Matthew Widdop
Matty is a Junior SEO Executive at Intelligency, helping our clients to improve their digital performance. Matty is currently studying for his Level 3 Multi-Channel Marketer apprenticeship and has completed a Sport Journalism Degree at the University of Huddersfield.
Crawl depth refers to the distance between a web page from the homepage within a
website’s structure, this is important for SEO as it impacts how your website is crawled by
search engines, such as Google.
Why is crawl depth important?
Crawl depth is important because it affects how your site is indexed by search engine
crawlers. Crawlers are automated bots that search websites and index content so it can then
be ranked and shown to audiences. Having an organised crawl depth makes it easier for
these bots to navigate your site.
How does site architecture affect crawl depth?
Site architecture refers to the way your pages are organised on your site. Making sure your
architecture makes sense for your users to understand but also for search engines to
navigate will help your site be crawled more easily and will help you avoid any orphan pages
(pages without any internal links). In his article on crawl depth Neil Patel says that ‘’it’s
generally best to keep pages within five clicks of the homepage.’’ Once again reaffirming the
point that a simple structure is best when it comes to setting up your site even if it is a
complex site.
Updating XML Sitemaps
Once you are happy with your site structure, making sure your xml sitemaps are up to date
is important for optimising your search engine rankings. An xml sitemap is a map submitted
to search engines that lists all the pages on a website, providing search engines with a
structured overview of your site’s content. Updated sitemaps can be submitted to Google
through Google Search Console to make them aware that your site has been updated and
needs recrawling.
Internal Linking
Having an up to date site structure helps to be able to have a clear internal linking strategy
where you can link relevant pages on your site to one another. This further reduces crawl
depth and allows relevant content to be found more easily by crawlers. Sites can find certain
content more quickly through internal links than through the menu bar.
Crawl depth is an important component of SEO, making sure your site architecture, XML
sitemaps and internal links are all up to date will help to improve crawl depth and online
visibility.
