Check whether important pages can be reached
Open priority URLs as a visitor, then inspect their response status, internal links, robots directives and canonical tags. Review robots.txt and the XML sitemap for accidental blocks, outdated paths or URLs that should not be indexed. A sitemap helps discovery but does not guarantee indexing.
Review duplicates and redirects
Choose one preferred URL for each page. Check that HTTP/HTTPS, host variants, trailing-slash variants and legacy paths resolve consistently. Redirect retired URLs to the closest useful replacement, not every missing page to the homepage.
Prioritise by impact
Fix widespread access problems before minor wording details. Compare mobile and desktop page behavior, page templates, broken assets and core page journeys. Keep a record of the issue, evidence, owner and retest result. Use Search Console's indexing reports as one signal, not as a complete quality score.