Adding a canonical tag to a duplicate page helps search engines understand which version of a page is the original and focuses the search engine’s ranking power on that page. The tag can be placed in the head of a page or in the HTTP response header. The best place for the tag is in the head of the page. The page’s head contains all the code between the head and head> tags.
Canonical tags are important to avoid duplicate content issues. Search engines will ignore pages with non-canonical content. They will also lower rankings if there are many pages with the same content. They also help content syndication. This type of content promotion helps bring more readers back to the original site. It also encourages responses to CTAs.
You should add the canonical tag to every page of your website. You can use absolute or relative URLs, but you should avoid protocol-relative URLs, which remove “http” or “https” from a URL. When used incorrectly, the canonical tag can create cross-references. This can lead to errors.
You can use a free tool to check the canonical tag of all your pages. You can also use a canonical tag plugin, such as Yoast SEO, to automate the process of adding canonical tags. If you are using a large website, manually adding canonical tags can be challenging. You may want to use a tool like Semrush Site Audit to check your canonical tags and fix any issues.
You should also use the canonical link to tell search engines which version of a page is the original. If the original page is not the page that you want Google to index, you can add a noindex, nofollow or nofollow-relative link. If you choose to use a nofollow-relative link, you will need to remove the meta robots tag. Googlebot may interpret the link as a soft 404 when it encounters it.
You should also check your canonical links for errors. If there are errors, they can be fixed by removing duplicate tags and removing the duplicate canonical URLs. It is important to make sure the canonical links on your website are 100% specific. This means that they point to the page you want to index. You should also not use other canonical links to point to the same page.
Canonical tags are important to improve overall ranking in Google Search. They help search engines understand the original content on a page and they also consolidate link equity from duplicate pages. If you use canonical tags correctly, you should not need to worry about duplicate content issues. In most cases, canonical tags are not difficult to implement. But, you need to follow a few best practices to make sure they work as effectively as possible.
You should also ensure that you add the canonical tag in the right place. You should place the canonical tag in the head of the page. You should also use lowercase URLs, avoid protocol-relative URLs, and make sure to use only one canonical tag per page. You should also be careful not to use the canonical tag in the same place as a noindex tag. This can lead to canonical chains.