Your Website Isn't Getting Indexed? Check These SEO Fixes

One of the most, if not the most, critical aspects of a website’s success is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO issues are quite common, and each has its own fix. Whether you’re dealing with duplicate websites, canonical issues, or crawling issues, these problems will negatively impact how your site gets indexed. As such, we’ve outlined our common sense approach to resolving them below.

Start with Your Webmaster Data

If you’re consistently publishing high-quality content but aren’t seeing improvements in your search rankings, you’re not alone. Many businesses struggle to gain traction despite their efforts. The first step in fixing indexing-related issues is to analyze search trends in Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, or similar tools. Although no single metric from these tools determines success, tracking your rank and indexing trends can help you uncover issues. These tools also report reasons why certain pages aren’t being indexed, or if you have bigger problems, such as manual actions. Therefore, you must get familiar with using these tools.

Address Your SEO Issues

After you’ve identified the indexing issues, you have two types of fixes: content and technical. Content fixes can take months to propagate and are important for organic growth. Technical issues are more serious and should be addressed immediately because they prevent page indexing. With these in mind, here are some of the most impactful yet common indexing problems we’ve seen and how you can fix them:

Issue	The Problem	The Fix	The Result
Duplicate Websites: The Silent SEO Killer	Your website may have duplicate versions floating around in a staging environment, subdomain, or IP-based environment. If search engines index multiple versions of your website, your SEO will be diluted across them. In Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, check for URLs in the “Top linking sites” and disable indexing on duplicate websites. You can also check your indexed pages to confirm whether one domain is indexed over another.	Ensure that your staging site and/or subdomains have a “noindex tag” applied, preventing them from being crawled and indexed. Use 301 Redirects to point your original instance IP and/or subdomains to your primary business domain. This lets search engines know which domain to attribute SEO. Apply canonical URLs to notify search engines where your source content is	From our experience, fixing this issue alone can boost impressions by 150%+ within a few months.
Canonical URLs: Wrong Ones or Not Using Them at all	Google and other search engines assure us that their bots and algorithms can index websites correctly without external intervention. However, they do make plenty of mistakes, and without guidance, your SEO efforts might be lost or assigned to the wrong page/domain.	Manually apply the canonical URL to the pages you want to credit SEO for. This signals to Google and other search engines the correct URL for SEO attribution.	We’ve seen these canonical fixes realign indexing and improve search rank and monthly impressions by 100%+.
Crawling Errors: Are Your Core Service and Product Pages Visible?	Your customers might be able to find you by your company name. But can they find you by your products and/or services? By not indexing your product and service pages, you reduce your chances of being found online for those products and services.	Below is how to resolve common crawling issues. Just make sure to resubmit pages that you fix for reindexing: Redirect error: If you’ve changed domains, verify that the canonical URL is configured and that your redirects point to the correct page. Most importantly, avoid redirect loops. Crawled – Currently Not Indexed: Depending on the root cause, the fix may involve updating, rewriting, or even killing content. Avoid overusing AI tools for content generation, as search engines are actively detecting them and flagging websites for spam abuse. Duplicate, Google Chose a Different Canonical: Review URL structures and ensure proper canonicalization. Page with Redirect: If a deprecated page has a valid redirect, no further action is needed. Otherwise, check your rules to ensure proper redirection. Excluded by ‘noindex’ Tag: If unintentional, remove the noindex tag and request re-crawling. Alternate Page With Proper Canonical tag: Confirm whether the listed pages are correctly ignored. Most of the time, that means the URLs are from a subdomain or http, and this error can be ignored. Blocked due to Other 4xx Issue: Look for routing issues affecting the URLs. Not Found (404): Do nothing if the page is removed. Otherwise, declare 301 redirects for pages that have permanently moved and 302 redirects for those that have temporarily moved. Discovered – Currently Not Indexed: If content is user-generated (not AI-generated), you may not need to do anything. However, if it’s been a while, try submitting the page to your webmaster or increasing backlinks to these pages.	Proper indexing is the backbone of any SEO program. We’ve helped clients increase impressions by 300%+ in a matter of weeks just by resolving indexing issues.

The Key Takeaway

Don’t ignore the basics: ensure your pages are properly indexed before you do anything else with your website.

The Bottom Line: Take Control of Your SEO

Your website’s success depends on search engines to index your content properly. Review your webmaster tools to diagnose and fix duplicate websites, canonical issues, and crawling issues.

At Uplancer, we’ve tackled SEO challenges across many industries. If you’re struggling with traffic and search rankings, don’t wait! Contact us today for a free consultation and take your website’s SEO to the next level.