If you’re managing an eCommerce site, you’ve probably encountered this challenge: despite continuous updates to your pages, enhanced content, and careful SEO efforts, your rankings just aren’t improving.

Why?

The culprit might not be your content; it could be an overlooked aspect— crawl budget optimization.

A crawl budget implies the number of pages search engines can easily crawl and index within a certain timeframe.

In this guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know about how to optimize your crawl budget for an eCommerce site—so you can finally ensure your key pages get the attention they deserve.

What is Crawl Budget?

The crawl rate is the number of pages search engines can crawl and index a site in time. Search engines like Google allow only a certain number of pages, and how often they can be crawled depends on several conditions. This becomes even more important for sites with thousands of pages, for example, in eCommerce, where individual product and category pages may exist.

Google, for instance, is selective in its approach, Even though it pays attention to what seems to be of consequence, excluding duplicate results, useless filters, or others having some technical problem encountered during crawling.

A large eCommerce site must go through this process since not all pages have the same value to produce organic traffic.

Crawl Budget= Crawl Rate+ Crawl Demand

Crawl Rate Limit:

The crawl rate limit is effectively the time a search engine bot can connect to your site for crawling purposes.

Crawl Demand:

Crawl demand depends largely on the popularity and freshness of your content. Pages that receive high traffic or have been recently updated are more likely to attract the attention of search engines, which prioritize these pages for more frequent crawling.
 

How to Calculate Crawl Budget?

To determine how much crawl budget your site is using, follow these simple steps:

• The first step is to examine the number of crawlable URLs in your XML sitemaps. This gives you an accurate idea of how many pages are available for crawling.
• Sign in to Google Search Console, navigate to “Setting,” and select Crawl Stats.
• Record the average number of pages crawled per day.
• To calculate whether your crawl budget is being used efficiently, divide your site’s total number of pages by the average number of pages crawled daily.
• If the result exceeds ten, search engines are crawling far fewer pages than your site has, indicating you need to optimize your crawl budget.
• If the result is less than three, your crawl budget is likely in good shape, and further optimization may not be necessary.

Why is Crawl Budget Optimization Important for eCommerce?

• Maximizes Search Engine Visibility: Crawl budget optimization ensures that search engines focus on your valuable pages and improve your rankings and visibility.
• Improves Rankings & Traffic: You drive more organic traffic to key pages, like top products and categories, and it directly increases sales.
• Unique Challenges for eCommerce:
• Large Volumes of Pages: There are thousands of product and category pages, and search engines can’t crawl all of them.
• Filters & Parameter-Based URLs: They can waste crawl resources if not properly managed.
• Efficient Indexing: It ensures that the vital pages on your site are crawled first and now, saving you a lot of wasted time in crawl budgets on lower-importance pages like duplicate content or irrelevant filters.
• Better SEO Performance: Search engines use focused crawling to index your most important content, thus improving your rankings and sales.

Key Factors Impacting Crawl Budget on eCommerce Sites

• Technical Issue

Technical concerns, like slow page speeds and server errors, can significantly influence your crawl budget. When search engine bots discover these challenges, they may be unable to crawl your pages or may have to spend more time attempting to access them.

• Duplicate content

Duplicate or near-duplicate content is a common issue for eCommerce sites, particularly when dealing with product variations (size, colour, model, and so on) or parameter-based URLs.

• Poor internal linking

A poor internal connection structure can likewise impede efficient crawl budget utilization. If crucial pages, such as your best-selling product categories, are buried deep within the site with little internal connection, search engines may overlook them entirely.

How to Optimize Your Crawl Budget?

Enhance Site Speed and Performance

One of the easiest and most effective ways to optimize your crawl budget is by improving your site’s speed and performance. Slow-loading pages waste valuable crawl resources and frustrate both users and bots.

• Start by compressing images to lower file size without sacrificing quality.
• Implement caching to serve pages faster, and minimize your code (CSS, JavaScript, and HTML) to ensure that pages load efficiently.

Use Canonical Tags for Duplicate Content

Duplicate content, especially in eCommerce sites with multiple variations of products, can drastically affect your crawl budget.

• Canonical tags signal search engines, telling them which version of a page should be considered the “main” one.
• This way, even if multiple product pages share similar content, Google will prioritize the most important version, ensuring the other duplicates don’t waste crawl time.
• It’s an easy way to consolidate link equity and improve crawl efficiency.

Block Unnecessary Pages from Crawling

Certain pages, like those with filtering options or sort parameters, may not provide significant value to search engines. While users might find them useful, these pages often create crawl inefficiencies and duplicate content.

• Use your robots.txt file or meta noindex tags to block search engines from crawling these non-essential pages.
• Doing so frees up the crawl budget to focus on your high-priority pages, such as core product pages and key category sections.

Develop a Crawl-Friendly Internal Linking Structure

A strong internal linking strategy ensures that important pages are easily discoverable by search engines. Without clear links to critical pages, search engines might overlook them, wasting crawl resources on less important content.

• Use anchor text that is descriptive and consistent, guiding bots to your key pages. Prioritise linking to high-conversion pages like bestsellers and top categories.
• Organize your site structure to ensure that the most valuable pages are never more than a few clicks away from the homepage or other important sections.

Optimize Your Crawl Budget for eCommerce Growth.

Mastering crawl budget optimization is crucial for eCommerce websites looking to improve their SEO and achieve better search engine rankings. By focusing on site speed, managing duplicate content with canonical tags, blocking unnecessary pages, and implementing a clear internal linking structure, you ensure that search engines prioritize your most valuable product pages.

With over 23 years of industry experience, Tangence India specializes in SEO services that drive measurable results. We utilize advanced techniques to ensure your website stays ahead of algorithm changes and market trends, optimizing your digital presence for sustainable growth in the competitive eCommerce space.

Trust Tangence India to help your eCommerce site reach its full potential and drive long term success!