Crawlability and Indexability in 2025: Making Your Site Search Engine Friendly

Your content might be brilliant, but if search engines can’t find it or store it, it might as well not exist.

In 2025, technical SEO is more important than ever. With Google’s algorithms becoming smarter and more selective, ensuring your site is crawlable and indexable is fundamental for visibility. This article explores what crawlability and indexability mean, how to optimise them, and what tools and strategies can help.

Understanding Crawlability and Indexability

Crawlability refers to how easily search engine bots like Googlebot can access and navigate your website.
Indexability is the process by which search engines store your pages in their database to appear in search results.

If a page is crawlable but not indexable, it won’t rank. If it’s not crawlable, it won’t be discovered in the first place.

Why They Matter in 2025

Google processes trillions of web pages, and in 2025, it’s more selective than ever due to crawl budget constraints and growing content volume. If your site isn’t optimised for crawling and indexing, your content could be completely missed—even if it’s high quality (Google Search Central, 2024).

According to Ahrefs (2024):

• Over 20% of websites have crawlability or indexation issues.
  
• Wasted crawl budget can cause slow updates and poor rankings.
  
• Fixing crawl errors can increase organic visibility by up to 35%.
  

Crawl Budget: What Is It?

Crawl budget is the number of pages a bot is allowed and able to crawl during a set period. It depends on:

• Site authority
  
• Server speed
  
• Site structure
  
• Freshness of content
  

Large websites (e.g., eCommerce stores or directories) need to optimise crawl budget to prioritise valuable pages.

Common Crawlability Issues

1. Blocked by robots.txt
   Files or folders blocked in your robots.txt file can prevent access.
   
2. Broken internal links
   These stop bots from crawling through your site.
   
3. JavaScript-heavy navigation
   Bots may struggle to follow links hidden in JS.
   
4. No sitemap submitted
   Bots rely on sitemaps to find structured URLs.
   
5. Orphan pages
   Pages with no internal links won’t be found by crawlers.
   

Common Indexability Issues

1. Pages set to noindex
   This meta tag explicitly tells bots not to index.
   
2. Duplicate content without canonical tags
   Can confuse bots and reduce index efficiency.
   
3. Low-quality or thin content
   Often excluded from the index by algorithms.
   
4. Soft 404s or redirect chains
   Pages that appear broken or looped won’t be indexed.
   

Key SEO Tools for Diagnostics

Tool	Function
Google Search Console	Check crawl and index status
Screaming Frog SEO Spider	Find broken links, orphan pages, redirects
Ahrefs Site Audit	Evaluate crawl budget usage
Sitebulb	Visual internal linking maps
robots.txt Tester	Check for blocked pages

Fixing Crawlability

✅ Use a Clean Robots.txt File

Make sure you don’t accidentally block important sections:

User-agent: *

Disallow: /admin/

Allow: /

• Allow important resources like JavaScript and CSS
  
• Test using Google’s robots.txt Tester
  

✅ Submit an XML Sitemap

A good sitemap helps bots find:

• Newly added pages
  
• Updated URLs
  
• Prioritised content
  

Tools: XML Sitemaps, Yoast SEO

Fixing Indexability

✅ Check and Remove Noindex Tags

Use this code only when necessary:

<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex, nofollow” />

For pages you want indexed, remove it.

✅ Use Canonical Tags Wisely

Canonical tags help consolidate link equity across similar pages.

<link rel=”canonical” href=”https://example.com/product-a/” />

Yoast SEO automates canonical tagging in WordPress (Yoast SEO, 2024).

Internal Linking: The Hidden Power Tool

Bots crawl your site by following internal links. Strong internal linking improves crawl depth and prioritisation.

Tips:

• Link from high-authority pages to new content
  
• Use descriptive anchor text
  
• Avoid broken or circular links
  
• Keep most important pages within 3 clicks from the homepage
  

Tool: Screaming Frog

Monitoring and Improving Crawl Budget

Use server logs or tools like Ahrefs to monitor how often pages are crawled.

Improve crawl budget by:

• Removing duplicate pages
  
• Blocking low-value pages (e.g., tag archives)
  
• Speeding up server response
  
• Compressing and minifying resources
  

(Ahrefs, 2024)

Case Study: From Invisible to Indexed

A regional travel blog had:

• 900+ pages
  
• Only 200 indexed
  
• Orphan pages and duplicate content
  

Actions:

• Created and submitted sitemap
  
• Added canonical tags
  
• Fixed 300+ internal links
  
• Submitted updated URLs via GSC
  

Result: Indexed pages grew from 200 → 750 in 3 months. Traffic increased 42%.

Summary Table: Quick Fixes

Problem	Fix	Tool
No indexed content	Remove noindex, submit sitemap	Google Search Console
Duplicate pages	Add canonical tags	Yoast SEO
Orphan pages	Add internal links	Screaming Frog
Wasted crawl budget	Block junk in robots.txt	robots.txt Tester
Crawl delays	Speed up server and reduce scripts	Site Audit tools

References

Ahrefs. (2024). Crawl budget: What it is and how to optimise it. Retrieved from https://ahrefs.com/blog/crawl-budget
Google Search Central. (2024). Crawling and indexing. Retrieved from https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing
Moz. (2024). Crawlability and indexability: What they are and why they matter. Retrieved from https://moz.com/learn/seo/crawlability
Screaming Frog. (2024). Internal linking and orphan page analysis. Retrieved from https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/
Yoast SEO. (2024). Canonical URLs and duplicate content. Retrieved from https://yoast.com/rel-canonical/