Crawl depth, or click depth, refers to the number of links that a bot has to crawl through, or the number of clicks it takes for a user to land on a particular page of your website. The homepage is generally the starting point. Pages linked directly from the homepage are considered the second level. Those pages link to other pages and the site continues to branch out from there.

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Why Should We Care About Crawl Depth?

We care about crawl depth because we care about user experience, as well as making sure your most important content is able to be crawled and indexed by search engines in a timely manner.

User Experience

On the user experience side, imagine you are a user who lands on the homepage of a website for the very first time and then tries to navigate to a specific product page. If it’s your first time trying to navigate through a site and the product you are looking for is several clicks away from the homepage, you may get frustrated or confused along the way and end up leaving the site. Having a well defined, clear and logical path with an appropriate number of pages for users to navigate through is ideal for user experience, and may also improve conversion rate.

Getting Important Content Crawled & Indexed Quickly

The deeper a page lives within the hierarchy of your site, the less important it may appear to search engines and therefore those pages may not be crawled as often. There are work-arounds to this, like manually submitting a page in Google Search Console and requesting that it be crawled and indexed. Although, this is just a suggestion and doesn’t necessarily speed up the crawling and indexing of that page. One way you can help ensure that your most important content gets crawled often is to reduce its crawl depth and place the critical pages closer to the top of your overall site hierarchy.

How To Audit Crawl Depth With Screaming Frog

Process

Screaming Frog is a helpful tool for analyzing crawl depth. There are different ways you can use Screaming Frog for this type of review, but the following steps are a simple method to gain insights:

1. 1. Crawl the site with Screaming Frog starting from the homepage.
   2. In the “Internal” tab, filter by “HTML” and export the data to a spreadsheet.
   3. Filter the “Indexability” column and remove all non-indexable pages (since indexable pages are likely the only ones we care about users and search engines finding).
   4. Sort the “Crawl Depth” column in descending order, so pages with the largest crawl depth will appear at the top.
   5. Identify key pages of the site with a crawl depth greater than three.
   6. Determine ways to reduce crawl depth if necessary. Prioritize the most important pages.

Things to Consider

The “3-Click Rule”

SEOs commonly use the “3-Click Rule” when auditing crawl depth. The 3-Click Rule says that no page should be more than three clicks away from the homepage. This is not a perfect rule of thumb, however, and should only be used as a general guide to help identify potential problems. There are exceptions to the 3-Click Rule that should be considered.

Exceptions to the 3-Click Rule

Sometimes it just makes sense to have pages that are more than three clicks away from the homepage. This is especially common with very large websites and paginated and Ecommerce sites. Ecommerce sites sometimes break up content into separate categories, subcategories, and product pages.

Here is how the navigation path to a product page may look on a large ecommerce site:

Homepage → Category Page → Subcategory 1 page → Subcategory 2 (sub-subcategory) page → Product page.

That’s four clicks! So is it a problem? Not necessarily, as long as the path makes logical sense and is justified.

My general advice is to start on the homepage and manually navigate through the pages until you reach the destination. This can help you determine if the path makes sense and is easy for users to follow. If so, then you should be okay to leave it as is.

Tip: You could review your conversion path in Google Analytics to see if any page has a larger exit rate. If so, users could be leaving the site because they are frustrated by the amount of clicks they have to go through to get to a product page or conversion. If that seems to be the case, you may want to look for ways to consolidate pages along the path to reduce crawl depth and make it more efficient for users.

Ways to Reduce Crawl Depth

Add Internal Links to Important Pages Within Your Content

If an important page lives deep within your site, you can reduce the click depth by linking directly to it from one of the pages in the very beginning of your site’s hierarchy. For example, you could link to a popular product page within the content of your homepage. This reduces the click depth to just two since the homepage is considered one click.

Update Your Navigation Menu

It’s possible to reduce the number of clicks required to reach certain pages of your site by changing your navigation or adding new types of navigation menus. Very large Ecommerce sites may benefit from using multiple dropdown menus or even a mega menu, to ensure pages that are very deep in the site can be quickly and easily accessed directly through the navigation menu.

There are many different types of navigation menus. The best type for your site will depend on a number of factors, such as the number of pages you have, industry, CMS limitations, etc. Some of the most common types include:

• Single-Bar Navigation
• Double-Bar Navigation
• Secondary Dropdown Menus
• Tertiary Dropdown Menus
• Mega Menus
• Side-Bar Menus
• Footer Navigation

Here are some examples of what some of these menus look like:

Single-Bar Navigation

Double-Bar Navigation

Secondary & Tertiary Dropdown Menus

Mega Menu

Keep in mind that each type of navigation menu has pros and cons. When choosing which navigation menu to use, you should carefully research competitors in your industry and test different options if possible. Also, be sure to research ideal implementation methods for your selected navigation menu. This is very important because if implemented incorrectly, Google may not be able to crawl through the links to find all of the pages on your site.

Link to an HTML Sitemap

Creating an HTML sitemap and linking to it in the footer of your site can greatly reduce crawl depth. A sitemap is basically a list of links to all of the important pages on your site. Linking to your sitemap in the footer is helpful because the footer is typically accessible on every page. This means that all pages would link to a page (aka the sitemap) that links directly to all of the other pages on your site.

Conclusion

An optimized crawl depth can boost user experience and help ensure your most important content gets crawled often and indexed quickly. When auditing your crawl depth, don’t forget to check-in with your gut. If a navigation path feels long or challenging that’s a good sign there’s an opportunity for improvement. There are several options to help reduce crawl depth. Do your research and choose the option(s) that works best for you and your website.

How To Audit Crawl Depth With Screaming Frog is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.

A featured snippet, also known as an “answer box”, is a special box that aims to answer a user’s query in the search results by algorithmically finding and extracting the answer from a webpage’s content. Answer box featured snippets appear at the top of Google’s search results for certain keywords. It is especially common for question searches, such as phrases that start with “who,” “what,” “where,” or “why.”

The idea behind featured snippets is to give users an answer to their query without them even having to click into a webpage. This is great for users because they can find answers to their questions quickly and easily since Google has already done the hard work of pulling the answer out of a page’s content and neatly displaying that answer within the search results page.

Getting your content featured in an answer box snippet can increase your visibility because featured snippets tend to be placed near the top of Google’s search results where they naturally draw users’ attention. This can help increase traffic to the site, if the answer isn’t entirely shown in the SERP.

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Keep in mind, that there is a fine balance between providing a strong answer to a query, and providing so much information that users no longer need to click through to your site. This is especially true now because as of January 23, 2020 Google changed the way featured snippets appear in the search results. Now, if your site is in the featured snippet, it will no longer appear in the regular organic results at the same time. I still believe that answer box snippets can be valuable, we just need to keep CTR optimizations in mind as well.

How do you optimize for featured snippets?

First, you need to identify your “low-hanging fruit” opportunities. Featured snippets can be very competitive to get into because they are prominently placed in the search results, which can attract a lot of traffic to the site (in cases where the query isn’t entirely answered). For that reason, it is also important to research the competition and try to understand what Google is looking for in an ideal answer. Then you should optimize your content and consider additional tactics like structured data markup. For more details, read these 5 steps to earn a featured snippet:

1) Identify strong opportunities

The first step towards earning a featured snippet is to uncover the most promising opportunities for your content. To do this, start by pinpointing relevant keywords that already have a featured snippet in Google’s search results. If you are running a Moz Pro campaign, you can use the “SERP Features” tool by going to Campaigns > Rankings > SERP Features. This will show you the keywords where either you or one of your competitors currently appears in a featured snippet. If you use this tool, I recommend using the “SERP Feature” filter to only display keywords with a featured snippet in its SERP. Then, sort the rankings in ascending order to see where your site is ranking near the very top of Google (around positions 1-5 organically). The ideal targets will be the terms where you are already ranking well but a competitor’s page is currently featured in the answer box snippet.

If you don’t have Moz Pro, you can also utilize Ahrefs to identify opportunities. Simply use Ahrefs’s “SERP Features” filter within the Keywords Explorer tool or the Site Explorer tool in the Organic Search > Organic Keywords section to show only keywords that have a featured snippet in the search results.

Besides Moz and Ahrefs, you can also use the keyword tracking tool STAT to filter for keywords with strong featured snippet opportunities. You will want to filter down to just the terms that have an answer box featured snippet in the SERP, and then sort those by your ranking position. Again, the strongest opportunities will be the keywords where your site is ranking near the very top of Google, but the featured snippet is currently occupied by a competitor.

Another way to see if a particular keyword would be a good target for featured snippet optimizations is to use search operators to see how close your page is to actually getting featured. By using this search operator: [keyword] -[CompetitorSite.com], you can see what Google’s search results would look like if the competitor that is currently in the featured snippet didn’t exist.

For example, in a regular search for the keyword “how to change location on google chrome”, support.google.com is currently in the featured snippet.

If we remove support.google.com from the search results using the search operator “-support.google.com”, we can see that nordvpn.com, which was originally ranking 3rd, is next in line to earn the featured snippet.

If it’s your page that shows up in the answer box once the competitor page is removed, you know that Google considers your page the “runner-up” for that featured snippet. If a different competitor appears in the snippet, you can use the same search operator to view the SERP minus that domain as well. Just keep subtracting the featured page until you see your site appear in the answer box. If only one or two competitors are in line before you, that is an indication that your page is very close to getting featured and some content updates may be enough to take over the snippet.

2) Analyze the current featured snippet and associated competitor page

Once you have a keyword target picked out, take some time to analyze the current featured snippet. This can give you insights into what Google is looking for for that particular snippet. First take note of the snippet’s format. Is the featured snippet a paragraph, table, numbered-list or bulleted-list? Providing your answer in the same format may help get it featured since Google has already shown that it likes that answer format for this particular query.

It can also be helpful to analyze the wording of the current snippet. Take note of its strong and weak points. Does it provide the best possible answer to the query? If not, how could it be improved? Update your content to provide an even stronger answer to the query. Keep in mind though, featured snippets are meant to be short (usually around 3-4 sentences). To be on the safe side, your answer should be about the same length as the current featured snippet.

It’s also a good idea to review the competitor page that’s currently being featured. See how their content is formatted. Is the copy that’s being pulled into the snippet right at the top of the page, or is it buried in the middle? (Most of the time it will be near the top of the page and directly below an H1 or H2 header.) You should also ask – “Is their page a blog post or a service page?” This can help give you insights into how best to format your own page, or if your page is even a good contender for that particular snippet. If the currently featured page is a detailed blog post, but your top-ranking page for the query is a service page with very little copy, it may be worth exploring other snippet opportunities instead.

3) Make sure your copy is well organized and clearly structured

It is important to make sure that your copy is clearly structured and well organized. Properly structured header tags is one way to make sure your content is clearly organized. If you’re an SEO you probably already know this, but here is a refresher on how to structure your header tags: each page should have one H1 header which describes the topic of the overall page. H2 headers represent sub-topics. H3s are sub-categories within the H2s, and so on. Your header tags should be organized in the same way that you would organize a research paper. Create a main topic, then sub-topics, then sub-sub-topics within those and go from there.

Proper header tag hierarchy is especially important for targeting list-type featured snippets because it helps Google understand how the content is structured. It is common to see the full question in an H2 header and then the answer in H3 headers listed below that. Google associates the H3 headers as sub-topics related to the H2, which makes it easier to see the Q/A relationship and pull it into a featured snippet.

Be sure to include the full question you are trying to answer in an H1 or H2 header. The answer to that query should be placed within the first sentence or two directly below the header. This is primarily helpful for paragraph featured snippets because the close proximity of the question & answer makes it easy for Google to recognize the Q/A correlation and pull it into an answer box. Remember, we are optimizing this for a robot so we should try to make it as easy as possible for a robot to understand (while also keeping user experience in mind).

Some queries are best answered in a table format, so Google will sometimes pull an entire table into a featured snippet. If your content includes a table, it is a good idea to define the different parts of the table with HTML tags (<tr>, <th> and <td>). For more information on how to use HTML tags for tables, see this resource: https://www.w3schools.com/html/html_tables.asp.

4) Answer the question quickly and simply

Now to the most important part, answering the question. Remember, Google is in the business of answering users’ questions as quickly and easily as possible. So if you can provide the best answer to a query, chances are good that you will appear in a featured snippet.

First, you should select the content on your page that best answers the question or is most similar to the current featured snippet content. Rewrite the copy to answer the question in a similar format and wording as the current featured snippet. If your existing content does not answer the target question at all, a bit of new copy may be needed.

Next, find ways to improve upon the answer. Having content exactly like the current snippet isn’t enough. The following are tactics you can employ in order to strengthen your answer:

Make it simple and succinct.

“Fluff” or unnecessary details can complicate the answer and make it harder for users and search engines to understand.

Get straight to the point.

The very first sentence below the header with your target question should start with “[keyword] is…” and immediately answer the question. Examples:

• Q: What is a qui tam lawsuit?
  • A: “A qui tam lawsuit is…”
• Q: How do you file taxes?
  • A: “You can file taxes by…”

Cite an expert as the author (if possible).

If you can get an industry expert to write the answer to your question, Google is more likely to use that content in a featured snippet because it comes from a trusted source. It is suspected that Google has integrated E-A-T (expertise, authoritativeness, and trust) more into its ranking considerations.

Your answer may be a direct quote from the expert, or maybe the expert is the author of your entire article (even better!). Either way, make sure to include the expert’s name and ideally a link to an author bio that lists their credentials.

Keep it non-branded and in a general format that doesn’t need additional context.

Remember, featured snippets appear directly in the search results so users are reading that snippet without the context of your website. That is why general, non-branded copy tends to make stronger answer box content.

Add a relevant image.

Most featured snippets include an image in the upper-right corner. The image is sometimes pulled from a different site than the actual copy. Make it easy for Google by including a relevant image near your optimized copy. Google may reward this by featuring your page over another.

5) Consider adding structured data

There is some debate in the SEO community over whether structured data is helpful for earning featured snippets or not. It’s certainly not required, but it may still help give you an edge over competitors. Structured data is code that tells search engines what different items are on your page. So for example, if you write an article on how to do something you can add “How-To” structured data markup to tell Google that your content specifically explains how to do something. Here are some types of structured data to consider when optimizing for featured snippets:

• Article
• ItemList
• How-To

“ItemList” structured data may be helpful if you are targeting a numbered or bulleted list type of snippet, especially if your header tags don’t make it clear where the list starts and ends. General “Article” markup can also be useful because you can include your relevant image and/or cite your trustworthy author in the code. Also keep in mind that Google prefers Schema.org JSON-LD structured data specifically. Once you are finished adding structured data to the page, be sure to test your markup for errors with Google’s Structured Data Testing tool: https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool/u/0/. You can also use this free tool to see if your page is eligible for rich results based on its markup: https://search.google.com/test/rich-results.

Conclusion

Featured snippets are typically in a prime location of SERP real estate, so they can be competitive to earn. Have no fear of the elusive answer box though! Just remember to identify the most ideal keyword opportunities, examine the current snippet and competitor page, clearly organize your content, provide a clear, strong answer and consider additional tactics such as structured data markup. If you follow this advice, you should be well on your way to earning a featured snippet.

Optimizing For Answer Box Featured Snippets in 5 Steps is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.

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1) Rank for Branded Keywords

The first step of your keyword strategy should be to start ranking for branded keywords, especially if you’re just getting started with SEO or you’re working with a brand new website or company. Branded keywords are any terms that include your company’s name, such as “haircut prices at Sally’s Salon”.

Ranking for branded queries may involve little to no effort since, by default, search results usually show the company’s page at the top. If you are not ranking well for these types of terms, there may be a brand awareness issue that you’ll need to resolve. Some steps to improve rankings for branded keywords include:

• Submitting your business information to Google My Business, Bing, Yelp, and as many other citations as possible
• Enhancing your reputation by building and responding to online reviews
• Being active on social media
• Adding structured data markup to describe your business
• Updating your homepage (it tends to send the strongest brand signals)
• Utilizing paid ads and traditional marketing tactics to spread the word about your company and its products

2) Get the Ball Rolling with Long-Tail Phrases

Once you’ve got branded keyword rankings in the bag, the next step is to focus on long-tail keyword phrases. These are usually less competitive and very specific, but don’t let the lower search volumes scare you. Targeting these terms are great because they drive more qualified traffic to your site than broader terms and build SEO equity.

Local businesses often add locations to keywords and optimize for phrases like “hair salons in Raleigh, NC”. I recommend researching different locality variations. Since search results vary by geographical location, it is beneficial to see what the search results in your target area look like. Here are some free tools that can help with this:

• Google Local Search Results Tool
• Google Ads Keyword Planner

Even if you aren’t a local company, there are other types of long-tail keywords you can utilize. Take advantage of the niche products or services you offer and add quality content to their site pages. Adding descriptive content to these specific topics and pages is a great way to optimize for more long-tail phrases. Companies in common industries can still find ways to differentiate themselves, and their target keywords, from the competition.

For example, Sally’s Hair Salon specializes in bridal updos, and therefore can optimize for long-tail phrases like “wedding hair styling salon” or “bridal-party updo service.”

Full Questions as Keywords

In cases where you are trying to rank nationally and you don’t necessarily offer a niche product or service, you can still consider targeting full-question searches. In fact, full question searches can be an excellent long-tail keyword target for pretty much any type of business. Full question queries like “Do most brides wear their hair up or down?”, often have an answer box rich snippet featured at the top of search results. This prominent location tends to attract a lot of clicks.

Targeting answer box snippets is also a way to optimize for voice search because the answer box is what virtual assistants like Siri and Cortona often reference when they provide an answer. So even though the query “Do most brides wear their hair up or down?” is quite long and probably has a low search volume, it can still help drive qualified traffic to the site.

While you are researching question keywords to target, make sure to keep an eye out for “people also ask” snippets on Google’s result pages. Google’s own data populates the questions in these snippets, so they tend to be great queries to create content around and optimize for.

A blog post is often the most natural place for tangentially related questions or topics that simply require more detailed explanation. If there are a lot of common questions that are directly related to your business, an FAQ page might be best for that type of content.

3) Driving Traffic with Mid-Length Keyword Topics

If your website already has some equity built up and is ranking well for branded and long-tail terms, your next target should be mid-length keywords. These are often the “bread-and-butter” terms that drive traffic to the important product and service pages of the site. If you’ve hired one, an SEO agency will probably spend most of its time on these types of keywords because they are so crucial.

For a hair salon, here are some examples of possible mid-length keywords:

• Professional hair styling
• Men’s hair salon
• Hair color services
• Deep-conditioning treatments
• Special occasion hair salon

For the best results, you should have a separate page to target each of your major service categories. If you notice a keyword topic has a significant search volume, like “professional hair extensions” for example, it would be ideal to create a dedicated page for that topic. This is a better strategy than simply listing “hair extensions” amongst all of your other services on a general services page. Here’s the bottom line: if you want to rank well for a topic, you need dedicated content (or a dedicated page) on that topic.

4) Dominating with Luxury Terms

If your site is already killing it in the search results for long-tail and mid-length keywords, it may be time to consider targeting luxury keywords. Luxury keywords are the nice-to-have terms that are usually very short and broad. They often have the largest search volumes and are attractive targets for business owners.

The downside to these terms is that they are extremely competitive and may not have the correct searcher intent. For example, a luxury term for a hair salon might be “haircuts” or just “hair”. These are very ambiguous terms that are searched for many different reasons. Someone searching “hair” may actually be looking for Hair the musical, rather than a hair salon.

Even though you should proceed with caution when targeting these keywords, they can be very lucrative if done successfully. A good way to tell if and how to optimize for a luxury term is to Google the keyword yourself and analyze the SERP (search engine results page). Are the top ranking pages coming from the same type of business as you? If so, review the top performers to determine how their content differs from yours. This can give you some great insight into what you need to do to improve your visibility.

Conclusion

No matter where you are in the SEO process, it is important to take a step back and make sure you are targeting the best type of keywords for your particular situation. It may be tempting to dive right in and aim for the luxury terms right off the bat, but in certain cases this could result in a lot of wasted time. In these instances, you will have more success taking the long-road and building your visibility one keyword layer at a time.

Adjusting Keyword Strategy Over Time for Optimal SEO Results is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.