How to Read Google Search Console Crawl Stats for Maximum SEO Power

I don’t know about you, but I’m always looking for ways to enhance my SEO.

I’ve been in digital marketing for more than 10 years now. I’ve heard thousands of people say, “SEO is dead!”

Yet it continues to thrive.

And it’s still a super important part of any website’s health.

That’s why I like finding new, interesting, and/or little-known methods to improve SEO.

Today, I’m going to share an SEO technique that I don’t hear about often, but it’s done a lot for me.

It’s the Crawl Stats feature of Google Search Console.

You probably know that Google Search Console, or GSC for short, is one of my favorite tools for managing a website.

You’ve most likely used it before. You might even be a GSC expert.

But I’ve realized that with GSC, there’s more than meets the eye.

It has a lot of features that I use, but I don’t see other people using them that much.

In particular, the Crawl Stats feature doesn’t get enough praise.

It’s a tiny page––it only has three graphs and some numeric data. But don’t underestimate it.

It tells you a lot about your site is reacting to Google’s search engine crawler. If you’re looking to maximize your SEO, that’s important information to have.

So I’m going to show you how to use Crawl Stats to beef up your SEO and get insights you might not get anywhere else.

What is Crawl Stats?

First, I’ll give you a rundown on what Crawl Stats is.

To access it, head to Google Search Console and select the right property.

In the sidebar on the left, click on Crawl.

In the menu that pops up below, click Crawl Stats.

You’re now at your Crawl Stats page! It should look something like this:

I’ll admit that at first glance it doesn’t seem too helpful. It’s not obvious how this data will make your SEO better.

So let’s talk about what these results actually are.

Basically, this data is measuring your crawl rate.

Crawl rate is how often search engine robots crawl your site. In this case, Crawl Stats is showing Googlebot’s (Google’s search engine robot) activity.

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