One of the most, if not the most, critical aspects of a website’s success is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Without proper SEO, your website risks not being found by current and potential customers! It also means that what you’ve spent on a website might have been a waste, so don’t invest another dollar in it until you start making decisions with SEO in mind.
For those facing indexing issues, let’s dive into key SEO checks that can resolve them.
First off, is Your Search Rank Dropping?
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 tremendous efforts. As such, the first step in fixing SEO 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 will help uncover your SEO issues.
Critical SEO Issues to Address
After you’ve uncovered your SEO issues, you’ve got two types of fixes: content and technical. Content updates can take months to a year for propagation and are important for capturing search terms. Technical SEO issues are more serious and should be addressed sooner rather than later because they can easily prevent pages from indexing. Here are some of the most impactful SEO problems and their fixes:
1. Duplicate Websites: The Silent SEO Killer
The Problem:
Your website may have duplicate versions floating around on a staging environment, subdomain, or IP-based environment. If search engines see and index multiple versions of your website, your SEO will be diluted across all versions. In Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, check for URLs in the “Top linking sites” and disable indexing on duplicate websites. Note that this problem can be challenging to identify if you’ve lost track of all of your environments, have many web pages to index, or face major website indexing issues. You can also check your indexed pages on the search console to confirm whether it’s indexing one version of your domain over another.
The Fix:
- 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.
The Result:
From our experience, fixing this issue alone can boost impressions by 150%+ within a few months.
2. Wrong Canonical URLs or Not Using Them at all
The Problem:
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 some guidance, your SEO might be lost or assigned to the wrong page.
The Fix:
Manually apply the canonical URL to the pages you want to credit SEO for. What this does is signal to Google and other search engines the correct URL for SEO attribution.
The Result:
We’ve seen these canonical fixes realign indexing and improve search rank and monthly impressions by 100%+.
3. Pages Not Indexing: Are Your Core Service and Product Pages Invisible?
The Problem:
If your core website pages aren’t indexed, customers will not find you for searches related to your product and/or services.
The Fix:
Check the Google Search Console reports to identify indexing issues. Below is how to fix some common problems. Just make sure to resubmit any pages that you fixed for indexing:
- Redirect error: If you’ve changed domains, confirm that the canonical URL is indexed correctly and that your redirects are correct.
- Crawled – Currently Not Indexed: Depending on the root cause, the fix may involve updating or even rewriting content, enhancing internal linking, and monitoring results for months. Note that using AI tools for content generation will be flagged by search engines and may lead to further action against your website 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.
- Blocked due to Other 4xx Issue: Look for routing issues related to the URLs.
- Not Found (404): Do nothing if the page is removed. Otherwise, set up 301 redirects for any pages that have moved.
- Discovered – Currently Not Indexed: If content is user-generated (not AI-generated), be patient. Google will likely index it over time.
The Result:
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 the above indexing issues.
Avoid SEO Pitfalls: Focus on What Matters
Many businesses chase SEO “hacks” while ignoring the basics: ensuring their pages are properly indexed. Pumping out content is meaningless if search engines don’t index it. We’ve seen companies waste valuable resources on content creation, only to realize later that their indexing issues were the true bottleneck for improving SEO.
The Key Takeaway?
Fix indexing issues first, then move on to advanced SEO strategies to outpace and beat your competitors.
The Bottom Line: Take Control of Your SEO
Your website’s success depends on search engines properly indexing your content. If your business pages aren’t appearing in search results, check Google Search Console to diagnose and fix duplicate content and indexing 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.
