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How do I add a canonical tag to a sitemap?
- General guidelines.
- Use a rel=”canonical” link tag.
- Use a rel=”canonical” HTTP header.
- Use a sitemap.
- Use 301 redirects for retired URLs.
What is a self referencing canonical tag?
What is a self-referential canonical tag? A self-referential canonical tag is a tag that is defined on the main version of the page; irrespective of duplicate pages elsewhere. This means, even if your page does not have other similar pages with duplicate content, you still put a canonical tag on that page.
Is canonical tag important for SEO?
A canonical tag (aka “rel canonical”) is a way of telling search engines that a specific URL represents the master copy of a page. Using the canonical tag prevents problems caused by identical or “duplicate” content appearing on multiple URLs.
What does it mean when a website has a canonical tag?
What is a canonical tag? A canonical tag (aka “rel canonical”) is a way of telling search engines that a specific URL represents the master copy of a page. Using the canonical tag prevents problems caused by identical or “duplicate” content appearing on multiple URLs.
What’s the mistake of pointing the canonical tag at?
A common mistake is to point the canonical at a URL that is either blocked by robots.txt, or is set to “noindex”. This can send mixed and confusing signals to search engines. A few common ways to inspect and audit your canonical tags are below.
Canonical tags should be referenced using absolute URLs, rather than relative, to ensure that they are properly interpreted. That means you should be using:
When to use lowercase or uppercase URLs for Canonical tags?
Since Google may treat uppercase and lowercase URLs as two different URLs, you want to first make sure to force lowercase URLs on your server and then use lowercase URLs for your canonical tags. If you switched over to SSL, make sure that you don’t declare any non-SSL (i.e., HTTP) URLs in your canonical tags.