In SEO, ‘crawling’ is the systematic process where a search engine bot explores web pages so that they can subsequently be indexed and eventually ranked. These bots are often referred to as ‘crawlers’ or ‘spiders’. They thoroughly examine all discoverable content on a given page.
When a search engine bot crawls a web page, it analyzes all the content and underlying code it can access. This includes standard text, images, their associated alt text, hyperlinks, and more.
Crawlers record any links they discover on a site and proceed to crawl those linked pages as well. In this manner, website owners can intentionally construct a link path for crawlers to follow. To assist bots in traversing a website more swiftly and efficiently, you might consider generating an XML sitemap.
Upon the completion of the crawling phase, search engine bots store and ‘index’ all the information they have gathered. They then utilize this comprehensive data to determine a site’s eventual ranking position.