I've been working on SEO and the best ways to get content seen on Google for almost a decade. At first, it all seemed pretty simple — optimize here, add keywords there. But then I discovered how web crawlers work, and I stumbled upon the concept of a crawl budget.

But as I learned more, I realized that crawl budgets affect sites with lots of pages or frequently updated content. Understanding how search engines decide which pages to crawl — and how often — turned out to be a game-changer. I could finally make more strategic choices about where I wanted Google to focus its attention.

In this post, I'll break down the essentials of crawl budget optimization, explain how it works, and share some tips on how you can manage it to get the best results for your own site.

Table of Contents

• What is a crawl budget?
• How is crawl budget determined?
• How to Optimize Your Crawl Budget
• Crawl Budget Best Practices

What is a crawl budget?

A crawl budget is the time and resources that Google will likely spend crawling your website. It’s like an allowance that helps Google decide how many pages of your website it will scan using its crawlers and consider listing for search results.

If you’re new to the idea of a crawl budget optimization, think of it as the amount of attention that search engines, notably Google, allocate to scanning or crawling your website.

Essentially, Google’s crawlers — also known as “bots” or “spiders” — are limited in how often and how many pages they can visit on your site during a specific time period. This limit is your crawl budget.

The crawl budget affects technical SEO for large websites because not all pages get equal attention in a big inventory. If Google can't crawl efficiently, important pages might not appear in search results. In contrast, this isn’t a big issue for smaller sites.

How is crawl budget determined?

In my time studying SEO, I’ve learned that the crawl budget is primarily based on two factors: the crawl capacity limit and the crawl demand. These two work together to decide how many pages Google can and will want to crawl on your site. It‘s an entirely automatic process based on Google’s basic search algorithm.

First, let’s go over crawl capacity limit. This is the maximum number of connections Googlebot (Google‘s crawler) can make to a website at the same time without slowing it down. Google doesn’t want to overload your server while indexing pages, so it carefully watches how your site responds to its SEO crawlers.

If your site loads quickly and reliably, Google will increase the crawl capacity limit, which means it can crawl more pages at once. But, if your site is slow or has server errors, Google will lower the limit and crawl fewer pages to avoid causing performance issues.

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Then, there’s crawl demand. This is all about how “in-demand” or important Google thinks your pages are. Pages that are popular, frequently updated, or generally important to users and have more traffic tend to have a higher crawl demand, so Google will check on them more often.

If I make big changes to my website, like moving to a new URL structure, it can also increase crawl demand because Google needs to re-crawl everything to update its records.

Together, crawl capacity and crawl demand make up your site‘s crawl budget optimization—the set of pages that Googlebot can and wants to crawl. Even if Google could crawl more pages (based on capacity), it wouldn’t do so if the demand weren’t there.

Google gives more crawl budget to sites that are popular, have unique and valuable content, and can handle the load without slowing down. If you manage these factors, you can help Googlebot focus on the most important pages on your website without putting too much strain on your servers.

How to Optimize Your Crawl Budget

1. Audit website index regularly.

One of the first things I like to do when optimizing crawl budget is check which pages on my website are actually getting indexed. Thus, I need to run regular website audits. Google Search Console, Ahrefs, or SEMrush are lifesavers for this — they show exactly which pages search engines are picking up on.

By doing this, I can clear the clutter and focus on the pages that matter. For example, if you manage an online store, you should clear out old product pages every few months so search engines focus on the items in stock or the latest ones you have added.

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2. Remove or update low-quality pages.

Some pages just don‘t serve a purpose anymore, and if they’re outdated or have low-quality content. I've learned from my experience that these pages can waste the crawl budget.

If I have a blog with old posts nobody reads anymore, I'll either update them with fresh info or combine a few similar posts into one strong article. A simple tweak keeps your site relevant to the search engine crawlers.

But, if a page is too outdated to update, or the content isn't relevant anymore, you can consider removing it. Deleting low-value content improves site quality and crawl efficiency.

Pro Tip: If you delete outdated pages, I would suggest you set up redirects to relevant pages or your homepage. This prevents 404 errors, preserves link equity and boosts your site's crawl efficiency.

3. Optimize website speed.

Faster load times mean search engine bots can crawl more of my site in one go, which helps with rankings. A fast site also makes for a better user experience.

Image compression, content caching, and page request reduction speed up the page load. Using Content Delivery Network (CDN) also helps, especially if I want my site to load quickly for visitors around the world.

You can use tools like Website Grader to get a quick report on your website's speed, performance, SEO, responsiveness, and security.

4. Implement a strategic internal linking structure.

Internal links are like connectors that guide search engine crawlers through my site. An intelligent linking structure can help them find and navigate to the best pages of the website.

I like to link from high-traffic pages to those that need a little extra visibility. This way, search engines can discover valuable content easily. It's a small change, but it can make a big impact on site visibility.

Pro tip: I suggest keeping your most valuable pages within three clicks of the homepage. This helps crawlers find them more efficiently and makes it easier for users to reach high-quality content on your site.

5. Address duplicate content with canonical tags and redirects.

I usually add canonical tags to pages with similar content, pointing them to the preferred URL. If an online store has multiple URLs for a single product (due to tracking or sorting), the canonical tag clarifies which page should rank, and the crawlers don't get confused.

When I need to move pages or clean up duplicate content, I use 301 redirects along with canonical tags. A 301 redirect is like a signpost that points search engines and visitors to the updated or main page.

This way, I keep my site organized and make things easy to find. Just be careful not to use too many redirects, though. If you have a bunch of them, it can slow down how often Google crawls your site.

6. Clean the redirect chains.

A redirect chain happens when there is more than one redirect between the first URL that was requested and the last destined URL. For example, URL A redirects to URL B, which redirects to URL C. So, it takes both visitors and search engine crawlers longer to load URL C.

I try to stay alert and avoid long redirect chains, which slow things down. Suppose I have a series of redirects to reach one page. In that case, I simplify them to just one or eliminate unnecessary redirects by pointing the original URL directly to the final page.

Crawl Budget Best Practices

Crawl budget optimization can improve your website's SEO performance in different ways. Since the technology is relatively deep compared to traditional SEO practices, it may be a bit challenging to absorb.

Here's a look at a few crawl budget best practices.

Manage and organize URL inventory.

Google actually wants you to tell them which pages of your website you want Google crawlers to see and which pages you don‘t. That’s because Google doesn't want its crawler bots or spiders to waste resources on unimportant content.

I use tools like robots.txt and canonical tags to help Google find my important pages and avoid the ones that don't matter as much. Robots.txt tells web spiders which URLs I want Google to access on my site.

For example, I block URLs with filters or session IDs that don't offer unique content. This way, Google spends time on the pages I actually want in search results.

Pro tip: I suggest using robots.txt to block unimportant pages instead of relying on noindex. It makes Google request the page and then drop it again, which wastes crawling time.

Consolidate and reduce duplicate content.

Google crawlers don't like finding similar content all over the website. Thus, I have to be quite alert to identify and clean up any duplicate content issues. Sometimes, I combine similar pages or mark one as the main version with a canonical tag.

For instance, if I have different URLs showing the same product, I merge them into one main page. The process for you could differ based on the size and number of pages on your website.

Use proper status codes for removed pages.

For pages I no longer need, I make sure they return a 404 or 410 status code. This tells Google to stop crawling them, saving the crawl budget for my active pages. I also check the index coverage report for soft 404 errors, which I fix to keep things running smoothly.

Update sitemaps and tags.