Stay Ahead: Crawl Budgets, A New Browsing Assistant, and Client Communication
Published 5 months ago • 2 min read
The Growth Digest
Your biweekly dose of content marketing news and advice to help you grow your audience, level up your content game, and get your site to the top results in Google.
Hey Reader,
Keeping up with SEO changes means adapting smarter strategies—and this newsletter is here to help.
In this edition, we’ll explore the ins and outs of managing crawl budgets effectively, what's to come for emerging AI tools like Jarvis for SEO, and how to handle the many ups and downs of the search engine landscape.
What's The Buzz?
2024’s been full of unexpected twists for SEO, with Google constantly updating search with new AI overviews, interactive features, and product carousels. Our Senior Director of Content Strategy, Leilani, shares her approach to handling client communication amidst these shifts.
Leilani emphasizes staying proactive with clients by explaining metric shifts and external influences, like market trends, before concerns arise—building trust and keeping communication open.
Keep your SEO updates simple by skipping the jargon, and help clients see how each change impacts their goals. For instance, some clients gain from AI overviews while others may need a strategy pivot to stay competitive. Her core message is flexibility: adapting strategies as search evolves. Check out Leilani’s full post for insights on handling SEO changes and keeping clients informed.
GOOGLE'S BROWSING ASSISTANT -- Google’s upcoming AI agent, Jarvis, was accidentally revealed in the Chrome extension store, giving us a brief preview of what’s to come. This new tool, expected to launch in December, will serve as an in-browser assistant that can surf the web on your behalf. Initially spotted by The Information, the listing described Jarvis as “a helpful companion that surfs the web with you,” supporting rumors that this AI agent will streamline tasks like online shopping and vacation bookings. However, users who downloaded the prototype were unable to access it due to specific permission requirements.
With Jarvis AI, Google joins a growing field of companies exploring automated AI agents, including Anthropic’s Claude AI, which already has a “computer use” feature. This development highlights how swiftly AI is evolving to support everyday web activities, potentially even making the need for manual search a thing of the past.
NEW CRAWL BUDGET GUIDANCE FOR BIG WEBSITES -- Google recently updated its Search Central documentation with new guidelines aimed at improving crawl efficiency for large websites. This change is particularly relevant to sites with separate mobile and desktop versions, emphasizing “link parity” to ensure the same links are available on both versions, as Google only indexes the mobile version.
Crawl budget refers to the number of pages Google allocates to crawl on a website within a given timeframe. For large or frequently updated sites, crawl budget optimization is essential, as it can mean the difference between having new content discovered quickly or left in obscurity.
To make the most of Google’s new guidance:
Audit Link Parity: Ensure your mobile and desktop versions feature consistent link structures.
Maintain Updated Sitemaps: Include all priority URLs in your sitemap file.
Check Critical Navigation Paths: Verify key navigation paths are accessible on mobile.
Monitor Crawl Stats: Regularly check crawl stats in Search Console to detect potential issues.
For websites managing large or rapidly changing content, these changes underline Google’s mobile-first indexing priorities, signaling a strategic approach to maximizing crawl efficiency for improved SEO.
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