Can you help me decide whether to fix page speed or indexation first?

Yes — in most cases, fix indexation first, then page speed.

Why indexation usually comes first

If pages aren’t indexable, all the speed work in the world won’t help those pages rank or even appear in search results. So the priority is:

1. Make sure important pages can be crawled and indexed

   • No accidental noindex
   • Correct robots.txt rules
   • Canonicals pointing to the right URLs
   • No soft 404s or redirect chains
   • Sitemap includes the right URLs

2. Then improve page speed

   • Speed helps rankings, UX, and conversion
   • It matters more once the pages are actually indexable and eligible to rank

When speed might come first

If indexation is already fine and the site is:

• Extremely slow
• Hitting poor Core Web Vitals
• Causing crawl inefficiency because of heavy JS or slow responses

then speed can be the higher priority.

Simple rule of thumb

• Pages not indexed = fix indexation
• Pages indexed but underperforming = improve speed
• Both broken = fix indexation first, unless speed is blocking crawling at scale

Best order in practice

1. Technical indexation audit
2. Fix critical crawl/indexation issues
3. Speed optimization on key templates/pages
4. Recheck in Search Console and analytics

If you want, I can give you a quick decision framework based on your site type and current symptoms.