Guides
Indexing and technical SEO
Diagnose why a WordPress page is not indexed, crawled, or shown as intended, and fix the setting, rule, or response behind it.
18 guides in this category.
Crawled, Currently Not Indexed: What to Check Before Rewriting
Confirm which crawl Google is reporting, rule out duplicates and missing rendered content, and only then treat the page as an editing question.
Discovered, Currently Not Indexed: A WordPress Investigation
Google knows the URL but has not crawled it. Check that it is a page you want, that your server answers cleanly, and that a crawlable link and the sitemap lead to it.
Find and Fix Redirect Chains and Loops in WordPress
Trace every hop with curl, identify whether the host, CDN, WordPress, or a plugin sent each one, and fix that layer so every URL reaches its final page in one step.
Find and Remove an Accidental Noindex in WordPress
Read the robots meta tag and the X-Robots-Tag header as a logged-out visitor, match the value to the layer that wrote it, fix it there, and purge caches.
Find Duplicate SEO Tags From WordPress Themes and Plugins
Count the title, canonical, robots, and description tags in the public HTML, find which theme or plugin prints each copy, and leave one owner per tag.
Fix a WordPress Sitemap That Google Cannot Fetch or Parse
Fetch the exact sitemap address Search Console holds, separate access failures from XML errors, repair the cause at its source, and check every child file before resubmitting.
Fix a robots.txt Block Without Exposing Private Pages
Find the robots.txt rule that matches the blocked URL, narrow it to what should stay uncrawled, and protect private pages with a login, not robots.txt.
Fix Soft 404 Pages in WordPress
Check the status code and what Google rendered. Make truly missing pages return 404 or 410, and fix the template or content state of useful pages Google read as empty.
Diagnose Googlebot Access Errors: 401, 403, 429, and 5xx
Collect the failing URL, time, and status, verify the requester really was Googlebot, find which layer answered, and change only that layer.
Handle Tracking Parameters and Duplicate URLs on a WordPress Site
Sort each URL parameter by whether it changes the page. Point tracking and sorting variants at the clean URL, keep them out of links and sitemaps, and treat real content changes separately.
Should WordPress Categories, Tags, and Author Archives Be Indexed?
Index an archive when it is a useful page a searcher could land on. Noindex, merge, or redirect the ones that duplicate another page or list one post.
Keep a WordPress Staging Site Out of Search and Verify Launch Settings
Put staging behind a login, keep the discourage setting as a backup, and run a launch check so production does not inherit staging's noindex, hostnames, or robots rules.
Remove a WordPress Page With the Right 404, 410, or Redirect
Redirect a retired page with a 301 when a real replacement exists; otherwise let it return 404 or 410. Then clear it from the sitemap and your internal links.
Diagnose a WordPress Page That Search Console Says Is Not Indexed
Start with one URL: inspect it, check the public response yourself, then route the status Google reports to the repair that owns it.
SEO Changes Not Showing on WordPress: Trace the Cache Serving Them
Compare the saved value with what an anonymous visitor receives, read the cache headers to find the layer holding the old page, and purge only that layer.
Why a WordPress Page Is Missing From Your XML Sitemap
Confirm the page should be listed, find which generator owns the sitemap, check its exclusion rules and cache, then search every child file for the exact URL.
Diagnose Canonical Selection in WordPress and Search Console
Compare the canonical your page declares with the one Google selected, work out which of three canonical statuses applies, and change signals only when the choice is wrong.
WordPress Pagination SEO: Reachable Pages and Correct Canonicals
Give page 2 and later of each archive its own canonical, link every page with a plain anchor, and make out-of-range pages return 404. Then check the whole sequence.