How can I increase the crawl rate of my site in Google?

• When comparing my site to some of my competitors I notice that my site is crawled less frequently. I know that this metric is relatively important for SEO, and would like to increase my average crawl rate. What can I do to get the Googlebot to revisit my pages more often?

Answer: You are correct in thinking that regular and frequent crawling of your site by Google is a relatively important SEO metric. In fact, it's one of THE most important metrics that site owners can identify in knowing that their site and its content truly appeals to Google. Sites and pages that Google views as more important and relevant are visited more often; if you're seeing a slower rate of revisits as compared to your competitors, it's definitely a metric that you should attempt to improve.

Even though there's really no way to "force" search engine spiders or crawlers to visit your site more frequently, there are ways to stack the odds in your favor that can result in more frequent deep crawls of your site's content—such as:

1. Add your site to Google Webmasters Tools. Doing this will provide you resources you can use to monitor how your site is performing in the Google index. This includes seeing which pages may be unreachable and adjusting them accordingly.
2. Adjust the crawl speed of your site in Google Webmasters Tools. This is a simple step you can implement immediately. This new crawl rate will be valid for 90-days and is a great starting point. Here is information from Google support on how to implement the crawl frequency change.
3. Update your site content more frequently. Google likes fresh content and if you can't update your site daily, shoot for three times a week if possible to ensure optimal crawling.
4. Add automatic pinging to your blog. If you have a blog and are experiencing slow post cac...