What is Crawling in SEO? A Beginner’s Guide to How Search Engines Discover Your Site

What is Crawling in SEO?

Crawling is the process search engines like Google use to discover content, images, videos, and PDFs by following links across the web. Crawlers depend on a logical site structure, clear internal links, and up-to-date sitemaps. If your pages aren’t crawlable, they’re invisible to search engines, no matter how good the content is.

In this blog, let’s break down crawling in SEO to set a solid foundation for your learning journey. At the end of this blog, you will find the most common interview questions related to crawling in SEO, which we teach as part of our digital marketing course at DigiGyan. So, keep reading till the end.

How Does Crawling Work?

Crawling, which is the most critical aspect of technical SEO, begins when search engine bots land on your site and move through links to discover more pages and collect data in the process. These bots visit each linked page to gather content and media like text, images, and videos.

Here is a crisp breakdown of how crawling works: 

• Link Discovery: Bots discover new pages by crawling through internal links on your site and external links from other websites.
• Content Analysis: They read and assess content, including text and media.
• Page Indexing: After analyzing, the page is added to the search engine’s index for future ranking.

How to Make Your Website Crawl-Friendly

Making your site crawl-friendly means you’re helping Google do its job faster and more efficiently, which leads to better visibility and rankings.

Let’s look at a few ways to make that happen:

1. Create and Submit XML Sitemaps

Use tools like Screaming Frog or Rank Math (if you’re on WordPress) to generate an updated sitemap. Then, log into Google Search Console, go to the ‘Sitemaps’ section, and paste the sitemap URL. This allows Google bots a clear path to your site’s most important pages.

2. Use Robots.txt Properly

Access your robots.txt file through your WordPress SEO plugin or cPanel. Make sure you’re not accidentally blocking key folders like blog or services. After editing, test it using Google’s Robots.txt Tester to be sure Googlebot can reach everything that matters.

3. Avoid Broken Links and Redirect Chains

Broken pages waste crawl budget. Use tools like Ahrefs’ Site Audit or Screaming Frog to find dead links and long redirect chains. Fix them by either updating the URLs or removing them altogether. This helps crawlers move efficiently through your site.

Tools to Track Crawling on Your Website

Catching crawl issues early lets you fix them before they hurt your rankings. The right tools show you exactly how bots see your site, where they get stuck, and which pages they never reach. In the next section, we’ll explore three free or low‑cost tools you can use today to monitor and improve your site’s crawl performance.

Google Search Console

To monitor and improve how Google crawls your site, go to the Crawl Stats and Indexing sections in Google Search Console. Use Crawl Stats to check crawl volume, response codes, and host status. 

In the Pages report under Indexing, identify pages marked as “Discovered – currently not indexed” or “Crawled – not indexed.”

Once you find issues, inspect the affected URLs using the URL Inspection Tool to understand what’s preventing indexing. From there, you or your SEO team should fix the problem, such as crawl blocks, thin content, or missing internal links, before escalating to developers if it’s a technical issue.

Screaming Frog

Download your server’s raw access logs from your hosting dashboard or CDN. Upload them into Screaming Frog’s Log File Analyzer. You’ll see exactly which URLs Googlebot is visiting and which ones it’s ignoring.

If you notice important pages aren’t getting crawled while low-value URLs (like admin or filter pages) are getting attention, it’s time to act. Add internal links to pages that didn’t get crawled or update your sitemap. Block unnecessary URLs using robots.txt to help bots focus on what matters.

Common SEO Interview Questions on Crawling

Below are common interview questions related to crawling in SEO. While covering all the possible questions is out of the scope of the blog, you can use the following questions as a starting point to your interview preparation.

1. What is crawling in SEO?

Crawling is basically how search engines discover content. Bots like Googlebot go through links on a site to find pages, then queue them for indexing.

2. How does Googlebot crawl a website?

It starts with known URLs, like from sitemaps or backlinks, and follows internal links from there. If the site structure is clean, it’ll keep discovering pages efficiently.

3. What’s the difference between crawling and indexing?

Crawling is just discovery. Indexing is when the search engine processes and stores that page to show in the results. A page can be crawled but still not indexed.

4. Tell me what is crawl budget

Crawl budget is the combination of how many requests Googlebot can make to the server and how much it wants to crawl the content, so that bots don’t overload the site while still revisiting important pages.

5. How do you make a site crawl-friendly?

I make sure the site has a clean internal structure, a valid XML sitemap, and no broken links or redirect loops. Also, I avoid blocking important URLs in robots.txt.

6. What’s the purpose of robots.txt?

It tells bots what not to crawl. I use it to block non-essential pages like admin or filter URLs, but I’m careful not to block the wrong pages can hurt visibility.

7. Can JavaScript cause crawl issues?

Definitely. If important content loads only after JS rendering, bots might miss it. In such cases, I use server-side rendering or prerendering to make sure it’s crawlable.

8. Do you know about Orphan Pages?

If a page has no internal links redirecting to it, that page is called an orphan page. Bots usually can’t find them unless they’re in the sitemap.

9. How do you track crawling on a site?

I use Google Search Console to see crawl stats and submitted/indexed pages. For deeper insights, I analyze server logs in Screaming Frog to check bot behavior.

Conclusion

Crawling is one of the first technical checks in SEO. If bots can’t find or understand your pages, they won’t rank, no matter how good your content is. Fix crawl issues first before worrying about keywords or backlinks. 
To take your preparation to the next level, explore courses offered by DigiGyan, which is one of the best digital marketing training institutes in Hyderabad. Connect with like-minded learners and get all your doubts clarified by certified trainers on campus.