You may have spent time in SEO or web development. Chances are you’ve seen canonical URLs. But if you’re anyone else, like a small business owner, hobby blogger, or curious reader, you’ve likely never heard the term. The term isn’t about religion or scripture. In this context, “canonical” means accepted as accurate. It is also authoritative.” A URL is the web address of any unique resource, like a website or PDF. It stands for “Uniform Resource Locator”. Many web resources educate about canonical URLs. But most are full of technical jargon and code. This makes it hard to understand. The problem is the importance of canonical URLs.
As a website grows and gains more content, it can be tricky to prevent pages from becoming duplicates. They can become near-duplicates of each other. This duplicate content can cause severe issues for your web presence. You have two very similar pages. Both qualify to rank for a keyword. But, a search engine must know which URL to send traffic to. You can now select a canonical URL to resolve the issue and boost your site’s SEO. You can use it in the code of your duplicate pages. This ensures that your preferred URL gets search traffic.
Although their meaning is not the same, the following terms are often used to refer to the canonical URL:
- canonical tag
- canonical link
- rel canonical
- rel=”canonical”
For consistency, we will call the canonical HTML element the canonical URL.
What Are Canonical URLs?
They were first introduced in 2009 at the Search Marketing Expo. Canonical URLs are a way to inform search engines that similar URLs are identical. You may have products or content on many URLs (or websites). You can have this duplicate content on your site without harming your rankings. This is if you use canonical URLs.
The idea behind canonical URLs is easy to understand. If you have many versions of the same content, pick one “canonical” version. Then, you point the search engines at it. When you do this, it fixes the duplicate content problem. Search engines don’t know which website version to show. Instead, search engines find the canonical URL. They send traffic to that site. This can improve your search rankings.
Technical Code-based Solution
A canonical URL is a technical, code-based solution for duplicate content. You might have a page or A canonical URL, which is a technical, code-based solution for duplicate content. You might have a page or product that exists under two URLs, like these two examples:
If you want one of these URLs to rank for search engines (and you should), you can use a canonical URL to tell search engines which one to use. You do this by adding some code to your website’s HTML, which we will explain in more depth later in this article. Many plugins for your website’s content management system have built-in options. For example, Yoast. They can add the canonical URLs to each of your unique pages.
E-commerce websites often have duplicate content issues. This is because they have products in many categories with different URLs for the same product. Choosing one as the canonical URL tells Google and other search engines which to show in search results.
Choose a good canonical URL for each set of similar URLs. This improves your site’s search engine optimization. It discloses the authorized version to the search engine immediately. Search engines will count all the links pointing at the different versions of your URL as links to the canonical version. 301 redirects can also help tell search engines which content is your preferred version. Setting a canonical URL is like a 301 redirect but without the actual redirecting.
How Do I Know When to Use a Redirect or a Canonical URL?
Redirects are also a standard solution for fixing duplicate content but are more severe and direct. Unlike with redirects, website visitors do not see your canonical URL. Redirects are good when you need only one version of the duplicate content. But canonical tags are helpful when you want both versions to exist for business reasons.
Some sites cannot handle the server load of too many redirects. Sites with duplicate content may consider redirects, but they could be better for website loading time. Redirects hinder user experience. If redirecting makes your site illogical or slow to load, using a canonical URL tag is a better solution. It solves your duplicate content problem.
How to Set Canonical URLs
Canonical URLs are very easy to put in place when you need to solve a duplicate content issue. We’ll walk you through how simple it is to apply canonical URLs on your websites. For this example, we’ll use the same fake URLs we used before.
Pretend these two pages have the same content, but they are in separate sections of your site. There may be a few stylistic differences, but other than that, the content is identical. You could even link these versions from other sites, making the content valuable and necessary to keep on your site. But how do you determine which version to display in search engine results?
You’ll see this situation often. As we mentioned earlier, this is especially true for e-commerce websites. Sometimes, an item has two different categories and different URLs for that reason. The inventors created canonical URLs to address the fact that a product can have several different URLs.
Pick One Page as The Main Page or the Canonical Version
You must pick one page as the canonical version when you have duplicate content. This version takes precedence, featuring the highest number of links or visitors.
Say we choose the first article above as our canonical page. We will have to add the canonical URL to the code of the non-canonical page by adding code into the <head> section of the page’s HTML. Your content management system may have a plug-in to set this for you. Automated code changes remove the need for manual work. But it’s still handy to know how to set a canonical URL. The URL that we would add in our example would look like this:
<link rel=”canonical” href=”https://schoolbus.com/our-services”/>
Add this code to the <head> section of “https://schoolbus.com/about-us/services/.” It will ensure that our preferred article appears in search results. It’s that easy.
This action unifies two pages into a single entity for search engines. Any links to both URLs now count as one – they are the canonical URLs. This change should increase organic search traffic.
Does Every Page Need a Canonical URL?
When it comes to setting canonical URLs, a big question is whether every unique page should install a canonical URL. If you will set it for some pages, why not do it for all? Google has confirmed that it is good practice.
This means that, yes, you will have canonical URLs on specific pages that point right back to themselves. This also means that the example above should have the same canonical URL. It is at “https://schoolbus.com/our-services” in its own HTML code. Canonical tags prevent duplication. That’s why they’re a good idea on pages without duplicate content on your sites.
Common Canonical URL Mistakes: What Not to Do
Misusing canonical URLs can cause big problems. So, it’s important to know some common mistakes to avoid them. Some sites have landing pages that link to a blog article using their canonical URL. This causes their landing page to vanish from search results. This is less than ideal.
There are a couple of other mistakes that you should avoid making when using canonical URLs, including:
- When your website has an archive with many pages, don’t set the canonical URL of the different pages to the first page. The canonical URL on page 2 should point to page 2, and so on. If you point its canonical URL to page 1, search engines will not index the links on these archive pages.
- Canonical URLs should always be 100% specific. Find the full URL address, like in our example (https://schoolbus.com/our-services). Search engines decode these URLs with precision. They see them as intended.
- Many canonical URLs on the same page can cause serious issues. Some content management system plugins need to check canonical URLs often.
Why Do I Need to Use Canonical URLs?
A canonical URL prevents duplicate content. It functions within and reaches outside. Internal duplicate content happens within your website. Duplicate content is external. It occurs when similar or identical pages exist on different websites.
You may have the same piece of content on several domains. Some sites or blogs will republish articles from other websites on their site (with permission). They do this because they feel the content is meaningful for their visitors. Canonical URLs enable you to direct search engines to the original version of an article.
With canonical URLs, you can put a link in the HTML of each of those articles. It points back to your original article. This means all the links point to your version of your article. They count toward the ranking of your canonical version. Other sites and domains can have your content. They’ll show it to their audience to enjoy. You’ll get a clear ranking benefit, too.
You’re a content writer, and you’ve written a post for another party that was published on their website. You could also post it on your site. You could agree to add the canonical tag to the original version. It’s a win-win situation for everyone involved!
No matter your reason, using canonical URLs is a good practice for your website. We recommend using canonical URLs for every page of your site. You can use the steps and resources we’ve provided in this article. We trust that you’ll find that, with their proper use, canonical URLs can have positive effects. They can boost both your search rankings and your website’s ongoing success.
