The AHX SEO Labs blog
Practical guides to the technical problems we find in real site audits: what they are, why they matter, and exactly how to fix them.
Indexing
Google visited these pages and decided not to keep them. There is no single cause: it can be thin or duplicate content, pages nobody links to, JavaScript that never loads, or a site Google doesn’t trust yet. Here is how to find out which one, and what to do about each.
Indexing
Two statuses cover duplicates: "Alternative page with proper canonical tag" (usually fine) and "Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user" (your hint was overruled). A worked example shows how a single wrong canonical gets ignored, and the fix we tested.
Indexing
A noindex is an instruction, not a guess: something on your site asked Google not to index these pages. Often that is right. Sometimes it is a forgotten setting, a plugin, or an HTTP header nobody knew about. Here is how to find the source and remove it safely.
Indexing
A long list of 404s looks alarming, but most are harmless and Google says they don’t hurt the rest of your site. The few that matter are pages that should exist, links on your own site, and URLs other sites still link to. Here is how to sort them.
Indexing
A 5xx means your server failed when Google asked for a page. A few now and then are normal; many, or the same ones again and again, make Google slow down and eventually drop pages. Here is how to find what is failing, and why.
Email security
Three DNS records decide whether anyone can send email pretending to be you: SPF, DKIM and DMARC. Here is what each one does, the exact records to add, and the mistakes that quietly break them.
Crawling
Google finds pages by following links, but only links written in a certain way. Buttons, click handlers and "#" links look the same to visitors and are invisible to search engines. Here is how to spot and fix them.
Technical SEO
A missing page should tell search engines it is missing. When it answers "OK" instead, Google wastes time on it, may index it, and trusts your site a little less. Here is how to test for it and fix it.
Free site audit
AHX crawls your site the way Google does and shows each problem, the pages it affects and the fix.
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