What it is
Before a search engine can rank your page it has to fetch it, be allowed to index it, and work out what it's about. Most of that comes from a handful of signals in your HTML: the <title>, the meta description, the headings, the canonical tag, and whether the page works on a phone.
None of this is new, and that's the point. These basics decide whether you appear at all, and AI answer engines draw on the same search indexes. A page that's weak on SEO is usually weak everywhere else too.
Why it matters
Search still sends most people to most websites
When people need a product, a service or a local business, a search is still where they usually start. Ordinary search results cost nothing per click, so they're often a site's best source of visitors.
AI answers are built on search
Google's AI Overviews draw on Google's own index, Copilot draws on Bing's, and AI assistants run web searches to answer questions. If search engines can't index and understand you, AI tools have less to go on as well.
Your title and description are your advert
In the results, your page is a title and a couple of lines of text next to your competitors'. A clear, specific title and description make people more likely to choose you, even when you're not first.
Google judges the mobile version
Google indexes the mobile version of your page first. If the page lacks a viewport tag, has tiny text or hides content on a phone, that's the version it ranks.
What Crawlable checks
- Indexability
- Whether the homepage returns a 200 status and isn't blocked by a
noindexmeta tag orX-Robots-Tagheader. - Title and meta description
- Whether each is present and a sensible length: roughly 30 to 60 characters for the title and 70 to 160 for the description, so neither gets cut short or padded out.
- Headings
- Whether there's a single, descriptive H1 and the headings below it follow a logical order.
- Canonical tag and HTTPS
- Whether the page names its preferred URL, and is served securely.
- Mobile readiness
- Whether the page has a viewport tag, so it fits a phone screen rather than showing a shrunken desktop layout.
- Images and links
- How many images lack alt text, and a spot-check of the page's links for ones that are broken.
- Lighthouse SEO audits
- The SEO checks Google's own Lighthouse runs on the mobile page through PageSpeed Insights.
Common problems and how to fix them
A noindex tag left over from development
noindex on, and it sometimes survives the launch. Remove <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> from the homepage, and check your server or CDN isn't sending an X-Robots-Tag: noindex header.A generic title such as "Home"
Wood-fired bakery in Leeds | Fernhill Bakery. Aim for 30 to 60 characters.No meta description
No H1, or several
Images without alt text
alt attribute that describes each meaningful image in a few words. Use alt="" for purely decorative images so screen readers skip them.Questions
Is SEO still worth doing now that AI answers exist?
Yes. AI answer engines and assistants lean heavily on search indexes to find and check information, so being indexable and clearly described helps you in AI answers as well as in ordinary results.
Why does Crawlable only look at my homepage?
The homepage is the page search engines and AI tools rely on most to understand who you are, and most site-wide problems, such as a blocked crawler or a missing viewport tag, show up there first.
How long does SEO take to make a difference?
Technical fixes like removing a stray noindex can take effect as soon as the page is crawled again, often within days. Improvements to content and authority usually take weeks or months to show in rankings.