topic Re: Google not indexing knowledge base pages in Knowledge Base Tool

Google not indexing knowledge base pages

AStewartITI — Mon, 29 Jan 2024 16:10:32 GMT

We launched our knowledge base in June and submitted a site map to Google. Months later search console was still showing that no pages were indexed. So we spoke to support and talked it through. They suggested we remove the No Index tags from all the pages and resubmit the site map to Google.

We did that in September and got three out of 121 knowledge base pages indexed - nothing else.

I've subsequently submitted the site map again in December and all my pages are still sitting on Search Console as 'Crawled - Not Indexed', but pending. Also, I now have 379 pages showing as 'Excluded by noindex tag' (strings of letters and digits) and I suppose these are search results pages??

I'm completely stuck now. I'm not an SEO expert but I've learned a lot since June and tried everything I can think of. I need HubSpot Knowledge Base specific SEO help. Any ideas?

Re: Google not indexing knowledge base pages

Jnix284 — Mon, 29 Jan 2024 16:28:29 GMT

@AStewartITI "Crawled - Not Indexed" simply means that Google crawled the pages and chose not to include them in the index.

There really isn't anything further you can do via GSC to resolve this, you would need to improve the content on those pages to make it something that would be indexed.

There's no guarantee pages will be indexed and there's nothing wrong with your sitemap.

For the 379 pages that say "Exluded by noindex tag", it sounds like those are most likely search results pages which is expected - not sure why you have so many without seeing an example.

Make sure the content your creating is most relevant for your user first, this is the best way to optimize for SEO.

Hope this helps clarify!

Re: Google not indexing knowledge base pages

AStewartITI — Mon, 29 Jan 2024 16:44:38 GMT

I feel like the content is good. But a SemRush audit report is saying that a number of pages have a low text to HTML ratio. Scripts and styles are determined by the HubSpot template to some degree. I don't want to take out the call out boxes and formatting, but I would if I thought it would make a difference.

Re: Google not indexing knowledge base pages

Jnix284 — Mon, 29 Jan 2024 17:41:06 GMT

@AStewartITI It definitely sounds like it could be the amount of text on the page - not that the content itself isn't good, but there just isn't enough of it (especially if it has a low text to HTML ratio).

If you use video content, you can include transcripts via text that can help improve the ratio, plus help with accessibility.

Do you mind sharing an example of a page that isn't indexed and also triggers the low text to HTML ratio in SEMrush?

Re: Google not indexing knowledge base pages

AStewartITI — Tue, 30 Jan 2024 09:28:07 GMT

Thanks Jennifer. This is all helpful.

My articles on are all practical help about trading between Ireland and Northern Ireland. Some of them are quite short because they answer a very particular question, but I thought that was a reason that a HubSpot knowledge base was the right way to share the info.

Here are links to a couple of the pages on my knowledge base: Article: The Duty Reimbursement Scheme (intertradeireland.com)

Article: A guide to e-commerce and digital services (intertradeireland.com)

Re: Google not indexing knowledge base pages

Jnix284 — Tue, 30 Jan 2024 12:37:24 GMT

You're welcome @AStewartITI, thanks for sharing the articles.

They look to be very detailed and specific, which is exactly what the knowledge base is for.

As far as content, the best thing that I can recommend is to create/identify supporting content on your website and include links between your website and specific articles in the knowledge base.

If you can show Google that the information in the articles is directly tied to the content on your website, it will help pick up more pages for indexing.

The larger issue here is the URL and domain structure.

Your website URL is:

https://intertradeireland.com/

and the knowledge base URL is:

https://crossbordertradehub.intertradeireland.com/

Because you have the knowledge base on a subdomain (crossbordertradehub) Google is treating it as an entirely separate website and is forcing it to rank independently.

Subdomains are helpful for organizing enterprise websites (think HubSpot with their knowledge base, community, etc.) and because they are all so well connected, Google recognizes that they all support the primary domain.

In your case, there is likely not enough authority for your domain to have this type of pull - the best thing you could do to improve the indexing for the knowledge base would be to remove the subdomain and move it over to your primary domain like this:

https://intertradeireland.com/crossbordertradehub/article-name-here

When you change the domain in HubSpot, it will automatically create the necessary redirects between the old URLs and the new URLs.

For knowledge base and blog, I always recommend keeping it on the same domain as the website for this reason.

I hope this helps!

Re: Google not indexing knowledge base pages

AStewartITI — Tue, 30 Jan 2024 13:05:58 GMT

That's really helpful. Thanks so much!

Amy

Re: Google not indexing knowledge base pages

Jnix284 — Tue, 30 Jan 2024 13:29:42 GMT

You're welcome Amy, happy to help!