Relevant content, credible backlinks, and website crawlability are critical components of content marketing. And, yes, “crawlability” is an ugly word, no two ways about it.
If you build your site, they won’t come -unless you have a massive built-in following. Or focus on on-page SEO and build credible backlinks to promote your business. Or run paid ads.
I’m a big fan of building on-page SEO before paying for most any ad or promotion. SEO is an engine that works in the background. Without it, paid ads have to do way too much heavy lifting, which comes at a price.
Your first job is to draw in site visitors with relevant content and a crawlable site. Once they’ve arrived, they need to know their next steps. Your second job is to make it fast and easy for them to understand what you want and do the thing you want them to do.
Website Crawlability Is Key
Yes, crawlability is an ugly word. Roger that. Here’s the thing: A crawlable website is a website that gets found, so this is one ugly word that you might want to integrate into your daily vernacular.
A search engine optimized website is one that search engine spiders (also called bots) can crawl through and understand. When your site is crawlable, your site pages will be indexed in search engine search results, making it easier for prospective customers to find you. The more specific the content on your site, the better.
I’ve discussed how it helps prospects when you are clear about who you are, who you serve, and what value you provide. As it turns out, clarity helps bots, too.
Search engine bots crawl through the content on your site, crawl through image alt-text (also called alt-tags), and follow links on your site. If search engine bots run into too many broken links, images without alt-text, and other hurdles, they’ll give your site a thumbs down, which essentially means your organic rankings will tank.
Website Crawlability Next Steps
Start with this technical SEO checklist from HubSpot. From a content crawlability perspective, here are three other ways to improve your site’s crawlability:
- Identify and fix broken links:
- Create text-based content anywhere and everywhere. Search engines can’t “read” images or text bitmapped into images. That awesome text-based image you made in Canva? It isn’t crawlable by Google unless you create descriptive image alt-text for it. To that end, be sure to create alt-text for all images that appear on your site in order to help Google know what they’re all about.
- Create keyword-rich URLs, titles, and meta descriptions for each page using Yoast.
Free Marketing Support
Want to go it alone? I’ll help set you up for success. Want to work with me? Let’s see if we’re a fit. Prefer to work with an agency? I can point you in the right direction or help you vet your selections.
I do up to 10 free marketing consults per week. Schedule one, and here’s what we’ll do:
- Review your high-level ecosystem — home page, on-page SEO, assets (e-books, white papers, blogs), PR efforts, and social media pages.
- Discuss the top 3-5 things you might consider doing (1) communicate your value to your customers and prospects more clearly and (2) optimize your site, SEO, and social presence.
- Point out templates and samples offered on my site and elsewhere to get you started.
Fast Wins + Zero Fluff = Game Changer
My aim is to help small businesses and teams keep from making common (and costly) marketing mistakes and get out of their “random acts of marketing” rut. All fast wins and zero spam, smoke, mirrors, or fluff. Best of all: no marketing PhD required.
You can get periodic marketing tips and tricks to empower you to eliminate random acts of marketing, improve your marketing aim, and fire on all cylinders. No smoke, mirrors, BS, or fluff. All fast-win informational goodness that you can put into action straightaway. Sign up to get on the list.
