What is the Crawl Budget? And how to optimize it?

If some pages of your website are not being indexed in Google or there are crawling issues, then one major reason for this can be Crawl Budget. In this blog we will understand what Crawl Budget is, how it works, and what are the best practices to optimize it.

What is the Crawl Budget?

Crawl Budget means how many pages of your website Google will crawl in a day. Crawl budget of every website is not fixed, rather it depends on different factors, such as:

✅ Authority of the website – High DA sites are crawled more.

✅ Server Speed ​​– If the site loads fast then Google will crawl more pages.

✅ Internal Linking – If there is a good structure then bots will crawl easily.

✅ Duplicate Content – ​​If there is too much duplicate content then the crawl budget will be wasted.

✅ Crawl Demand – If Google sees that your content is frequently updated and valuable, it will crawl more often.

✅ Crawl Rate Limit – Google limits the number of requests per second it makes to your site to avoid overwhelming your server.

If Google visits your site but crawls only a few pages and skips the rest, then it means that your Crawl Budget is not being utilized properly.

How to Optimize Crawl Budget?

If you want Google to properly crawl the important pages of your website, then you will have to optimize the Crawl Budget. Here are some best practices:

1. Use Robots.txt correctly

Prevent Google bots from crawling those pages that are not necessary, such as:

❌ Admin pages

❌ Duplicate pages

❌ Low-quality content pages

Example robots.txt:

User-agent: Googlebot

Disallow: /admin/

Disallow: /thank-you-page/

2. Improve Internal Linking

If there are no internal links on a page, then Google will not find it easily. By giving good internal links, important pages will be crawled quickly.

✔ Link important pages to the homepage or menu.

✔ Give links to related pages in blog posts.

✔ Identify orphan pages (which have no links) and link them.

✔ Maintain a logical link structure to avoid deep nesting of pages.

3. Submit Sitemap XML

The best way to tell Google which pages of your site are important is to submit a sitemap to Google Search Console.

Example:

👉 For WordPress users, use RankMath or Yoast SEO plugin.

👉 Generate a manual sitemap and submit it to Google Search Console.

👉 Regularly update and resubmit the sitemap after adding new pages.

4. Fix Broken Links

If your site has too many 404 pages or broken links, the crawl budget will be wasted. So:

✅ Check the "Coverage Report" in Google Search Console.

✅ Use the Screaming Frog SEO tool or Ahrefs to detect broken links.

✅ Use 301 Redirect if any page is deleted.

✅ Ensure there are no infinite redirect loops.

5. Improve Page Speed

If the site is slow then Google will crawl fewer pages. You follow these steps:

✔ Compress images (WebP format is best)

✔ Use Cache plugins (WP Rocket, LiteSpeed ​​Cache)

✔ Minify CSS, JavaScript

✔ Choose good hosting

✔ Enabling lazy loading for images and videos.

6. Avoid Duplicate Content

If there is duplicate content on the website then the crawl budget will be wasted. To avoid this:

✔ Use Canonical tags correctly.

✔ Do not put the same content on multiple URLs.

✔ Do not index low-quality pages.

✔ Use hreflang tags if you have multilingual pages.

7. Block Low-Value Pages Using Noindex

If you have pages that add little to no value, such as login pages or outdated content, use the noindex tag to prevent Google from crawling them.

Example:

<meta name="robots" content="noindex">

This will ensure Google doesn't waste crawl budget on unimportant pages.

8. Reduce Redirect Chains

Multiple redirects in a row slow down crawling. Ensure that redirects are minimal and go directly from the old URL to the new one.

❌ Bad example: Page A → Page B → Page C → Page D

✅ Good example: Page A → Page D

9. Monitor Crawl Stats in Google Search Console

Regularly check Google Search Console to monitor crawl stats and detect issues. Go to Settings > Crawl Stats Report to analyze how Google crawls your site.

✅ Look for sudden drops or spikes in crawling.

✅ Identify which pages Google is prioritizing.

✅ Check if Google is crawling unnecessary pages.

If you want Google to properly crawl and index the important pages of your website, then Crawl Budget Optimization is a must. Fixing robots.txt, internal linking, broken links, submitting a sitemap, and improving site speed are some of the best strategies that will help you to increase the crawling efficiency of your site.

Follow these strategies:

✅ Use Robots.txt properly

✅ Improve internal linking

✅ Submit a sitemap

✅ Fix broken links

✅ Boost page speed

✅ Avoid duplicate content

✅ Block low-value pages

✅ Reduce redirect chains

✅ Monitor crawl stats

By implementing these best practices, you can improve your website’s SEO performance and ensure that your important pages are indexed faster.