Why Your Website Isn’t Ranking: 15 Technical SEO Issues.

First: is it a technical problem at all?

Open Search Console → URL Inspection, paste the page address and press Enter.

To check impressions, go to Performance → Search results → + New → Page, paste the address and look at the queries.

A technically clean site isn’t enough on its own. On the NAPS project, an Australian higher-education provider, we couldn’t make major technical changes during the campaign. Organic clicks still grew from 85.3K to 137K in six months, through keyword research, content and links. Fix the technical blocks first, but don’t expect them to do all the work. (NAPS case study → https://jagritilakher.com/case-studies/education-seo-case-study-australia/)

The 15 issues at a glance

Issues that stop Google indexing your page

1. The page is blocked by robots.txt

Your robots.txt file tells search engines which parts of the site they can’t crawl. A single line such as Disallow: / blocks everything. It’s often left over from a staging site.

How to check: open yoursite.com/robots.txt in your browser. You should only see admin folders blocked, such as /wp-admin/.

How to fix in WordPress: in Rank Math → General Settings → Edit robots.txt, remove any Disallow line that covers pages you want indexed. Save, then purge your cache.

2. A noindex tag was left on

A noindex tag tells Google not to index the page. It’s the most common reason a brand-new site doesn’t show up at all.

How to fix in WordPress:

• For the whole site, go to Settings → Reading and make sure “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” is unticked. Developers tick it while building and forget to untick it.
• For one page, edit it → Rank Math → Advanced → set Robots Meta to Index.

3. The canonical tag points to the wrong page

A canonical tag tells Google which URL is the main version of a page. If a page’s canonical points somewhere else, for example to the homepage or to a copied page, Google indexes the other URL instead. Google calls rel=“canonical” “a strong signal”.

How to check: in URL Inspection, compare “User-declared canonical” with “Google-selected canonical”. They should be the same address as the page.

How to fix: edit the page → Rank Math → Advanced → Canonical URL. Leave it empty (Rank Math then uses the page’s own address) unless you really mean another page.

4. Duplicate pages with no canonical

The same content at several addresses (with and without a trailing slash, with tracking parameters, or a printed copy of a page) splits signals. Search Console shows “Duplicate without user-selected canonical”.

How to fix: keep one version, redirect the others to it (a redirect is the strongest signal), and make sure each page has a self-referencing canonical. Rank Math adds one by default.

5. “Crawled – currently not indexed”

Google visited the page and decided not to index it, at least for now. This usually means it doesn’t see enough value: a short page, a page that repeats another one, or a tag or category archive with two posts.

How to fix: make the page clearly more useful than what already ranks, by adding examples, numbers, a table and an answer to the question in the first two sentences. If a page will never be useful in search (a thank-you page, a thin tag archive), set it to noindex instead. Then click Request indexing, once.

6. “Discovered – currently not indexed”

Google knows the page exists but hasn’t crawled it yet. Google says this is often to avoid overloading your site. On small sites it usually means weak internal links or a slow server.

How to fix: link to the page from two or three relevant pages that are already indexed, check issue 11 (server), and wait. Request indexing once. Asking every day doesn’t speed it up.

Issues that hold an indexed page back

7. Two of your pages compete for the same search

This is called keyword cannibalization. You have, for example, a service page and a blog post that both target “SEO consultant”. Google can’t tell which one you want, so it keeps switching between them and neither ranks well.

When I audited my own site in October, I found this exact problem. My service page and my main consultant page were both getting links with the same anchor text, so Google got mixed signals about which one should rank.

How to check: Performance → Search results → + New → Query = your keyword → Pages tab. If two of your URLs show up, they’re competing.

How to fix: decide which page should rank for that search. Change the other page’s title and focus keyword to a different search, and point your internal links (with that keyword as the link text) to the main page only.

8. Internal links that go through redirects

When you change a page’s address, old links still point to the old URL and then redirect. One redirect is fine. But menus and buttons that link through a redirect on every page, or chains of two or three redirects, waste Google’s crawling and weaken the links.

On my own site, the “SEO” link in the main menu pointed to an old address that redirected, so every page on the site linked through a redirect.

How to fix: in Rank Math → Redirections, look at the list of old addresses. Then update menus, buttons and in-text links to the final address. Search Console shows “Page with redirect” for the old URLs. That’s normal, as long as your own links don’t use them.

9. Broken internal links

Links to pages that no longer exist (404) are dead ends for visitors and for Google.

How to fix: Search Console → Indexing → Pages → Not found (404) lists them. For each one, either redirect the dead address to the closest live page with a 301 in Rank Math → Redirections, or fix the link that points to it.

10. Empty or near-empty pages

Leftover pages that contain only the header and footer often show as “Soft 404”: the page loads, but Google treats it as missing. Elementor sites often have these from old templates or abandoned sections.

When I audited my own site, I found nine of them, each with about 150 words of menu and footer text and no H1. On a site with 69 pages, that’s more than one page in eight with nothing on it.

How to fix: for each empty page, either add real content, redirect it to the closest useful page, or set it to noindex until it’s ready.

11. Server errors and slow hosting

If your server returns errors (“Server error (5xx)”) or responds slowly, Google crawls less, and new pages wait longer.

How to check: Search Console → Settings → Crawl stats → Host status. All three checks should be green.

How to fix: turn on page caching (LiteSpeed Cache or your host’s cache) and its crawler, so pages are cached before visitors and Google arrive. If errors continue, ask your host about database connection limits, or move to a better plan.

12. Content Google can’t see

Some sliders, tabs, “load more” buttons and page builders load text with JavaScript. If Google doesn’t render it, your page looks empty to Google.

How to check: URL Inspection → Test live URL → View tested page → Screenshot and HTML. Search the HTML for a sentence from the page. If it’s missing, Google can’t see it.

How to fix: put key text (the intro, headings and answers) in normal text widgets, not inside elements that only load after a click.

13. Orphan pages

An orphan page has no links from other pages on your site. Google finds it only through the sitemap and treats it as unimportant. Blog posts become orphans when they drop off a “latest posts” box.

How to check: Search Console → Links → Internal links → More. If an important page has fewer than three internal links, it needs more.

How to fix: link to it from related posts with descriptive link text (never “click here”), and add your most important pages to the menu or footer.

14. A messy XML sitemap

Your sitemap should list only pages you want indexed: live pages that return 200, with no redirects and no noindex pages.

How to fix: in Rank Math → Sitemap Settings, exclude post types and taxonomies you don’t want indexed (for example tags). Then submit /sitemap_index.xml in Search Console → Sitemaps and check that it says “Success”.

15. The wrong country version ranks

If you have pages for different countries, such as /uk/ and /au/, Google may show the UK page to Australians. Google also warns against redirecting visitors automatically by IP address.

How to check: Performance → + New → Country, then look at which page appears for each country.

How to fix: add hreflang tags so Google knows which page is for which country. My guide hreflang in WordPress shows the plugin options and the en-GB vs en-UK mistake.

Check all of this in 15 minutes

My free technical SEO checklist has 36 checks you can tick off as you go and download as a PDF. It covers everything above, plus HTTPS, mobile and structured data.

Frequently asked questions

Why is my website not showing up on Google?

Usually because the page isn’t indexed yet, or something is blocking it, such as a noindex tag or robots.txt. Check the page in Search Console’s URL Inspection tool. If it says “URL is not on Google”, the reason is shown under Page indexing.

How long does it take for a new page to rank on Google?

Indexing can take a few days to a few weeks. Ranking well usually takes months, depending on competition and links. A new site on a competitive topic should expect three to six months before steady traffic.

What does “Crawled – currently not indexed” mean?

Google visited the page but decided not to add it to its index, at least for now. It usually means Google doesn’t see enough unique value. Improve the page or merge it with a similar one, then request indexing once.

Can a technical SEO issue cause a sudden drop in rankings?

Yes. An accidental noindex, a broken robots.txt or a site-wide redirect after a redesign can remove pages within days. If rankings fall suddenly, check the Page indexing report and Manual actions first, and compare the date with Google’s update history.

Do I need a developer to fix technical SEO?

Not for most of these. In WordPress, issues 1–10, 13 and 14 can be fixed in the WordPress settings, Rank Math and your page editor. Server problems, JavaScript rendering and hreflang are where a developer or a specialist helps.

Still not ranking after these fixes?

If your site is technically clean and still isn’t ranking, the problem is usually content, search intent or links, and that needs a closer look. I audit websites for businesses in the UAE, Australia, the US, Canada and the UK, and show you which fixes will move rankings first. See my SEO & AI search optimization service, or book a call.

Book a free 15-minute consultation