Contents
What are canonical links in 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 duplicate links mean?
Duplicate content is content that appears on the Internet in more than one place. That “one place” is defined as a location with a unique website address (URL) – so, if the same content appears at more than one web address, you’ve got duplicate content.
Why are canonical links important?
The canonical tag appears as: rel=”canonical”. The tag is important because search engines regularly crawl websites to look for information to help them decide how to rank pages and posts. It can’t decide which page should rank, so the two pages cannibalize the ranking potential of the other.
What is meant by canonical URL?
Canonical URL: A canonical URL is the URL of the page that Google thinks is most representative from a set of duplicate pages on your site. For example, if you have URLs for the same page ( example.com?dress=1234 and example.com/dresses/1234 ), Google chooses one as canonical.
What is the purpose of a canonical link?
Often referred to as rel=”canonical,” canonical tags are a way of telling the search engines that a specified URL is the master copy of a page. They allow you to specify the canonical URL for a page. A canonical link allows webmasters to prevent duplicate content issues by specifying the “canonical” or “preferred” version of a web page.
When do you use a canonical URL for a website?
Use canonicals to specify the URL that you want the search engines to rank. When you have duplicate or near-identical pages on your site, there is a chance that the individual URLs could earn links from external sources. Use canonical URLs to consolidate the link signals from multiple pages into a single URL that you specify.
Where do I find the canonical link meta tag?
Head back to the Search Engine Optimizations section on the Catalog page and find the ‘Use Canonical Link Meta Tag For Categories’ option. Make sure that this is set to no so you will be able to manually specify the canonical URL for categories.
When to not canonicalize pages in different languages?
Canonicalize pages in different languages to the primary page for that language. If you publish multiple versions of your pages/content in different languages, don’t canonicalize pages in, say, German to pages in English. Canonical German pages to the main page written in German even if you would consider the English version your primary page.