Step By Step Guide To Fix Crawl Errors

fix crawl errors

What are Crawl Errors?

These are errors that occur when a search engine tries to reach the page on a website but fails to receive that page. This was simply shown by 404, page not found etc. Crawling means when a search engine tries to visit every page of a website through a bot. As a website owner, your goal is to be sure that this search engine bot can reach to all your pages on the website.

You have to make sure every link lead to an actual page on your website if not, that could cause these Crawl errors.

Types of Crawl Errors

There are basically two types of main errors, here is the list:

1. URL Errors

This type of error is like 404, page not found and Url not reached. This is not good, but they are easier to fix since it’s only one specific URL per error.

Mostly URL errors are caused because of internal links that could mean it’s your own fault. Maybe you have deleted or moved some of your posts and it can’t find it anymore.

In some cases there could be a different problem:

Malware errors: This error means Google or Bing has found software, which is malicious on that URL.

Mobile-specific URL errors: These occur mostly on smartphones, it could be if the URL is not working or reachable.

Google news error: There is a large list of errors with this. For example it could tell your page doesn’t contain news articles at all.

2. Site Errors

This error is the worst one. You don’t want this at all, because that means your entire site can’t be crawled.

Site Errors can Occur a lot of Things. Here is the list of most known.

Robots Failure: The bot can’t reach the robots.txt file. If that is the case it will occur until you make sure the file is reachable. Make sure you fix this error as fast as you can. Also, it’s not the biggest problem that could happen.

DNS errors (This is the first error and also, the first to consider fixing fast. Because when DNS error happens, it means Google bot can’t connect with your domain. Also, the Search Engine is not able to reach your website. It could be down and not available to visit. This means Google has tried to reach your site but wasn’t able to do it.

Server Errors: This can occur when the request for a bot to visit has timed out or even when the page has had so much visitors that it just wasn’t able to handle it and went down.

How To Fix Types of Crawl Errors?

If you want to be sure is your site down for everyone or only you, you can use ISUP. It will show you detailed information about the site being down.

First of all, if you are wondering how to fix crawl errors,

Step 1:You need to go to Google Webmaster Tools or Google Search Console Tool. There will be displayed all the errors that have occurred under Crawl errors in left bar in the old version. In the new Version, It will show in INDEX COVERAGE.

Step 2: After that, you need to find out what types of errors are being displayed and what exactly is causing them. Don’t get confused, sometimes there could be displayed a huge amount of errors and it can make a bit harder to find what you are looking for.

Step 3: Download the list of the 404 pages and fix them by using 301 redirection on important pages.

Step 4: After redirecting the 404 pages on new relevant destination, Let to know Google by fixing them from Google Search Console.

If you are experiencing server error, you should act immediately. Start with making sure Google bot is able to connect to the DNS. If that doesn’t help, try to use Fetch as Google to know if Google bot can access your site. If that leads you back to the homepage without problems, it means now everything is back to normal.

Sometimes the problem can be if you have just moved or deleted post or page, in that case, you can redirect the links from broken pages to the working ones. You can even redirect every deleted post or page to bring the visitor back to the home page.

Another simple thing to try is to update the invalid URL’s, there can be a situation in which that’s the problem causer.

An important step is to maintain security subscription so that prevent malware attacks. If you don’t do that, there is a possibility you could experience some serious problems.

How Crawl Errors Impact on Website Visibility of Search Engine?

If you have some serious Crawl errors, the visibility will be damaged too. Your site can even be not reachable. In that case, visibility will be the smallest problem, because no one even will be able to reach something on your page.

If you don’t fix Crawl errors, your website will not be seen on google top pages. That’s something you don’t want.

Why It is Compulsory to Fix the Crawl Errors?

It’s one of the most important steps to do because it can cause some serious problems and damage your page and its ratings. It will not be findable so easy, because the Google search engine will not be able to reach your site. In some other cases, your whole website can be not reachable. That would be the biggest problem.

It’s good to check all the Crawl errors at least weekly. You should put one day a week, and every week on that day check all the errors and get rid of them. In that way, you will know everything is working well and nothing is causing problems.

Of course, the perfect way of dealing with problems would be to check everything daily, that’s how you would be totally sure if everything is working and dealing with errors faster. Also, it’s easier to fix errors when they have just appeared, not when it’s been a while and you don’t know with what to start anymore.

Tools to Find the Crawl Errors or 404 Pages

Below are the tools you can use to find the crawl errors or 404 pages or pages those are giving site errors.

  1. Google Search Console
  2. Semrush
  3. Moz
  4. error404.atomseo
  5. Brokenlinkcheck

Conclusion

Crawl errors are important. So make sure everything runs without problems because that’s how you will make Search Engine run well. If you don’t fix the problems it can lead to more new and deeper problems, in the end, it will be hard to get rid of them. Don’t forget that you need to look at the Google Search console to know about all the Crawl errors. That is the place where you can fix everything either.

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