How to Fix Crawl Errors for SEO Improvement: A Guide by Digital HiFi

Crawl errors can severely impact your website’s SEO, preventing search engines like Google from accessing and indexing your pages properly. When search engines cannot crawl your pages, they won’t be able to rank your content, and your website’s visibility in search results will decrease.

At Digital HiFi, a leading digital marketing agency in South India, we specialize in helping businesses in Chennai, Ongole, Sullurpeta, and Kuala Lumpur fix crawl errors to improve their SEO and increase their website’s search engine rankings. In this guide, we’ll walk you through the steps to identify and fix crawl errors, ensuring that search engines can index your website effectively.

1. Understand What Crawl Errors Are

Before you can fix crawl errors, it’s essential to understand what they are. A crawl error occurs when a search engine’s crawler (like Googlebot) tries to access a page on your website but encounters an issue that prevents it from loading the page.

Common Types of Crawl Errors:

• 404 Errors (Page Not Found): These occur when a user or search engine tries to access a page that doesn’t exist.
• 403 Errors (Forbidden): These errors occur when a search engine crawler is blocked from accessing a page.
• 500 Errors (Server Issues): These errors are caused by server malfunctions or timeouts.
• Soft 404s: These happen when a page returns a “not found” message but with a 200 OK status code, leading search engines to treat it as a live page.

At Digital HiFi, we help businesses identify and resolve crawl errors so that their websites are fully indexed by search engines.

2. Use Google Search Console to Identify Crawl Errors

The best way to identify crawl errors is by using Google Search Console (GSC), a free tool provided by Google. GSC provides detailed reports on your website’s crawl status and highlights any errors that may be affecting your SEO performance.

How to Find Crawl Errors in Google Search Console:

1. Sign in to Google Search Console.
2. Go to the Coverage Report under the Index section.
3. Look for the Error tab, which will show any issues Googlebot encountered while crawling your website.
4. You can click on the specific errors to get more details on the pages affected.

At Digital HiFi, we monitor your website’s performance through Google Search Console and help you address any crawl errors quickly to ensure your website remains visible to search engines.

3. Fixing 404 Errors (Page Not Found)

404 errors occur when a page is deleted, moved, or doesn’t exist, but users or search engine crawlers try to access it. If a 404 error is not addressed, it can lead to poor user experience and negatively affect SEO.

How to Fix 404 Errors:

• Redirect to a Relevant Page: If a page no longer exists, redirect it to a similar, active page on your website using a 301 redirect. This ensures that both users and search engines are sent to a relevant page.
• Restore the Page: If the page was deleted accidentally, consider restoring it with the same URL and content.
• Update Internal Links: If internal links are pointing to deleted pages, update them to reflect the correct URLs.

At Digital HiFi, we help businesses set up 301 redirects for broken pages and monitor for any future 404 errors to improve both user experience and SEO.

4. Address 403 Errors (Forbidden)

403 errors occur when the search engine crawler is blocked from accessing a page, usually due to server settings or restrictions in the robots.txt file.

How to Fix 403 Errors:

• Check the robots.txt File: Ensure that your robots.txt file is not blocking search engines from accessing important pages. Remove any unnecessary Disallow directives.
• Review Server Permissions: Check your server settings and file permissions to ensure that Googlebot and other search engine crawlers can access your pages.
• Whitelist Googlebot: If you have specific IP restrictions in place, ensure Googlebot is not being blocked by accident.

At Digital HiFi, we help businesses configure their robots.txt files correctly and troubleshoot server settings to ensure that search engines can crawl their websites without issues.

5. Resolve 500 Errors (Server Issues)

A 500 error indicates that something is wrong with your server, preventing it from responding to the search engine’s crawling request. This can be caused by server malfunctions, timeouts, or software bugs.

How to Fix 500 Errors:

• Check Server Logs: Review the server logs to identify the root cause of the error and resolve it.
• Contact Hosting Provider: If the issue is server-related, reach out to your hosting provider to fix the problem.
• Increase Server Capacity: If your server is experiencing high traffic and overloads, consider upgrading your hosting plan or adding additional resources to handle more traffic.

At Digital HiFi, we collaborate with hosting providers and technical teams to resolve 500 errors, ensuring your website is always accessible to both users and search engines.

6. Address Soft 404 Errors

A soft 404 error occurs when a page returns a “not found” message but still returns a 200 OK status code. This misleads search engines, which may index the page even though it doesn’t contain useful content.

How to Fix Soft 404 Errors:

• Ensure Proper Redirects: If a page is removed, redirect it to a relevant page using a 301 redirect.
• Update Status Codes: Ensure that the correct status code (404 or 410) is returned for deleted or non-existent pages. Avoid using a 200 OK status code on a page with no content.

At Digital HiFi, we use technical SEO tools to help businesses identify and fix soft 404 errors, ensuring that pages are correctly indexed by search engines.

7. Fix Crawl Errors Related to JavaScript

Sometimes, crawl errors occur because search engines have difficulty rendering JavaScript content. Modern websites use a lot of dynamic content created through JavaScript, but search engines may struggle to crawl and index this content properly.

How to Fix JavaScript Crawl Errors:

• Test JavaScript Rendering: Use Google Search Console’s URL Inspection Tool to check if Googlebot can render JavaScript content correctly.
• Implement Server-Side Rendering (SSR): For dynamic websites, consider using server-side rendering to ensure that search engines can easily crawl all of your content.
• Use Lazy Loading Carefully: If you use lazy loading for images or content, ensure it doesn’t block search engines from crawling important content.

At Digital HiFi, we help businesses optimize their JavaScript content to ensure that search engines can crawl and index it properly, improving overall site visibility.

8. Monitor Crawl Errors Regularly

Fixing crawl errors is not a one-time task. To maintain a healthy website and ensure your pages continue to be indexed correctly, you must monitor crawl errors regularly.

How to Monitor Crawl Errors:

• Use Google Search Console: Regularly check the Coverage Report in Google Search Console to identify new crawl errors and take corrective actions.
• Track Changes: Track any changes you make to the website and ensure that they do not result in new crawl errors.
• Set Up Alerts: Set up email alerts in Google Search Console to be notified immediately when crawl errors occur.

At Digital HiFi, we provide ongoing SEO audits and crawl error monitoring to ensure your website remains crawlable and visible to search engines.

Conclusion

Fixing crawl errors is an essential part of SEO improvement. By identifying and resolving issues such as 404 errors, server problems, and soft 404s, you can ensure that search engines are able to crawl and index your website efficiently. A well-maintained website will rank better and provide a better user experience.

At Digital HiFi, we specialize in helping businesses in South India and globally resolve crawl errors and improve their SEO performance. Whether you are based in Chennai, Ongole, or Kuala Lumpur, our expert team is here to help you maintain a healthy website and achieve your SEO goals.

For more information or to get started with fixing crawl errors, contact us at:

Email: info@digitalhifi.com
Website: digitalhifi.com
Phone: ‪‪+91 6304469055‬‬ | ‪‪+91 8885668885‬‬
Locations: Ongole | Sullurpeta | Chennai | Kuala Lumpur

Let’s work together to fix crawl errors and improve your website’s SEO performance!