You know all about search engine optimization — the importance of a well-structured site, relevant keywords, appropriate tagging, technical standards, and lots and lots of content. But chances are you don’t think a lot about Googlebot optimization.
Googlebot optimization isn’t the same thing as search engine optimization, because it goes a level deeper. Search engine optimization is focused more upon the process of optimizing for user’s queries. Googlebot optimization is focused upon how Google’s crawler accesses your site.
There’s a lot of overlap, of course. However, I want to make this important distinction, because there are foundational ways in which it can affect your site. A site’s crawlability is the important first step to ensuring its searchability.
What is Googlebot?
Googlebot is Google’s search bot that crawls the web and creates an index. It’s also known as a spider. The bot crawls every page it’s allowed access to, and adds it to the index where it can be accessed and returned by users’ search queries.
