What the H!@# is a Canonical Tag? First off, it is pronounced [kuh-non-i-kuhl] tag and it helps eliminate duplicate content on your site in the eyes of search engines. It is easy to implement, accepted by all the major search engines and can help your site in the rankings.
In its simplest form, a canonical tag tells the search engines which page to display in place of similar pages (like a 301 redirect), but without actually redirecting the user to the new page. When there are multiple versions of the same page/URL (example.com, www.example.com, www.example.com/) they are all considered the same in the eyes of the engines, which means the engines don’t know which URL to display in their indexes. This in turn can affect your pages’ search engine rankings and traffic to your site (something no one wants).
To prevent your site from potentially losing rankings and positions, simply add a canonical tag to the duplicate pages. Like other meta attributes, it is added in the <head> of your page’s code. You will want to add the canonical tag to all of the duplicate pages, but not the preferred page’s URL. Here is an example of code that will be added to the duplicate pages that you will not want indexed:
Add <link rel=”canonical” href=” www.example.com> inside the <head> section of the duplicate content URLs:
- http://www.example.com/
- example.com/
- www.example.com/
- http://www.example.com
And by adding that simple line of code into the header of the duplicate pages, the search engines will understand that the duplicate pages all should be pointed to the preferred canonical URL. You can check your site’s duplicate content by going into Webmaster Tools and adding in canonical tags where appropriate. With these simple instructions and examples, start adding your own canonical tag today!
