Workflow guide · 4 minute read
Export an SEO fix list from a crawl
Running a crawl is the easy part. The slow part is deciding what matters, explaining it, and turning hundreds of rows into work someone can actually pick up. This workflow gets you from crawl to focused handoff without rebuilding the audit in a second spreadsheet.
23-second workflow
Watch the crawl become a fix list.
The demo uses Lil Robots' public fixture pages, so every issue is deliberate and safe to reproduce.
Why use this workflow
Raw crawl exports are comprehensive, but comprehensiveness is not the same as usefulness. They mix urgent failures with intentional signals, duplicate the same template problem across many URLs, and leave the recipient to translate crawler language into a decision.
The pain this removes
No copy-pasting findings into a new sheet, no vague “please fix SEO” ticket, and no forcing a developer or client to work out what a crawler label means before they can start.
Use it before a launch, during a migration, after a template change, or whenever an audit needs to become an accountable list of fixes rather than a report that gets filed away.
What happens in the demo
Run the crawl
The fixture site is intentionally small and messy, so the crawl finishes quickly while still producing realistic audit findings.
Open 4xx Client Errors
Broken destinations are usually worth checking first because they interrupt users, internal links, and launch QA.
Review Canonical points elsewhere
A canonical can quietly tell search engines to credit a different URL. That may be intentional, or it may erase the page you meant to rank.
Check Missing titles
Missing titles often come from template or publishing gaps. One fix can clean up an entire page type.
Inspect Redirect chains
Chains add avoidable hops and make migrations harder to reason about. Internal links should usually point at the final destination.
Export the fix list
The export turns findings into a handoff with issue, severity, affected URL, recommended fix, and supporting detail.
What to check first
The demo moves from hard failures to signals that need judgment. That order keeps obvious breakage visible without pretending every warning has the same impact.
| Issue | Why it matters | First question |
|---|---|---|
| 4xx client errors | Users and crawlers reach a dead end. | Is the URL supposed to exist, redirect, or be removed from internal links? |
| Canonical conflicts | Ranking signals may be assigned to the wrong URL. | Does the canonical match the page you want indexed? |
| Missing titles | Search snippets and page intent lose a primary signal. | Is this one page or a shared template problem? |
| Redirect chains | Every extra hop adds fragility and obscures the final target. | Can internal links point directly to the final 200 URL? |
Export and hand off
Open Actions, choose Export fix list (.csv), and save the file. The useful context travels with each row:
- Issue and severity
- Give the recipient a fast way to sort impact and urgency.
- Where
- Identify the affected page or resource without another lookup.
- Source and destination
- Keep link and redirect relationships attached to the finding.
- Fix
- Provide a practical next action instead of making the recipient interpret crawler jargon.
- Details
- Preserve evidence such as status code or indexing reason for verification.
Safe sample data generated from the same fixture site used in the video.
Before you act on every row
A crawler reports signals; it cannot know the intent behind every page. A noindex may be deliberate. A cross-domain canonical may be correct. A redirect may exist for a campaign or migration reason. Confirm intent, group repeated template issues, assign an owner, and verify the affected URLs again after the fix ships.
A good handoff answers four things
- What is wrong?
- Where does it happen?
- Why does it matter?
- What should change next?