Google has just introduced new guidelines aimed at helping large websites optimize their crawl budget, especially for those with 10,000+ pages or ongoing indexing issues. Here’s what you need to know to stay on Google’s radar—and avoid crawl inefficiencies that can impact your site’s discoverability.
- Mobile and Desktop Link Consistency is Key Google now recommends maintaining a consistent link structure across both mobile and desktop versions of your site. This change is critical: if your mobile site doesn’t include all the same links as the desktop version, Google’s crawlers may miss valuable pages, slowing their discovery and potentially impacting rankings.
- Who’s Most Affected? This update primarily impacts large sites with more than 10,000 pages or those experiencing indexing delays. For these sites, a well-structured and consistent link setup is essential to ensure Google’s crawlers efficiently cover every corner of your site.
- Why Link Structure Matters for Crawl Budget Ensuring that both versions of your site share a cohesive link framework improves the efficiency of Google’s crawlers. When your link structure is optimized, Google can focus on high-priority pages rather than wasting crawl budget on redundant or hard-to-find content.
- Audit Your Mobile Links Check that your mobile site includes all the links present on your desktop site, especially to high-value pages. This can be a quick fix that leads to faster discovery and indexing.
- Reduce Link Redundancy Avoid cluttering your pages with links to low-value or duplicate content. By creating a clear hierarchy and reducing redundancies, you ensure that Google focuses on the pages that matter most.
- Monitor Crawl Stats Use Google Search Console to monitor crawl stats and spot indexing issues early. Consistently reviewing your crawl stats helps identify if certain pages are being overlooked, which can be a sign of link structure inconsistencies.
In a world where every page counts, Google’s new link structure guidelines are a valuable roadmap for getting the most out of your crawl budget. For large websites, maintaining a consistent, clean, and purposeful link structure across devices is key to efficient crawling and indexing.
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