Managing Unwanted Indexed URLs for Optimal SEO Performance

Indexing issues can be one of the most painful problems to experience as a digital marketer. You’ve put all this work into crafting a beautiful website, ensuring everything is crawled easily and optimized well. Then, you check Google Search Console to find index errors everywhere. We’ve all been there. Today, we will discuss how to resolve those issues so all of your content is viewed as authoritative and has a fighting chance of your SEO working.

The main culprit for these errors is Unwanted Indexed URLs. What are those? As the name suggests, they’re URLs (e.g., pages, posts, PDFs, etc.) that you don’t want search engines to index. Why do they matter? Because the entirety of your website is considered when determining your overall authority. If you have any crawl errors, unwanted indexed pages, or duplicate content, you’re sending a massive low-quality signal that will affect the overall performance of your website.

Unwanted indexed URLs are a blight on your website and will prevent your SEO work from succeeding at the highest level.

Common Causes of Unwanted Indexed URLs

Okay, now that we know what unwanted indexed URLs are, let’s discuss why they happen.

First, you run into a duplicate content problem because of query parameters. These are strings of content at the end of a URL that help a server understand a user’s intent or desire. They look like this:

Examples of query parameters are:

• Search Queries – Many websites use a search query parameter to help serve relevant results when a user searches for something. That search or query is added to the end of a URL that will display those results (see the example above).
• Pagination – Paginated pages are created when an index page displays content that doesn’t ‘fit’ on the page. For example, your eCommerce website has 101 products but is only set to display 10 products at a time. Your product index page will be paginated and thus duplicated 10 times to display all 101 products.
• Add-to-Cart URLs – When you add a product to a cart, a query string is often used to tell the server what product to add to the cart. These can frequently be indexed, causing a headache because the pages don’t exist, but you tell search engines that they do.

Next are Session IDs or tracking parameters. These identifiers feed data back to a server to better understand who is visiting the website, how they got there, and what content to display to the user.

• Session ID – A session ID can help a server better understand who this user is, their access permissions, and other similar details. It’s a metric dynamically generated for that specific session and doesn’t represent an actual page.
• UTMS – Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) are query parameters that help tools like Google Analytics better understand where the traffic came from, what Ads campaign or marketing initiative drove that traffic, and even what specific keyword phrase was used in a click to your website.

Next, we have printer-friendly versions of pages. Believe it or not, these can be indexed as a unique URL, even though they are designed to allow a user to print the content without all of the fluff used in the page’s design. Again, this creates a duplicate content issue and sends a low-quality signal to search engines.

And last, you might find these with staging or test environments of pages. For example, we here at Rook Digital are big fans of Cornerstone by Themeco. This website builder allows us to quickly and easily deploy client websites that they can update without knowing complex code. Often, we find a Cornerstone URL display as an indexable page. This would be an example of a test environment. Still, others might be your staging site URL being submitted via an XML sitemap and your entire website being duplicated in Search Console. That’s a big problem, especially if you don’t know about it.

Google’s Recommendations for Addressing Unwanted Indexed URLs

So, what can you do about these unwanted indexed URLs? Google has a few straightforward guidelines for handling this issue. Let’s explore those options.

Using Noindex Tags

A no-index tag signals crawlers that you do not want this page indexed by Google. Why does that matter? Well, there’s a big difference between a directive and a suggestion. Since the Google Penguin update in 2012, Digital Marketers have used canonical tags to tell Google to ignore known duplicate content. This has long been considered the best practice. Now, we’re learning this is viewed as a suggestion, not a directive. Suggestions are hints, but directives must be followed. A noindex tag is a directive, and Google will ensure that pages marked this way are not indexed.

Use Your Robots.txt

Your robots.txt file is a key file listed on your website and instructs crawlers on how to behave and treat content on your website. If you have specific URLs, directories, or even content strings (e.g., add-to-cart query parameters, tracking parameters, testing environments, etc.) that you don’t want to be indexed, you can block them right here, and search engines will listen.

Canonicalization

As I mentioned above, canonicalization has long been the go-to method of telling search engines that you understand there is duplicate content and that they should ignore it. While this is now known to be seen as a suggestion, it’s still important to utilize canonicalization (e.g., rel=“canonical”) as a stopgap to prevent the majority of these unwanted index URL issues.

Parameter Handling in Google Search Console

In Search Console, you can configure parameter settings to help ensure Google ignores query strings you don’t want them to index. This is an excellent backup to your robots.txt file and should be implemented if you find repetitious and pervasive unwanted indexed URL issues.

Best Practices for Preventing Unwanted Indexing

Now, let’s review what you can do to prevent those issues in the first place. There are several considerations, but like most things, you must treat this professionally and not lackadaisically.

Consistent URL Structures

Most people tend to throw up pages and posts halfhazardously. This approach leads to tremendous confusion and a lack of consistency that confuses webmasters and search engines alike. Starting with a plan and sticking with a consistent approach to URL structure will help search engines not only index content you want to be indexed but ignore content you don’t. 

Regular Audits

A professional digital marketer knows that you must regularly test and retest your website. Often overlooked, however, are audits on things we consider to be set and done. Search Console is often overlooked as a set-it-and-forget-it solution. You must periodically review your indexed URLs to identify unwanted indexed URLs and other issues holding your SEO initiatives back.

Avoiding Thin Content

We know about the issues with duplicate content, but another often ignored issue is thin content. I often hear people say they don’t want a ‘busy’ site. They often refer to the amount of content on a page. I learned early on to ignore those people. They are the ‘Vocal Majority’. They are either too close to a project or not a persuadable buyer, so their opinion is mute. We know that persuadable buyers have questions, and your content can help persuade them to buy both in the structure and language of the content by overcoming and eliminating objections they might have.

Your content needs to be both valuable and helpful. By doing this, you’re ensuring Google understands why they should index your content, and users will respond better, leading to more leads and sales.

Conclusion

Now that you understand unwanted indexed URLs and why they’re crushing your SEO progress, you need to act on the valuable tips and insights provided here. Some of this can seem very technical, and in truth, it is. That’s okay. The good news is that much of this can be managed easily using specialized SEO Plugins like RankMath SEO and a competent SEO agency like Rook Digital. If you have any questions or need additional help, schedule your Free Website Audit today, and we can help you find and understand how to clean up issues like these.