BrightonSEO
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Log File Analysis Training

Log files are one of the most valuable yet often overlooked data sources that a technical SEO has at their disposal. Whereas crawling tools will mimic how search engines might crawl through your site and flag any issues they may encounter, log files will show you the exact crawling behaviour of Google, Bing and the other search engines. That is incredibly powerful. Being able to decipher the information contained within your website’s log files will allow you to make decisions based on real search engine data, not hunches. When you know exactly where to look and what to look for, you can gain insights into how efficiently search engines are able to crawl, the pages they think are the most important, errors they’re encountering with any of your pages resources, and much, much more.

Trainer TBC

Trainer TBC

Courses: 32

Coming soon

Course content


Here are some of the things you’ll learn throughout this highly interactive course:

  • The background on how Google prioritises, schedules and crawls pages, and the algorithms that determine this process.
  • The components of a log file and log file request, and the key elements you should be keeping an eye on.
  • Some of the main log file tools that you can use for your analysis.
  • Identifying the different search engines and bots that visit your site, and how requests are distributed between them.
  • How to track and trend search engine crawl activity and issues over time.
  • How to identify pages that search engines determine as the most important for crawling.
  • Identifying areas of waste and URL duplication on your site that are using up crawl budget.
  • The issue of crawler traps, and how to using log files to spot and fix them.
  • How to use log file data to enhance your 404 error and redirect analysis.
  • Analysing how different content types are visited and handled by search engines over time, such as HTML content, images, JavaScript, and more.
  • Using log files for site speed and performance insights, including identifying pages with large download times and large file sizes.
  • How to identify internal linking and site architecture optimisation opportunities from your log file data.
  • How to layer other data sources such as customer analytics and search data on top of your log files to get a more complete picture of your site’s crawlability, technical health and performance.

At the end of this session, you will have gained a deeper understanding of the different tools and methods for leveraging the multitude of insights than can be gained from log files, and use those findings to enhance the performance your own website.


This course is suited to attendees with a fundamental understanding of technical SEO who want to deepen their understanding of log files. However, it will cater to a variety of different experience levels, from beginners through to more experienced SEOs.


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