HubSpot SEO covers three jobs: the SEO recommendations that flag issues on your pages and posts, canonical URL settings for duplicate content, and the robots.txt file and noindex tags that keep content out of search. All three are available on every HubSpot product and plan as of October 2026.
Here's the catch. HubSpot gives you two ways to hide a page, robots.txt and a noindex meta tag, and says plainly that you shouldn't combine them. If robots.txt blocks a page, search engines can't crawl it, so they never see the noindex tag and the page can stay in results. Robots.txt is for content that hasn't been indexed yet. Noindex is for content that already has.
How HubSpot sorts SEO recommendations
Recommendations are organised by their impact on your site's SEO, how technically difficult they are to fix, and the suggested role of the person fixing them. Anything with a Technical Difficulty of High may need a developer. HubSpot also points out that search engines decide what shows in results, so they may display a different title or description from the one you set.
| Category | Examples of what HubSpot flags |
|---|---|
| Accessibility | Missing image alt text, a missing or wrong lang attribute, meta refresh tags |
| Crawling and Indexing | Pages blocked by robots.txt, invalid canonical links, broken pages, hreflang errors, vague anchor text |
| Mobile Experience | Tap targets under 48 pixels by 48 pixels, a missing viewport tag |
| On-Page SEO | Title and meta description, blog content length |
| Performance | Images uploaded too large and resized in the editor |
| Security | Pages or resources loading over HTTP, target blank links without noopener |
| User Experience | Broken links, broken resources, stretched images |
The recommendations worth knowing about
A few of these aren't what you'd guess. The content length check only scans blog posts, never pages, and it counts the blog title and author along with the body. HubSpot's rule of thumb is at least 300 words, but it also tells you to look at what ranks for your topic and match that depth. The count is most accurate in languages that use a Latin alphabet.
Some images should have blank alt text. Icons that only separate parts of a page carry no meaning, so HubSpot asks you to review blank alt text and confirm it's intentional, not missing.
Broken links get grouped: if the same broken URL appears several times on one page, it shows once in the recommendations. And blog listing pages can trigger a false duplicate content alert, so don't panic if one shows up.
On security, HubSpot provisions a standard SAN SSL certificate through DigiCert automatically when you connect a domain. If your site is hosted, or partly hosted, somewhere else, you'll need a certificate from an external provider. Pages using HTTPS have been a Google ranking factor since 2014.
When HubSpot marks a canonical link invalid
By default, every new page and blog post is set as its own canonical URL, which HubSpot recommends. Blog listing pages don't get canonical URLs by default, so search engines can find the later pages in the series. HubSpot marks a canonical link invalid if any of these is true:
- There's more than one canonical link.
- The canonical link isn't a valid URL.
- It's a relative URL, not a full one.
- It points to a page for a different region or language.
- It points to a different domain.
- It points to the site's root.
To change the defaults, go to settings, then Content, then Pages, and open the SEO & Crawlers tab. If you pick Don't add canonical URLs to any pages or blog posts, you'll have to set every one by hand. If you set each blog listing page's canonical to the first page in its series, search engines may not find the pages after it.
To set one page's canonical, open it in the content editor, click Settings, then Advanced, and fill in Customize canonical URL. A canonical set on the page beats your site-wide setting. Then click Publish or Update. The same Settings menu is where you'll manage titles and URLs when publishing posts on the HubSpot blog.
Keeping content out of search results
| Method | Use it when | Where it lives |
|---|---|---|
| Robots.txt Disallow | The content hasn't been indexed yet | Settings, Content, Pages, SEO & Crawlers tab |
| Noindex meta tag | The content is already in search results | Page Settings, Advanced, Head HTML field |
Robots.txt only works for content on a domain connected to HubSpot. Content on HubSpot system domains containing hs-sites is always set as noindex. You can edit one robots.txt for all connected domains or override it for a single domain. Each blocked page gets a line such as Disallow: /welcome. If you use HubSpot's site search module, add HubSpotContentSearchBot as its own user-agent so the search feature can still crawl your pages.
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To noindex a page or post:
- Open the page, landing page or blog post and click Settings in the top right.
- Click Advanced in the left sidebar.
- In Additional code snippets, add the robots noindex meta tag to the Head HTML field.
- Close the dialog and click Update or Publish.
Knowledge base articles work the same way, except the option is called Advanced Options. If the page still shows up after a while, check three things: the page is public, since private or password-protected pages can't be crawled; the tag is saved and rendering in the live source; and no Disallow rule in robots.txt is blocking it. For Google, the Removals Tool in Search Console speeds things up.
My verdict on HubSpot SEO
I'd work through the recommendations by impact, fix canonical and broken link issues first, and leave the High difficulty items for a developer. Leave the canonical defaults alone unless you know why you're changing them. Skip robots.txt for anything that's already indexed, and never use it with noindex on the same page. If you're weighing which edition to buy for your content, my guide to what each HubSpot Marketing Hub edition includes sets that out.
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Frequently asked questions
Are HubSpot SEO recommendations free?
Yes. SEO recommendations, canonical URL settings and the robots.txt and noindex options are available on all HubSpot products and plans.
Should I use robots.txt and noindex together in HubSpot?
No. HubSpot says the two shouldn't be combined, because a robots.txt block stops search engines seeing the noindex tag.
Does the HubSpot word count check pages?
No. The content length check scans blog posts only, and it counts the title and author as well as the body.
Why is my HubSpot canonical URL marked invalid?
It may be relative, duplicated, not a valid URL, or point to another domain, the site's root, or a page in a different region or language.
Why does my blog listing page show a duplicate content alert?
Blog listing pages may trigger a false duplicate content alert in HubSpot's SEO recommendations.
