Phase 2 · Foundation

Fix GSC
Indexing Issues

Audit Google Search Console's Pages report — excluded URLs, discovered-but-not-indexed, crawled-but-not-indexed, accidental noindex tags, soft 404s, and canonicalisation problems. Every excluded URL gets a verdict and a fix or a confirmed leave.

Phase 2 — Foundation Frequency: As identified Duration: ~2 hrs Deliverable: Indexed URLs fixed + verdict spreadsheet

Overview

What It Involves

Open GSC → Indexing → Pages. Review every URL in the "Not indexed" categories. For each excluded URL, make a binary decision: should it be indexed (fix it) or is it correctly excluded (leave it and document why).

The common fix categories are: remove accidental noindex tags, add the URL to the sitemap, add internal links to orphaned pages, fix canonicals pointing away from the correct URL, rewrite thin content, and resolve soft 404s.

Why It Matters

A page that isn't indexed cannot rank — full stop. Indexing problems hide on otherwise healthy sites. A well-written service page with the right keywords that accidentally has a noindex tag from a staging migration will never appear in search results.

Fixing this is among the cheapest wins in SEO: no new content, no new links — just removing the barrier that was blocking a page that was already ready to rank.

Open GSC Pages Report

Open the GSC Pages report and note all exclusion categories

Log in to Google Search Console. Go to Indexing → Pages. The report shows: Indexed pages (good), and Not indexed pages (need review).

Under "Not indexed", note the count in each category:

Exclusion categories to check

  • Crawled – currently not indexed
  • Discovered – currently not indexed
  • Duplicate without user-selected canonical
  • Alternate page with proper canonical tag
  • Page with redirect
  • Not found (404)
  • Soft 404
  • Blocked by robots.txt
  • Noindex (page has a noindex tag)
  • Excluded by 'noindex' tag
  • Other

Export the full list: click each category → export the URL list to a spreadsheet. Create one tab per category.

Triage Exclusions

Triage: should this URL be indexed or not?

For each excluded URL, answer this question first before deciding on any fix:

Triage decision guide

  • Is this a page we WANT indexed? (service page, landing page, blog post with real content → YES)
  • Is this a page we DO NOT want indexed? (admin pages, thank-you pages, duplicate pagination, filtered query-string URLs, CMS preview pages → NO — leave excluded and document as "correctly excluded")

Create a "Verdict" column in your spreadsheet: Indexed (needs fix) or Correctly Excluded (leave as-is, document reason). Only proceed to fix steps for URLs marked "Indexed."

Key rule: Every URL gets a verdict before any action is taken. Do not jump straight to fixes — triage first. Submitting the wrong URLs for indexing wastes crawl budget and creates duplicate content issues.

Fix Noindex Issues

Fix accidental noindex tags

"Excluded by noindex tag" means the page has <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> in the HTML, or an X-Robots-Tag: noindex in the HTTP header.

Open the page in the CMS. Check the SEO plugin settings (Yoast, Rank Math, etc.) for a "noindex" or "block search engines" toggle. Turn it off.

Also check the HTTP header: in Screaming Frog or using curl -I [URL], look for X-Robots-Tag: noindex in the response headers. If present, this is a server-level setting that requires a developer fix.

After removing the noindex

  • View the page source and confirm the noindex meta tag is gone
  • Request Indexing in GSC: URL Inspection → Request Indexing
  • Log the fix in the spreadsheet with the date actioned

Common cause: pages marked noindex on staging and not unchecked after going live. Check all new pages when they launch.

Warning: Removing the noindex in the CMS is not enough if the server is also sending X-Robots-Tag: noindex via HTTP headers. Always verify both the HTML meta tag and the HTTP response header after every noindex fix.

Fix Canonicalisation

Fix canonicalisation issues

"Duplicate without user-selected canonical" and "Alternate page with proper canonical tag" indicate canonical confusion. The canonical tag (<link rel="canonical" href="...">) tells Google which version of a page is the master. If it points to a different URL, Google indexes the canonical destination, not the page you're on.

Check: open the excluded page in a browser. View source. Search for rel="canonical". Does it point to the correct URL (itself)? Or does it point elsewhere?

Common canonical fixes

  • If it points elsewhere incorrectly: update the canonical in the CMS SEO settings to point to the correct URL (or to itself, using the full absolute URL)
  • If www vs non-www variations are causing duplication: ensure all versions canonical to the preferred version, and 301 redirects are in place for non-preferred versions
  • If HTTP vs HTTPS variations exist: same approach — canonical to preferred, redirect the rest
  • Check the CMS's default canonical setting — if it's wrong, it's wrong sitewide, not just on one page

Fix Thin & Soft 404s

Fix "Discovered – currently not indexed" and "Crawled – currently not indexed"

These are pages Google knows about but has decided (so far) not to index. They are not broken — Google simply deprioritised them. Common reasons and fixes:

Diagnose the actual reason first

  • Thin content: page has very little text. Fix — add substantive content, at minimum 300 words of relevant, unique copy
  • No internal links pointing to the page (orphan): Google deprioritises pages it only discovered via the sitemap. Fix — add contextual internal links from related pages
  • Not in the sitemap: ensure the URL is included in the XML sitemap and the sitemap is submitted in GSC
  • Page is too new: if content and internal links are in place, submit via URL Inspection → Request Indexing and wait

Fix soft 404s

A soft 404 is a page that returns a 200 HTTP status code but looks like a 404 to Google — usually because the page says "no results", "page not found", or is empty.

Soft 404 resolution options

  • Genuinely empty page with no real content: either add real content, or redirect it to a relevant page (301 redirect)
  • Page showing "no results" due to a CMS filter or empty category: add at least one item to the category, or noindex the category until it has content
  • Page returning 200 but displaying an error message: fix the underlying content or redirect
Do not bulk-remove from sitemap: Treating "Discovered – currently not indexed" as broken and removing pages from the sitemap makes things worse. Diagnose the actual reason (thin content, no internal links, too new) and fix that specifically.

Submit & Verify

Re-submit and monitor

After fixes: use URL Inspection → Request Indexing for each fixed URL. Do this in batches — GSC limits re-crawl requests.

Submission and follow-up steps

  • Add a note in the spreadsheet: date fix applied, date indexing requested
  • Return in 2–3 weeks and re-check the GSC Pages report
  • Verify previously excluded URLs have moved to the Indexed category
  • Schedule the follow-up check in Zoho so it doesn't get missed

Zoho comment template: total excluded URLs reviewed, number fixed (by fix type), number correctly excluded (documented), number pending (content needed), time logged. Example: "Reviewed 47 excluded URLs in GSC. Fixed 23 (8 noindex removed, 7 added to sitemap + internal links, 5 canonical corrected, 3 soft 404s redirected). 24 correctly excluded (admin, thank-you, pagination). Time logged."

Standards

Completion Checklist

  • Every excluded URL has a verdict: fix or correctly excluded — no undecided rows
  • Noindex removals verified by viewing page source after CMS change
  • Canonical tags checked — each page's canonical points to its own full URL
  • Soft 404s resolved (content added or redirect applied)
  • Orphaned pages have at least one contextual internal link added
  • All fixed URLs submitted via Request Indexing in GSC
  • Spreadsheet saved to client Drive with verdict and action per URL
  • Follow-up check scheduled 2–3 weeks after fixes

Common Mistakes

Mistakes to Avoid

Mistake Why It Happens How to Avoid It
Requesting indexing for pages that should be excluded Accidentally submitting admin pages, thank-you pages, or paginated filter URLs wastes crawl budget and can cause duplicate content issues. Triage first. Every URL gets a verdict before any action is taken.
Fixing the noindex in the CMS without checking the HTTP header Some hosting setups add X-Robots-Tag: noindex at the server level. Removing the CMS tag doesn't fix it. Use Screaming Frog or curl -I to check the HTTP response header after every noindex fix.
Treating "Discovered – currently not indexed" as broken These pages aren't broken — Google just hasn't indexed them yet. Bulk-removing them from the sitemap or adding noindex will make things worse. Diagnose the actual reason (thin content, no internal links, too new) and fix that specifically.
Not following up after fixes GSC takes time to reprocess pages. If you don't check back, you won't know whether the fix worked. Schedule a follow-up check 2–3 weeks after applying fixes. Note this in Zoho.
Fixing canonical issues on one URL without checking the site pattern If canonicals are wrong, they're usually wrong sitewide (CMS default setting). Fixing one page at a time misses the root cause. Check the CMS SEO plugin's default canonical setting before fixing individual pages.