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Validate an external URL in the SEO tool

Last updated: June 28, 2023

Available with any of the following subscriptions, except where noted:

Marketing Hub Professional, Enterprise
CMS Hub Professional, Enterprise
Legacy Marketing Hub Basic

When attaching an external page to a topic or subtopic, the SEO tool will automatically validate the URL to track internal and inbound links. This process should finish within 20 seconds. If your external URL doesn't validate within that time, you may need to take additional action based on the validation status message.

You may receive one of these error responses when validating an external URL in the SEO tool:
  • Unverified: there's a temporary issue crawling your external page. Check back again in five minutes to see if this error has been resolved.
  • Bad HTTP Status: your external URL returned an error response, usually a 404 error. To resolve the issue, check the DNS provider and content management system (CMS) where your external page is hosted.
  • Validation error: the tool is unable to crawl your external URL. Removing and re-adding this external page URL to your topic usually resolves this error. If you continue to see this error, reach out to HubSpot Support.
  • SSL error: there's an issue with the SSL certificate for your website. To resolve this issue, check with your SSL certificate provider.
  • Blocked by 403: additional security or authentication is preventing the SEO tool from crawling your external page. 
  • Non Canonical URL: your external URL does not match the canonical URL for that page. To resolve this error, click Replace with canonical URL.
If your external URL doesn't return a validation status after five minutes, reach out to HubSpot Support.
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