Hey everyone,
I wanted to share a fix I discovered after getting frustrated why one of my blog posts still wasn’t ranking on Google — even though I already optimized the title, headings, keywords, and meta description inside HubSpot.
What was happening:
The blog post looked fully optimized inside the editor, but the page was still not appearing in search results like I expected.
What I discovered and how I fixed it:
- I opened the Blog Settings → Advanced → and checked the canonical URL.
Turns out — HubSpot set the canonical URL pointing to ANOTHER blog post with similar topic.
So Google was treating my post like a duplicate content.
- I fixed the canonical URL and pointed it to itself (the exact URL of the blog I wanted to rank).
- I went to the SEO Recommendations tool inside HubSpot → ran a scan → and cleared remaining warnings like:
- missing internal links
- missing alt text
- long URL slug
- I connected the domain to Google Search Console directly through HubSpot → Settings → Integrations → Connected Apps.
After doing these steps, Google finally started crawling the page as a unique page (not a duplicate), and impressions started to appear in Search Console within a few days.
Hopefully this helps someone else dealing with the same hidden ranking issue. Sometimes everything inside the blog editor looks correct — but one tiny setting in canonical URL can block your page from ranking.
Best,
Kathlyn Buenafe
Thank you very much for sharing what worked for you. If you can leave a comment or reply here, I can get this post accepted as a solution (I cannot accept the original post). Thanks again! – Jaycee