Most visitors to your NFP website will spend under a minute exploring all your services, latest news, and engagement pages. That gives you barely any time to convince them to make a donation, sign up for a volunteer spot, or clean enough to share your mission and services with Australian friends and neighbours.
The last thing you want is for your visitor “bounce” rate to increase. You must find ways to make your website easier to explore with a lighter crawl depth, so more visitors learn about who you are, what you provide, and how your nonprofit boosts the local community.
What is Website Crawl Depth?
There are many factors that must be aligned for a website to succeed. It has to load quickly, be mobile responsive, and use content directly appealing to the target audience. However, it also must be easy to crawl.
Crawl depth refers to the minimum number of web pages on your site a visitor has to click through to find the information they want. You measure this from the homepage to the final page result.
For example, if you have an NFP around helping people experiencing homelessness with a page dedicated to local food banks and you have to click four times to get to that information from the homepage – your crawl depth is 4.
Why Does Crawl Depth Matter?
Yes, your NFP website needs to be simple and streamlined for guests, but crawl depth also applies to backend SEO (search engine optimisation). You can rank higher on Google and other sites if you have a lower crawl depth.
Why does crawl depth help with search results? The longer it takes a web crawler (or bot) to index all your information. Search engines rely on indexing to organise keywords and information on your site when delivering results to a user. The better your crawl depth, the higher your rank.
Think about it from Google’s perspective. The company only has so many resources. The less it needs to index a site, the better.
8 Tips to Boost Your Crawl Depth
So, how do you transform your Australian NFP’s website, so it is easier to crawl and find information? Here are some straightforward tips from our professional website designers and developers at Web 105.
#1 – Smooth Navigation
Want to improve your crawl depth? Have clearly marked signs for where visitors should go next. You wouldn’t want a mountain hiking trail without signage. You don’t build a website without clear navigation.
The header, footer, side, and sub-menus all need to provide clear pathways for visitors to find the specific information they want. Shoot for your subpages to be no more than 5 clicks away from your homepage – and less is definitely more.
#2 – Maintain Sitemaps
Backend website managers know a good website has both HTML and XML sitemaps. These are the hierarchies built in the languages of the internet so website crawlers and other sites understand the structure of your particular website.
To most, an XML sitemap is going to look like a long list of pages on their website. To computers and programs, it reframes the website into something much easier to manage and create reference points.
#3 – Toss in Internal Linking
Internal linking is crucial to crawl depth. For example, we offer a service for “Not for Profit Web Design” directly linked to our primary header menu. However, we also provide internal links in our blogs, just like this one, so you can click and reach the same NFP service.
Internal linking is extremely valuable for anyone running a website’s blog or video content stream. You can add more weight to particular anchor keywords by linking to the most relevant pages on your site more often. Don’t overdo it. Stick to 2-4 per article, but it does help.
#4 – Think Like a Detective
Computers and the online world are based on logic. You want to think like your target user picking up clues about information from each page that directly leads to the next.
Think about how hard it would be to find information about a specific ride at Walt Disney World. The website contains information about various lodging, dining, and shopping options, making getting to a particular ride challenging. Without the proper structure for your detective users to follow, they won’t get what they want.
You’re almost laying a trail of candy for a hungry kid to follow. Make it clear, easy, and simple.
#5 – Keep Popular Pages Upfront
Create a small section on your homepage for popular blog posts, recent news, or other service pages that people frequent the most. Look at your data analytics and update your homepage with the changing whims of your visitors.
If your donor page is getting a lot of hits because you are running a campaign, make sure it has an image hyperlink on the front page. Not only will you make it easier to get more donations, but your guests will find it easier to get where they need to go.
#6 – Use Pagination
Pagination is the practice of splitting a lot of information over multiple pages. Say you have a 4,000-word article for your blog, you might split that up into 4-6 smaller articles more niched down that are easier to find.
The benefit here is that you get to give each page its unique URL (canonical or not) and improve your SEO practices over a wider range of user touchpoints.
#7 – Clean Your URL Inventory
Crawl depth makes an impact on URL inventories. Every website has a list of unique URLs based on the pages present. You don’t want to have broken links, duplicate content, or pages with redirects.
Google wants your content as clean as possible. Watching what URLs are present on your site allows you to improve site usability and make technical adjustments as needed.
#8 – Schedule & Monitor
Automation is the new “hotness” in website design and development. Instead of designating someone from your team to manually monitor everything all of the time, set up automation tools. These can run in the background and ensure your crawl depth is always optimised according to your set parameters and goals.
How Web 105 Can Help
If you want your NFP website to succeed, it needs many features and optimisations. Crawl depth is important so users and search engines can locate the most relevant information about your nonprofit’s goals, mission, donor programs, and volunteering opportunities.
At Web 105, we leverage decades of working with governmental, healthcare, and NFP organisations. We create clean, easy-to-navigate, fully mobile-responsive websites tailored to your unique goals. Reach out today, and let’s build something perfect for your Australian team.
FAQs
What is the crawl depth of a website?
It refers to the number of pages it takes to go from a website’s homepage to the target information during a single “crawl” or session.
What does crawl depth 0 mean?
Crawl depth 0 generally refers to a website’s homepage because there are no other pages to go to when users land on that page.
What is a good page crawl depth?
The measure of your website’s crawl depth depends on your niche or industry. In most cases, you want the most important information under two clicks from your homepage. That would be things like your nonprofit’s services, about us page, or donor pages.