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What are canonical? A guide for better SEO(2024)
Search engine optimization is all about making your website rank better in search results. One of the key factors that search engines consider are content and quality. What if your website has similar content on multiple pages , this would lead to duplicate content issues. It is here that the canonical url acts as a weapon .
What is a canonical URL ?
Canonical Url is the preferred page for indexing over a group of pages with similar or identical content. It basically indicates to the search engine which page is considered as the master page and finally google indexes this master page.
Let us see an example:
Suppose you have two urls
/shoes/black (for black color option)
/shoes/?color=black (back color with query parameter)
Both urls tend to give the same content , but we need to mention only one url for indexing so that it ranks. Here we can make /shoes/black as canonical url for both the pages so that it is the only url submitted for ranking
Why are canonical URLs important?
Duplicate content can negatively impact your ranking in many ways
- Wasted crawl budget: Search engines have a very limited crawling budget. If we have two pages with duplicate content , search engines spend more time crawling for the same content.
- Ranking confusion : Search engine will not know which content to rank higher as result both pages will suffer ranking
- User experience : Poor user user experience , has user might stumble on duplicate content , leading to frustration
Benefit of using canonical url :
- Consolidation of link juice : links to various duplicate pages gets combined and directed towards one master page , increasing seo power
- Improve efficiency : search engine can crawl your website more efficiently and focus more on relevant pages
How to set canonical URLs?
The canonical url is set with the help of link tag <link> in the <head> .
<head>
<link rel=”canonical” href=”https://example.com/canonical-page/” />
</head>
Now google would consider this link as master url and rank it on search result
Best practice for canonical Url
Canonical urls seem to be more complex and technical topics . However, the majority of users need to know only a handful of techniques.
- Self referencing canonical tags:
Self referencing canonical url is the one that points to its own page . For example you have a page example.com/hello . If the canonical url is
<link rel=”canonical” href=”https://example.com/hello/” />
Then it is a self referencing canonical url .
Self-referencing canonical urls is the most easy and powerful technique . it is actually preferred by google’s John muller
- Excluding non-canonical url
Google says we need to index only canonical urls because if present google would see it as suggested canonical.
One way to check this to run site audit on AHref or semrush
Canonical urls are the most powerful seo tool which one can use to evade duplicate content issues and consolidate link juice . Take advantage of canonical url to see your website rank climb on search engine
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