SEO can seem complex but to keep it simpler, you can break SEO into three foundational areas: crawling, indexing, and ranking. Every problem and every SEO factor relates to one of those three areas. So, what is each area and how does it work?
Let’s start with definitions:
Crawling: Search engines send out robots, commonly known as crawlers or spiders, to fetch content from your website. When crawling, search engines aim to discover every page and file that exists on your website. Once robots find the content, robots save a copy of that content.
Indexing: Once your content has been crawled, the next step is indexing. In this phase, search engines analyze and understand the copy of your content they fetched when crawling. Robots analyze the content to categorize it appropriately in their database.
Ranking: After indexing, robots want to rank some of the content contained in their index. Here, search engines decide if your website will appear in search results when someone queries a keyword relevant to your content. If your website does appear, this is where robots determine what position your website should show up in.
When analyzing problems on your website, it is important to understand how those problems relate to each of these areas. For example…
Rendering issues can impact crawling. For example, if your site has a lot of heavy JavaScript, it could potentially slow down or block crawlers from effectively fetching your website’s content. It’s critical to ensure your website is well-optimized and technically sound for efficient crawling. Any problem with crawling creates problems with indexing and ranking.
Content-related issues can impact indexing. Let’s say your site contains ‘thin content’ (pages with little to no added value), search engines may find it harder to understand the purpose of these pages and struggle to index these pages properly. It’s always a good idea to consistently review your site’s content for quality and relevance. Any problem with indexing can create a problem for ranking.
Issues with your website’s schema markup can impact ranking. Invalid schema can prevent enhancements (like stars or FAQ text) from appearing alongside your listing in search results. This can reduce clicks from search results but won’t cause problems with how your website is crawled or indexed.
With this understanding, it’s time to review your own site. What problems exist related to crawling? What problems exist related to indexing? What problems exist related to ranking? Which of those areas represents the biggest problem for your website?