If the same webpage has multiple URLs, it can create conflicting signals for a search engine. This inconsistency can hurt your website’s visibility without you even knowing. You can fix this issue with canonical tags.
A canonical tag tells a search engine which URL is to be considered the “primary” URL. This is a very small action, but a critical part of having a tidy and optimised website.
Without a canonical tag, your content might even be competing against itself in search indexing, link equity could be dispersed across multiple URLs, and performance metrics could lose weight.
Correctly utilising canonical tags will combine SEO value, alleviate indexing conflicts, and, ultimately, allow your best-ranking pages to serve your users in a timely and efficient manner.
A canonical tag, or canonical link, is a small amount of code which you should put in the head area of a webpage. The tag is used to tell search engines what version of a webpage is the primary version.
There are times when the same content can exist on more than one URL, and you may not even be aware of it. For example, you may have a product page that is exposed to the internet under several categories or search filters, which look like separate product pages to a search engine, but the content is the same.
When search engines come across duplicate content, they may be unsure of which version to display in search results. That is where the canonical tag comes to the rescue; the tag points to the original or main webpage so that the search engine knows which to highlight.
Duplicate content can cause confusion for search engines. When they see duplicate content across various pages, they will have to select a page to show in search results, which may not be your intended page. Duplicate content can also decrease link value by splitting it across pages and diminishing the authority of your content.
Canonical tags resolve these situations quietly and effectively. Canonical tags help search engines understand your content better. The better they understand your content, the better your chances of appearing correctly in search queries. They also help create fresh site architecture and resolve unintended SEO fiascoes as your site grows.
The primary function of a canonical tag is to unambiguously identify the designated main version of a page. If you have five pages that are all essentially the same, the canonical tag informs search engines that “This is the one that matters.”This keeps everything tidy and prevents the engine from indexing and ranking multiple versions of the same content.
Imagine that you have three different URLs that all link to the same product, but those URLs have been linked by separate websites. Without a canonical tag, the strength of those backlinks is diluted.
When you tell search engines that the three pages are canonical to one main URL, the overall value will all flow to the main URL. This strengthens that page’s rankings in search engines and helps improve overall technical SEO performance.
If you have a website with filters, categories, or the ability to search for products, chances are you already have duplicate content and don’t even know it. A person could see the same product in different ways, creating different URLs for the same page.
Canonical tags in SEO help with duplicate content and keep your SEO efforts intact. This also works out for blogs when one blog post could be tagged as a few things or under a few different topics.
Also Read: A Complete List of Points to Include in the Technical SEO Audit
Whether or not the content on your page is unique, it is still a good idea to utilise a canonical tag that points back to itself, which is referred to as a self-referencing canonical.
It is an easy practice that communicates to search engines, “This is the original version of the page and there are no duplicates.” It gives you peace of mind regarding your content and makes certain that nothing gets misplaced or lost on the web.
What you should understand is that a canonical tag does not take a visitor from one page to another page. Users can view whatever page they click on. The canonical tag is only for search engines, and it lets them know, without any fanfare, that the main content lives here.
This is useful in situations when you want to serve different versions of your pages to users, for example, a printer-friendly version, or pages that contain tracking codes, but you only want to see one of those pages in the search results.
Search engines can only crawl your site for a certain amount of time. If you have a lot of duplicate pages, it can slow things down. Canonical tags allow search engines to find and index your most preferred page.
This means that the pages that you want to rank get indexed faster and more frequently, which is good for your visibility and an important aspect of good technical SEO.
It’s so simple to add a canonical tag to your page, literally one line of code, but it can have a big impact. It can help eliminate an SEO mistake, improve your site’s rankings, and allow you to manage your site more effectively, without making any big changes. Sometimes, it is one of those small steps that will lead to great benefits over time.
Canonical tags may appear small, but they are a fundamental part to assuring your website is lean, mean and search engine friendly. When executed correctly, they are a benefit to the long-term health of your site and a productive SEO performance as your content matures.
For companies that want to keep and grow an advantage in a competitive digital environment, every technical aspect is important. That’s where a trusted technical SEO services company comes in.
We at RepIndia take care of these essential behind-the-scenes optimisations to make sure your website performs at its best, so you can focus on what you do best, growing your brand.
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