Crawlability And Indexability: What Are They & How Do They Affect Your Small Business's Website

Crawlability and indexability are essential in ranking your pages. You can write the most valuable content in your niche, but if search engines can’t crawl or index your pages, nothing will happen. These two factors form the backbone of your organic visibility.

This article breaks down exactly what these terms mean, why they matter, how they affect SEO, what affects crawlability and indexability, how to find issues, ways to optimize your crawlability and indexability, and the best tools to help you optimize them.

Crawlability and indexability are key to your technical SEO. If you are new to technical SEO, check out my step-by-step technical SEO guide to learn the basics and build a solid foundation.

What Is Crawlability?

Crawlability is your website’s ability to be discovered and accessed by search engine bots.

If Google’s crawlers can’t reach your site’s pages, they won’t appear in search results. When you launch a website, it’s not automatically visible to search engines. Crawlers, like Googlebot, need to “crawl” your site, following links from page to page, gathering data.

If these bots hit roadblocks, like broken links, incorrect robots.txt settings, or unoptimized internal linking, they may skip valuable content. That’s a huge missed opportunity.

Crawlability isn’t just about technical access. It’s about creating a structure that invites crawlers in and guides them clearly. You need a solid sitemap, clean site architecture, and optimized navigation.

The better bots can crawl, the better they can understand and rank your content in search results.

What Is Indexability?

Indexability is your website’s ability to be stored and listed in a search engine’s database after it’s crawled.

If crawlability is how Google finds your content, indexability is how it remembers it. You can have perfectly crawlable pages that still never show up in search results because they aren’t indexable.

This often happens when pages are blocked with a no-index tag, buried behind login walls, or served with the wrong status codes. If your pages aren’t indexable, they won’t rank.

Simply put: without indexability, you’re invisible.

How Do Crawlability And Indexability Affect SEO?

As discussed above, crawlability and indexability are the foundation of SEO success. If search engines can’t crawl or index your site, nothing else matters. You could have the best content in your niche, top page speed, or the best possible backlink profile. But if Google can’t crawl your pages or add them to its index, your site won’t appear in search results.

Crawlability affects how easily search engines discover your content. Think of it as Google’s first impression of your site. If your technical setup blocks crawlers with broken links, orphan pages, or poor internal linking, you’re putting up walls that stop bots in their tracks. This reduces how often and how deeply your site is crawled. New pages may take longer to show up or may never be discovered at all.

Indexability picks up where crawlability leaves off. Once crawlers access a page, it must meet specific criteria to be stored in the search engine’s index. If your pages use noindex tags, return 404 errors, or serve duplicate content, they may be excluded from the index entirely. This results in no visibility.

You need both crawlability and indexability to succeed in modern SEO. They work together to help search engines find, understand, and rank your content.

What Affects Crawlability And Indexability?

Internal links

Your internal linking structure is important for search engine bots. An internal link is a link from one page on your website to another. If there is a logical and clear internal linking structure, crawlers can discover new pages without getting lost.

If a page on your website has no internal links pointing to it, it becomes a so-called “orphan page,” which crawlers will not or rarely discover. This results in it not being included in Google’s index.

When you link often to a specific page from important places like homepage or pillar articles, you signal that this page is a priority, so crawlers tend to visit and index it more frequently.

Robots.txt

Robots.txt files tell search engines where they’re allowed to go and not to go. If you set up your robots.txt files in a clear, logical way, you guide crawlers to the pages that matter the most, which supports crawlability and indexability for your important content.

Be aware that strict or incorrect rules in this file can accidentally block bots from certain pages. When this happens, those pages might never be crawled and indexed.

Robots.txt helps you manage your “crawl budget.” By excluding non-important pages, you optimize your budget for your key pages, which increases your chances of those pages getting crawled and indexed.

Meta Robot Tags

Meta robot tags sit in your HTML code. They instruct bots to crawl but not index certain pages. The most common meta robot tags are “index/noindex,” “follow/nofollow,” “noarchive,” “nosnippet,” “alll” and “non.“

The most used are probably the index and noindex tags. Noindex tags tell bots to net index specific pages. They’re helpful for private or duplicate content. Don’t overuse noindex tags, as they can harm indexability. Bots still crawl the page but won’t add it to search results.

Always check which pages have a noindex tag. If it’s added for important pages, make sure you add an index tag so your page will be indexed.

XML Sitemap

An XML sitemap is like a structured, readable directory of your website’s pages for search engine bots. You give search engines a clear list of URLs, and this makes it much easier for them to understand the pages you have and where to find them.

Sitemaps are helpful for new websites, larger websites, or sites with a less clear internal linking structure. This will speed up crawlability and indexability for pages that are important or would be overlooked.

Content Quality

Content quality has a direct impact on whether search engines decide if your page deserves a place in the index. If your content is duplicated, thin, or offers little to no value, crawlers can still find the page, but algorithms can choose not to index it.

With high-quality content the opposite happens. Algorithms recognize its value, this will increase the chances of being indexed and being kept in the index in the future.

Technical Issues

Technical issues stop crawlers from accessing and/or understanding your pages. Problems such as broken links, server errors, or pages that rely heavily on JavaScript can prevent bots from fully loading or following through your content.

When crawlers come across too many errors, they may reduce how often they visit your website. This can result in slower discovery of new pages and not being included in the index as crawlers won’t be on your pages long enough.

Rendering problems also affect crawlability and indexability. If important text or links only appear after complex scripts run, search engines may see an “empty” version of your page.

How To Find Crawlability And Indexability Issues?

You don’t want to wait until traffic drops or rankings tank before taking action. Finding crawlability and indexability issues early helps you fix them before they block your content from getting the attention it deserves.

Start With Google Search Console

Google Search Console (GSC) is your go-to tool for spotting crawlability and indexability issues. It’s free, accurate and built by Google.

Here’s what to check:

Coverage Report: This shows which pages are indexed, which are excluded, and why. Look out for errors like “Crawled – currently not indexed”, “Blocked by robots.txt”, or “Soft 404”.

URL Inspection Tool: Plug in any URL to see if it’s crawlable, indexed, and when Google last visited it.

Sitemaps: Submit a sitemap and monitor how many pages Google finds versus how many it indexes.

These reports highlight whether Google is seeing your site as you intended or getting stuck.

Use Screaming Frog for Full Site Crawls

If you want to dig deeper, use a tool like Screaming Frog. It simulates what a search engine bot sees as it crawls your site.

With these tools, you can:

Identify broken internal links that stop crawlers in their tracks
Spot pages missing meta robots tags or using no-index by mistake
Find redirect chains or loops that confuse bots
Highlight orphan pages with no internal links pointing to them

Run a crawl regularly, especially after site updates or redesigns. You’ll catch crawl roadblocks before they cost you rankings.

Check Robots.txt & Meta Robots Tags

A misconfigured robots.txt file or careless use of meta robots tags can destroy your crawlability and indexability without you noticing.

Use the robots.txt Tester in GSC to check if you’re unintentionally blocking important sections.
Review meta robots tags for values like no-index, no-follow, or no-archive, especially on templates and CMS-generated pages.

One not clear line can tell bots to ignore your entire blog.

Test Mobile & Speed Factors

Google’s bots are mobile-first. If your site doesn’t work well on mobile, it may not be fully crawled or indexed. Page speed has an impact on crawl efficiency, which exhausts your website’s crawl budget. Page speed also have an impact if your page will be index or not. Poor page speed may result in a “Crawled – currently not indexed” mark.

Use PageSpeed Insights to catch issues that impact crawl efficiency.
Mobile usability errors can block JavaScript content, which may hide important page elements from bots.

4 Ways To Optimize Crawlability And Indexability?

1. Submit Sitemap To Google Search Console

If you’re not submitting your sitemap to Google Search Console, you’re wasting opportunities. As mentioned earlier, it tells Google exactly where your most important pages live and invites them to crawl. I use Rank Math plugin to generate my sitemap.

Why it matters:

Without a sitemap, Google relies on internal links and backlinks to discover your pages. A sitemap speeds up indexing and helps ensure no key page is overlooked.

Here’s how to do it right:

Create a clean, XML sitemap using tools like Rank Math (for WordPress), Screaming Frog, or XML-Sitemaps.com.
Include only index-worthy pages. Don’t list thin, duplicate, or blocked URLs.
Keep it under 50,000 URLs and 50MB uncompressed, or split it into multiple sitemaps.
Submit it in GSC under “Sitemaps” and monitor the index coverage regularly.

By submitting your sitemap and keeping it up to date, you make Google’s job easier.

2. Strengthen Your Internal Linking Structure

Internal linking is critical for crawlability and indexability. If Googlebot finds one page, it follows those links to discover others. Poor internal linking breaks that flow.

Without a solid internal linking structure, you end up with a lot of orphan pages, which means no indexing, no ranking, and zero SEO value for your small business.

Here’s how to fix that:

Link to every important page at least once. No orphan pages, period.
Use descriptive anchor text. Help Google understand the context of the link.
Keep your click depth shallow. Pages buried more than 3 clicks deep may not get crawled regularly.
Use hub pages to group related content and create topical relevance.

For example, if you have a cornerstone page on “technical SEO.” Link to that from related blog posts, your homepage, and even the footer. Then, make sure that page links out to deeper articles like “how to audit crawl errors” or “fixing indexation issues.”

3. Update And Add New Content

Google loves fresh content. But it’s not just about new articles. Updated pages are also crawl magnets. If your content is stale, crawlers may visit less often. That delays indexation and weakens ranking potential.

Why content freshness matters:

Search engines prioritize active, evolving websites. When you publish regularly and update older pages, you signal that your site is alive and worth crawling.

How to stay fresh:

Update existing content with new stats, insights, and keywords. Don’t just change a date, add real value.
Republish evergreen posts after refreshing them. Change the date, improve the content, and re-promote.
Create new content consistently. Even once a month can keep bots coming back.
Link new posts internally. Tie them into your existing content to maximize crawl flow.

By keeping your content ecosystem active, you improve crawl frequency and increase the chances that every page gets indexed faster.

4. Avoid Duplicate Content

Duplicate content kills indexability. Google doesn’t want to store or rank the same content multiple times. If your site serves duplicates, some pages may be excluded from the index.

Why this happens:

Same content accessible via multiple URLs (e.g., /product/, /product/index.html, /product/?ref=123)
HTTP vs. HTTPS or www vs. non-www conflicts
Copied blocks of content across category pages or blog templates
Poor use of canonical tags or none at all

Here’s how to fix and prevent it:

Use canonical tags correctly to tell Google which version of a page to index.
Consolidate thin variations (like product filters or tag archives) that create similar content.
Customize descriptions, intros, and meta tags for each page.
Check for scraper issues. If others copy your content, your original version may not get indexed.

Remember: If two pages compete for the same keyword with the same content, Google might choose neither.

5. Optimize robots.txt files & meta robot tags

As mentioned above, robots.txt files tell crawlers where they are allowed to go. It ensures your crawl budget is used as efficiently as possible. I use Rank Math plugin for my WordPress site to set up the robots.txt files.

Here’s which pages you exclude from robots.txt files:

Admin pages (/admin/, /login/).
Duplicate content (/category/, /tag/).
Parameters (/page.html?sort=).
Internal search results (/search?q=).
Staging/test pages (/staging/, /dev/).

Pages to add meta robot “noindex” tag:

Thin content pages.
Duplicate pages.
Private users profiles.
Paginated content beyond page 2

3 Tools To Help You Improve Crawlability And Indexability

1. Screaming Frog

Screaming Frog is a desktop-based SEO spider that mimics search engine crawlers to scan your entire website. Unlike browser-based tools, it sees your site the way bots do. This is critical when diagnosing hidden crawl issues that impact indexability.

With Screaming Frog, you can:

Simulate a full crawl just like Googlebot, revealing how your site structure looks to search engines.
Identify broken internal links that stop crawl paths dead in their tracks.
Spot incorrect or missing meta robots tags that may block indexing unintentionally.
Locate redirect chains and loops, which confuse bots and waste crawl budget.
Find orphan pages—those that no internal links lead to and Google likely never finds.
Audit canonical tags, hreflang, pagination, and status codes at scale.

Run Screaming Frog regularly, especially after major changes or site migrations.

2. Google Search Console

Google Search Console (GSC) is non-negotiable. It’s free, straight from Google, and shows exactly how their bots view your site. While Screaming Frog reveals what could be happening, GSC shows what is happening in Google’s crawl and index behavior.

Use GSC to:

Check the Coverage Report, which flags pages that are excluded and explains why (noindex, crawl anomalies, soft 404s, etc.).
Use the URL Inspection Tool to see if a specific page is indexed, crawlable, and when it was last visited.
Submit and monitor your XML sitemap, ensuring all key URLs are being discovered and indexed.
Monitor Crawl Stats, which show how often and how deep Google is crawling your site over time.
Test your robots.txt file, making sure you’re not unintentionally blocking important content.

If there’s a mismatch between what you think is indexable and what’s actually indexed, GSC will show it.

3. Ahrefs Site Audit

Ahrefs Site Audit combines technical crawl data with actionable SEO insights, making it especially useful for strategists and marketers.

With Ahrefs Site Audit, you’ll be able to:

Spot crawl errors, noindex pages, and broken links, all categorized by urgency and severity.
Audit internal link flow, identifying pages with too few or too many internal links.
Review on-page SEO elements, such as duplicate titles, missing meta descriptions, and thin content.
Track changes over time with historical comparisons—ideal for measuring the impact of your fixes.
Segment crawl results by URL type, status code, or crawl depth to diagnose structural issues fast.

Ahrefs makes crawlability and indexability part of a bigger SEO picture, helping you balance technical health with strategy.