting your website indexed, which is necessary for it to appear in search results. Imagine spending long hours on making a website successful, but it is not appearing in the search results. It hurts, and we understand this, which is why professional SEO Services are necessary to achieve the goal.

Crawl errors significantly impact SEO by preventing search engines from accessing and indexing website pages, which directly affects ranking potential and organic traffic. These errors, when encountered by search engine bots, can block important pages from appearing in search results, hindering a website’s visibility and overall SEO performance.

Here is more information regarding how crawl errors affect SEO:

• Crawling allows search engines to discover and index content. If a page is not crawled due to an error, it won’t be indexed, meaning it won’t appear in search results, which clearly affects the entire point of making a website.
• Frequent or severe crawl errors can signal to search engines that a website is poorly maintained, potentially leading to lower rankings in search results.
• Failing to crawl and index pages directly translates to a loss of potential organic traffic, as users won’t be able to find those pages through search.
• You must have seen 404 errors once while searching, right? Some crawl errors, like 404 errors, can negatively impact user experience if visitors encounter them while navigating a website.

The next question that comes to mind is, “How to fix these crawl errors?”.

How to Fix Crawl Errors?

Here we will discuss how you can fix these crawl errors and allow the website to welcome potential customers and increase the effectiveness of their experience:

• Identifying These Errors

Coverage report can be used to view crawl errors, including 404 errors, server errors, and redirects. Tools like SEMrush or Search Atlas can scan your site and identify various crawl errors.

• Common Crawl Errors and How to Fix

For 404 errors, these occur when a page is not found. Use 301 redirects to send users to a relevant page. Eliminate broken links pointing to the missing page. If a page was accidentally deleted and is still relevant, restore it. Provide a user-friendly 404 page with navigation options.

For redirect errors that can occur when redirects are not set up clearly, you need to simplify chains of redirects to go directly to the final destination. Also, ensure redirects don’t loop back on themselves.

Soft 404 errors occur when a page returns a 200 status code but is effectively a 404. Fix these by making sure the page has actual content and isn’t just a placeholder.

For Robots.txt/Meta Tags Issues, check for incorrect robots.txt rules or noindex tags that might be preventing crawling.

• Validate and Submit Changes Made

After making changes, use the “Validate Fix” option in Search Console to confirm the errors are resolved. Use the “URL Inspection” tool to request re-indexing of fixed pages. Resubmit your sitemap in Search Console to help search engines discover and crawl your updated content.

You can take the help of professionals who can help you make an effective website and fix the errors.