What is Google Crawling and Indexing – Do you know what Crawling and indexing really mean? Crawling and indexing are the two basic terms that plays a vital role in the SEO world. If you are keen to enter the SEO world, then crawling and indexing are some of the basic terms you should be aware of.If you have been in the web for a while, then you must have at least heard of these terms for sure.

It is very essential for people to know deeply about the basics of SEO world. Here you will get a complete knowledge of what is crawling and indexing and how they are important in SEO.

What is Google crawling?

Following a path would be the best definition for the term Google crawling. In the SEO world, Google crawling means following your links around the website. When bots come to your website or any page of your website then they follow other linked pages also on your website. This is the major reason why we create site maps for the website. Crawling is very important for users to have a deep look of your website.

What is Google indexing?

Google indexing is basically the process of adding web pages into the Google search. Google will crawl and index your pages depending upon the Meta tags you have used. A no index tag means that the respective web page cannot be indexed in the Google search. A better idea for ranking higher on search engine results is to index the vital pages of your websites.

Factors that affect Google crawling and indexing

There are millions of people who are dissatisfied with the crawling and indexing rate of their websites. Google has several terms and condition that you must follow in order to get you page indexed. Below mentioned are some of the reasons that affect the crawling and indexing rates.

• Domain name importance has risen over the years now for all the good reasons. Your crawling rate will be higher if the domain has a higher page rank.
• The more back links you have, more reputable you are in the eyes of people and most importantly search engines.
• Internal linking also affects the crawling and indexing rates. Internal linking is a good practice not only for search engine optimization but for maintaining the active users.
• XML sitemap is necessary for the indexing of your page. Once you will create it, Google will automatically know that you want to index your page.
• Duplicate content can really affect the indexing and crawling rate in bad ways. You can never get your page or website indexed if it contains duplicate content.
• Meta tags, pinging are some of the other factors that can affect your crawling and indexing a big time.

What is the difference between crawling and indexing?

Crawling is a term used when Google or other search engines send bots to a web page and reads that page. Many people confuse this process as indexing. Crawling is the baby step of having your page indexed. Crawling does not necessarily means that the web page is indexed and will be found on the search engines. Pages get crawled for a number of reasons such as having an XML sitemap etc. Indexing is very important for any page to be officially shown on search engines. I hope this might have been helpful in clearing your confusion.

Conclusion

To start with SEO, crawling and indexing are two of the many basic terms that you need to be aware of. You should know the difference between them most importantly their worth in the SEO world. So if you had not any idea about them I am sure this might have added to your knowledge. They are extremely important and if you really want to take your services or websites to another levels then learn about these basic terms first.