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Purpose

Once a canonical page has been identified and optimized with content, we need to submit a request in Google Search Console to have the page crawled and indexed. This includes pages where content is newly posted as well as pages that get updated content. When Google bots crawl a page, they are discovering pages and links that lead to more pages on the site. Then the page is indexed, which means the content on a page is stored, analyzed, and organized and connections between pages are created. It is only once a page is indexed that it can show up in search results and improve in SERPs rankings for relevant search terms.

Procedure

Inputs

  • A canonical page URL is identified, and content has been posted to that page by the Juniper team or the SEO rep.

  • The page URL is posted in the “Content Link” column of the Work Done Import tab of the client sheet.

 Step 1: Copy the page URL and paste into the search bar at the top of the GSC account.

Pasting the page URL into the search bar tells GSC to inspect the URL and bring up information regarding the page’s crawling and indexing status.

 Step 2: Analyze the URL Inspection information that comes up in GSC.

If the page URL is the correct canonical URL, the URL Inspection information should look something like this:

If the page URL is not a canonical URL, then the Inspection Information might look like this:

You can see that the Page Indexing information states that an alternate page has the canonical tag, meaning that content was posted and internal linking was set up for the wrong page URL. At this point you would have to edit the content and internal linking to go to the correct canonical page, which you can find by expanding the page indexing section:

 Step 3: Request indexing for the canonical page.

Click on “Request Indexing” and you will first see this message:

Then after about a minute, you should see this message:

That’s it!

 Step 4: Check off the "GSC Indexing Requested" box in the client sheet.

Go back to the Work Done Import tab of the client sheet, where a column has been created called “GSC Indexing Requested” - column J. Check the box for each work done page URL that you requested indexing for.

Note: Indexing should only be requested once all the content proposed in a month for that page has been posted. The Juniper rep should request indexing for any pages that they posted requested content to, including blogs, custom pages, and pagefooters or inventory content (new packages only) on an inventory page (this includes refresh content that was requested for the content team to write). If a work done URL refers to a page that an SEO rep optimized a featured banner only for and is not waiting for a pagefooter to be posted, or a page that the SEO rep refreshed content themselves for, then the SEO rep would be responsible for requesting indexing and checking the GSC Indexing Requested box.

Outputs

  • All the pages worked on moving forward are canonical URLs and are being indexed in Google to begin ranking improvements in search results.

FAQs

 Related Process

Before a page can be indexed, you must ensure that content is being posted to the canonical URL and not an alternative page. Here is the process for ensuring we are doing work on canonical pages: ARI Canonical Go-Forward Process - DigMS - Digital Marketing Services - Confluence (atlassian.net)