Hello fellow cart’ers!
I’m hoping for some guidance here because I’m at a complete loss right now.
I’ve requested a crawl from Google and without fail I have issues with the site. I don’t feel the “issues” are very forward so I have no idea how to proceed.
I decided to have my site audited by an SEO business - and the results were staggering. By the sounds of it my site is 98% errors! Of course, I don’t know what those errors are or how to fix them. And their price tag to fix anything is much more than I’m willing to spend.
I just want my site indexed on Google, I don’t require top rank or any of that. It’s hard for me to know what to do without knowing what to do.
Any insight, or advise would be great!
Thanks in advance.
Hello!
Don’t fall into the trap of SEO scammers. There are a lot of them these days. First of all, use the Google Search Console Tools, upload your store’s sitemap.xml and once crawled, check what recommendations it gives. If there is anything difficult to understand, you can ask for clarification here on the forums.
Beside Google Search Console I’ll recommend some more free tools that will help you to understand you traffic and help you fix technical and content issue:
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Google Tag Manager → will help you to add easily other 3rd party tools to website
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Google Analytics → will help you to check traffic
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Microsoft Clarity → will help you to see how visitors are interacting with your website by having access to recordings and heatmaps
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Ahrefs → will provide a free SEO report and you can see what you need to fix
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Thank you for your response. I did just that some time ago - I’m not sure how to go about the results. Is there a specific area on the forums to inquire about things like this?
Thanks for your guidance!! I checked out Ahrefs this afternoon and I’ll have to learn more about it - I can’t see where to find out what needs to be fixed.
I just don’t know what is considered an error on pages; all I know is I apparently have a ton of them!
I am afraid, there is no specific topic on this forum. You can post your questions right here in this topic. There is always a chance, that there will be someone that will be able to help you 
I’ve taken a step back for a bit, and now ready to try this again - and sadly this whole ordeal is difficult for me to comprehend.
My Google Console results are unreal with over 18,000 pages not indexed, along with 6 other reasons that halt indexing.
I’d like to understand, and even moreso, know how I can fix it. I’m assuming there’s no easy fix.
Sure there are firms out there ready to take this on - however want a 1-year contract which would cost more than it’s really worth.
Where do I even start?
I don’t think Google understands Google with the exception of “Make money”.
It’s even difficult to use the console because it takes forever for it re-crawl and update. I have found many of my items in the “Crawled but not indexed” but when I go to inspect it, it says it’s indexed. Also, even if there is nothing wrong with your page, Google still may not index it just because it doesn’t think it is useful to their audience.
What are the reasons it’s giving for not indexing?
Another thing you might want to try that seems to help is using Google Merchant Center.
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Thank you for writing to me!!
The reasons I have are;
Alternate page with proper canonical tag (281)
Excluded by ‘noindex’ tag (139)
Page with redirect (21)
Not found (404) (3)
Discovered - currently not indexed (18,675)
Crawled - currently not indexed (994)
Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user (471)
I don’t even know where to start.
What exactly will the Merchant Center help with?
Those are a general idea and I have found that I couldn’t/didn’t need to do anything with most. I would concentrate on Discovered - currently not indexed and Crawled - currently not indexed. If you inspect the pages and they check as good, there isn’t really more you can do except tell Google to index it.
They say that the Search Console and Merchant Center don’t have anything to do with each other but before I started using the Merchant Center, I had a low amount of listings when I ran a Google search using “site:www.example.com”. After I started using the Merchant Center I had about 4 times the amount of listings. The Merchant Center will also give you a more detailed report of what’s wrong with your pages.
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Very interesting! I will look into the Merchant Center and let you know how that turns out! Thank you so much for replying and some suggestions! I really appreciate it!
Hey there! So I’ve been going through the Merchant Center but I’m unsure what I should be doing on it or where to go.
I also checked out several pages under the Crawled - currently not indexed on Search Console, and you’re right!
I picked random pages and when I click on 'em, it says the page is indexed with a green checkmark.
I’m so confused!!
Have any suggestions where to go from here, if anything?
Not really. Since the Search Console is so inconsistent, I don’t put much effort into it. I can only suggest getting the Merchant Center figured out.
Agreed…its such a drag and lists all sorts of crap that doesnt matter, iive learned not to take that much notice of it.