Crawlability and indexing determine whether a page can be found at all — before rankings, before AI citations, before any of it. This is the plumbing layer of search visibility.
Crawlability and indexing, plainly
A page that can’t be crawled can’t be indexed. That means a working robots.txt, a clean XML sitemap, no accidental noindex tags, and a link structure that actually lets crawlers reach every page that matters.
Core Web Vitals and page speed
Google’s Core Web Vitals are ranking signals, but more importantly they’re user-experience signals. This matters just as much for AI crawlers, which have their own fetch budgets.
Site architecture and internal links
A flat, well-linked structure — the kind described in the content strategy guide’s cluster model — makes it easy for crawlers and AI systems to understand which pages are authoritative.
- Fix indexation issues (noindex tags, canonical conflicts, orphaned pages) first
- Submit and maintain an accurate XML sitemap
- Address Core Web Vitals issues — usually image weight and render-blocking scripts
- Confirm mobile-friendliness
Think a site has a crawlability problem? Start with an SEO audit.