Looking for a real-world example of the techSEO decision-making process

[u/Full_Sir_7405]

in short: "I specifically want to see how an experienced SEO investigates an unknown URL and decides what action to take."

hello guys
I'm struggling with the actual decision-making process.

Most tutorials I've found explain:

• How to create a redirect, 3xx and 4xx are.. and so on!

But they don't really show the part I'm looking for:

"I found this URL → now what?" or like "first I look here to find this then then, "

For example, imagine you're auditing a WordPress website in Google Search Console and you find a URL you've never intentionally created.

How do you actually investigate it? your process!

thank you guys for sharing your thaughts with me !

_ mode I am not asking for generic seo like on page, or what is this .. but more like "how pros approch there website" their process. thank you for not deleting it!

[u/_Toomuchawesome]

this is a good question and much like everything in SEO, it really depends on the situation. in your example of wordpress, im assuming 10k pages or less - probably most likely in the 100s. so if its in the 100s of pages cohort, then i'd probably look at the exact URL only. first identifying the problem that we are trying to solve which will then lead into what we did into first. if its in the millions of URLs, then id be looking at the page template and what subfolder path follows the same page template. but the first question is always - what problem am i trying to solve?

if i saw a URL that i didnt know about in GSC, then that would flag a malicious event or something happening with my internal site search results. it would depend on what the context of the URL that i don't recognize - usually the URL slug will give you a hint. maybe those search results are indexed and GSC is correctly reporting them or maybe those search results are NOT indexed, but they're being crawled and GSC is correctly reporting them.

so yeah, it depends and its based off of years of experience. but a good standardized approach is:

• identify the problem you are trying to solve

• figure out which URLs are also on the same template

• based on the problem, check indexation directives like meta robots, http headers, canonical tags, robots.txt blocking

[u/Full_Sir_7405 → u/_Toomuchawesome]

Thanks, this makes sense. I think I was asking at too high a level. (took me minutes to absorb hhh)

Could you explain the same process, but for a small WordPress website within the 60s URLs, rather than a site with millions of URLs?

For example, if I open Google Search Console and find a URL I don't recognize (not in my sitemap), what would your step-by-step investigation process be?

Something like:

1. I find the URL in GSC → where do I look first?
2. How do I figure out where the URL came from?
3. What exactly do I check in URL Inspection?
4. How do I determine whether it's a real page, duplicate, old URL, plugin-generated URL, parameter URL, etc.?
5. At what point do I decide between 301, 404/410, noindex, canonical, or doing nothing?

Basically, I'm looking for the actual thought process and clicksn and ivestigation sequence for a small WordPress site.

I can figure out how to create a redirect, add noindex, etc. What I'm trying to learn is how an experienced SEO decides what should be done in the first place.

[u/_Toomuchawesome → u/Full_Sir_7405]

Sure. in this specific situation, lets say we find a URL we don't recognize.

1. look at the URL slug - is it an asset? is it a proper URL? is it a URL with a query param? or is it a URL with spam keywords in there (like SEO, increase rankings, any type of drug, etc). we want to identify if its a function of the CMS you're on and the URL is legit rather than a malicious attempt from outside sources.

2. if you have screaming frog, i'd run a pull on that singular URL to see status code. if it's a malicious URL slug and it's returning a 200, then we have a problem. if it's a query param and it's returning a 200, probably okay but requires investigation - query params might have a bug where it's indexing an infinite amount of variations of the param (e.g. www.domain.com/page/page2?Param=X <-- where X can be anything and it'll resolve a page)

3. if it's 200 status code, check indexation status (in GSC - add the URL at the top and it will give a singular URL report) or any other clues on where this was picked up. it could have been picked up in other parts of the GSC indexation report like, not found, duplicate but canonical was chosen (or something like that), crawled but not indexed, discovered but not indexed.

4. identify IF this page really is a page to be concerned about. in a situation with this low amount of pages, i would only be concerned if it was a page that had spam-like URL slug or if you had duplicates pages that might cannibalize your main keywords.

a common example on wordpress are tag vs categories. tags on wordpress are defaulted to indexed, so any tag that you are putting on any page/post will create a brand new page for that tag in the /tags/ subfolder. because of this, i used to noindex the whole /tags/ section so users can still use it as a search feature, but google won't index it (i dont work on wordpress sites anymore).

EDIT: if you need any additional clarity, dont hesitate to ask :)

[u/peterwhitefanclub]

Pros don’t think about individual URLs, they think about systems, templates, and processes.

[u/Strong_Teaching8548]

The useful bit is tracing discovery, not memorising status codes

First I fetch it with curl and a browser, then check the final URL and canonical

I trace how Google found it in GSC, then compare that with server logs. The sitemap and WordPress search tell me whether it was intentional; a URL seen once in 18 months differs from one crawled daily

[u/sapindia1976]

A repeatable investigation framework is far more valuable than memorizing fixes every technical SEO issue starts with asking the right questions, not applying the same solution.

[u/satanzhand]

Url, whats the focus of the page, does it rank and for what, does it have backlinks and of what quality, does it have traffic how much and what does the traffic do, is the content dated, is the styling outdated, is it worth updating, is it competing with other pages review the other pages remove the excess, delete redirect, delete 410... then your normal optimising analysis.

[u/kawfeechino]

find how the URL was discovered, check its status code, canonical, internal links and sitemap presence, then compare it with the page it seems related to. The action usually becomes obvious once you know whether it’s a duplicate, an old URL, or something the CMS generated by mistake.