Common failures
Where this usually goes wrong
The three we are called in to fix most often. If any of these describe your current setup, that is the first thing we would change.
Measurement
How you will know it is working
Agreed before we start, so progress is visible in the months before it shows up in revenue.
- Indexed vs submitted
- The gap between URLs in your sitemap and URLs Google has actually indexed. This is the number that moves first, and nothing else can move until it does.
- Weeks 2–4
- Crawl requests per day
- Rising crawl frequency in Search Console means the site got easier to read. Falling crawl on a growing site is the earliest warning of a structural problem.
- Weeks 3–6
- Pages with impressions
- How many distinct URLs earn at least one impression. It rises before positions do, which is what makes it useful early.
- Weeks 4–10