Last updated on Jul 26, 2024

You're facing indexing issues with your website's technical SEO. How can you troubleshoot them effectively?

When your website isn't showing up in search engine results as expected, it's often due to indexing issues. Indexing is the process by which search engines organize information before a search to enable super-fast responses to queries. If your site is not indexed properly, it's like having a library without a catalog: visitors won't find your content. Troubleshooting these issues requires a systematic approach to identify and resolve the technical SEO problems causing the indexing difficulties.

1 Check Robots.txt

Your robots.txt file is the gatekeeper to your website, instructing search engines on what they can and cannot index. It's crucial to ensure that this file isn't accidentally blocking important pages. You can check your robots.txt file by appending /robots.txt to your domain. Look for any Disallow: directives that may be preventing search engines from accessing your content. If you find any, consider whether they are necessary or if they could be hindering your site's visibility.

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Pete D.

Senior Director Architect @ eBay | Search Optimization
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Don't just look at robots.txt as the only source for preventing bot access. You may also find that for example you're rate limiting or blocking search engine bots via your firewall or CDN (Content Delivery Network) such as Akamai, Cloudflare, Fastly etc., even your CMS (Content Management System) such as Wordpress may have some settings with in it to limit bot crawling/scraping. It could even be something such as a .htaccess file in a directory that's preventing access or some newer initiative like ai.txt (though at the moment not many are using that). Perhaps the page renders fine for people and passes a robots.txt check but on inspection half the assets needed to render are blocked for bots or are redirecting.

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2 Review Sitemaps

A sitemap is a blueprint of your website that search engines use to find and index your content. Ensure your sitemap is up-to-date and free of errors by submitting it through search engine webmaster tools. This will also tell you if the search engine has any issues accessing or processing your sitemap. Regularly updating your sitemap when new content is added or old content is removed will help search engines keep up with the changes on your site.

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Pete D.

Senior Director Architect @ eBay | Search Optimization
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This is lower priority in this list of immediate troubleshooting but worth checking. The main thing to look for, and it's not uncommon, is whether incorrect or non-canonical URLs are being submitted via this (or the various indexing APIs). If your sitemap is mostly errors & redirects then it can't be trusted.

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3 Analyze Crawl Logs

Crawl logs are records of the search engine's attempts to visit pages on your website. By analyzing these logs, you can identify patterns and issues such as frequent 404 errors or long load times that could be impacting your site's indexability. Use crawl log analysis tools to sift through this data and pinpoint what might be causing search engines to struggle with indexing your site.

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Pete D.

Senior Director Architect @ eBay | Search Optimization
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Logs are your friend, look at this first if you can. You ideally should have some level of monitoring in place to alert to errors. It's not just about the 4xx errors. Look for 5xx errors, maybe there's an outage or server issues or bots are being served the 5xx error to deter them. 301/302 redirects, maybe there's a redirect loop or broken redirect or it's redirecting to a page that shouldn't be indexed. Look at the % of times people & bots are getting errors, the higher the % the less trustworthy your site is - why index something when it's most likely not going to be working. Look for issues with incorrect canonical, hreflang etc., these aren't directives but still are a hint and if broken can change the decision of what to index

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4 Inspect URL Parameters

URL parameters can often cause duplicate content or lead to non-existent pages, both of which can confuse search engines and lead to indexing issues. Use your website's analytics tools to review how URL parameters are being used and ensure they are set up correctly. If necessary, use canonical tags to specify the preferred version of a page, or adjust your CMS settings to prevent problematic URL structures from being generated in the first place.

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5 Utilize Webmaster Tools

Webmaster tools offered by search engines are invaluable for diagnosing indexing problems. These platforms provide insights into how search engines view your site, highlight errors, and offer the ability to fetch and render your pages as a search engine would. Make sure to regularly check these tools for notifications and errors, and use the "Fetch as Google" (or equivalent) feature to test how search engines crawl your pages.

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6 Enhance Site Architecture

A well-structured website facilitates better indexing. Ensure that your site architecture is logical and that internal linking is coherent, with a clear hierarchy that search engines can follow. Navigation should be intuitive, with important content no more than a few clicks away from the homepage. If your site is large, consider implementing breadcrumb navigation and a robust internal search feature to help both users and search engines navigate your content more effectively.

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Pete D.

Senior Director Architect @ eBay | Search Optimization
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Make sure the links are not only relevant but also correct & canonical, reduce the burden on the search engine to decide which version to index.

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7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?

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You're facing indexing issues with your website's technical SEO. How can you troubleshoot them effectively?

1

2

3

4

5

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1 Check Robots.txt

2 Review Sitemaps

3 Analyze Crawl Logs

4 Inspect URL Parameters

5 Utilize Webmaster Tools

6 Enhance Site Architecture

7 Here’s what else to consider

Search Engines

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You're facing indexing issues with your website's technical SEO. How can you troubleshoot them effectively?

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

1 Check Robots.txt

2 Review Sitemaps

3 Analyze Crawl Logs

4 Inspect URL Parameters

5 Utilize Webmaster Tools

6 Enhance Site Architecture

7 Here’s what else to consider

Search Engines

Rate this article

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