Run an indexability audit before you spend a dollar on backlinks

Link building is expensive. Whether you're paying for guest posts, sponsoring a newsletter mention, or running a digital PR campaign, every dollar assumes that the linked-to URL is actually in Google's index and capable of receiving link equity. The audit takes 30 seconds and catches the disaster cases.

What kills link equity before it arrives

• noindex meta tag on the target page — link equity goes nowhere.
• Canonical pointing to a different URL — equity flows to the canonical, not your intended page.
• Robots.txt block — Google never crawls the page, so it never reads the link signal.
• Page redirects — equity passes through but loses a small amount per hop.
• The page is in "Crawled, currently not indexed" — Google has the link signal but doesn't trust the page enough to rank it.

The 30-second pre-buy check

1. Paste the target URL into IndexerNow's Audit tab.
2. Confirm: 200 status, self-canonical, indexable robots meta, in-index per URL Inspection.
3. If any of those fail, fix before buying the link.

Re-audit after the link goes live

Once the link is published, push the target page through the Indexing API. This nudges Google to re-crawl and pick up the new link signal sooner. Combine with a Status check a week later to confirm the page's index position has updated.