Crawling
Learn how to ensure search engines can efficiently crawl and understand your website’s content
Crawling is a fundamental aspect of SEO that refers to the process by which search engines, such as Google, scan and collect information from your hotel’s website. This process is essential because it determines how well your content is understood and indexed by search engines. If a search engine’s crawler can’t properly access your pages, they won’t be included in search results, limiting your hotel’s online visibility. By optimising your website’s crawlability, you can ensure that search engines capture all the relevant information on your site, improving your chances of ranking higher in search results. In this guide, we’ll explore the critical components of crawling, explain common challenges, and provide actionable steps to help you optimise your hotel’s website for better SEO performance.
By understanding and controlling how your website is indexed, you can improve visibility, increase direct bookings, and ensure potential guests can find your hotel online. This guide will help you navigate the key concepts of indexation and provide actionable strategies for optimising it to enhance your hotel's overall SEO performance.
Understanding The Search Engine Crawling Process
Crawl Budget
The concept of crawl budget refers to the number of pages a search engine crawler will scan on your site within a specific time period. Google doesn’t crawl every page of every website daily. Instead, it allocates a crawl budget based on your website's size, importance, and how often the content changes.
If your hotel’s website has numerous pages, ensuring that your crawl budget is spent on the most important content is crucial. For example, pages with outdated promotions or seasonal offers should be deprioritised in favour of high-value pages like current room listings or dining options. Efficiently managing your crawl budget can help search engines focus on the most relevant pages, speeding up the indexation of new or updated content.
Internal Linking
Internal linking is one of the most effective ways to guide crawlers through your website. By linking key pages together, you create a logical path for both users and search engines to follow. A strong internal linking structure helps ensure that no important pages are orphaned or hidden too deep within the site.
For hotels, this could mean linking your homepage to essential pages like room categories, local area guides, or your booking engine. The more effectively you use internal links, the easier it is for crawlers to understand the relationships between your pages and prioritise indexing the most valuable content
Crawl Errors
Crawl errors occur when search engines encounter problems accessing or reading your website’s content. These errors can prevent key pages from being crawled and indexed, negatively impacting your SEO. Common crawl errors include broken links, missing pages, or pages blocked by robots.txt. For hotels, a crawl error might mean that your booking page or room descriptions are inaccessible to search engines, leading to missed opportunities for potential guests to find your site. Regularly identifying and fixing crawl errors is crucial for ensuring that your website is fully crawlable, and that search engines are indexing all the pages you want to be found.
Improving Your Website’s Crawlability
1
Fix Broken Links
Broken links are a common cause of crawl errors. When a search engine bot encounters a broken link, it may stop crawling that section of your site, meaning important pages might not get indexed. For hotels, broken links on key pages like booking engines or special offers can lead to reduced traffic and missed reservations. Regularly audit your site using tools like Google Search Console to identify and repair any broken links.
3
Use a Robots.txt File
The robots.txt file allows you to control which pages or sections of your website crawlers should or should not access. This is particularly useful for excluding non-public pages like login screens or admin panels from being crawled. For hotels, you might also want to exclude pages that don’t offer value to potential guests, such as internal tracking pages or expired promotions. Properly configuring your robots.txt file ensures that crawlers focus on the most valuable parts of your site.
5
Improve Page Load Speed
Search engine crawlers may give up on crawling your pages if they load too slowly. Improving your website’s page speed not only benefits user experience but also ensures that more of your site can be crawled in a shorter amount of time. For hotels, a fast-loading website means potential guests can quickly access booking pages, room details, and reviews without frustration. Optimising images, enabling compression, and using a Content Delivery Network (CDN) can significantly improve your page load speed and crawlability.
2
Update Your Sitemap
A sitemap is essentially a blueprint for your website that helps search engines navigate your content. By regularly updating your sitemap, you ensure that search engines are always aware of new pages, such as newly added rooms or promotions, as well as any pages you’ve removed. Submitting an up-to-date sitemap to search engines through platforms like Google Search Console can streamline the crawling process and ensure that all your essential pages are indexed.
4
Avoid Duplicate Content
Duplicate content can confuse search engine crawlers, causing them to waste crawl budget on multiple versions of the same page. This is especially important for hotels that may offer similar room types with slightly different descriptions. To avoid duplicate content issues, use canonical tags to indicate which version of a page should be indexed. This ensures that only the most relevant pages are crawled and indexed, helping you avoid penalties from search engines for duplicate content.
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Manage Crawl Budget Effectively
Prioritise high-value pages such as home, property-level pages, room-pages, and promotional pages to ensure they are crawled frequently. If certain pages are less critical, consider reducing their priority using the "noindex" tag or blocking them with robots.txt. This allows you to allocate more of your crawl budget to important content, ensuring that the pages that drive bookings are indexed promptly.