What is a Canonical Tag, and why is it important for SEO

In the contemporary environment where internet marketing is rapidly growing, SEO remains one of the critical success indicators of a website. Well, first of all, SEO ensures that through some techniques a website is more likely to be seen on sites like Google and therefore have more visitors and conversions. Many factors go into making search engine optimization; however, one of them that site owners usually ignore is the canonical tag. Knowledge of the importance of the canonical tag can go a long way in enhancing a website’s search engine optimization results.

The canonical tag is another tiny but enormously useful tool used by search engines to handle a concern that affects almost every site. In this blog, we will explore canonical tags, understand what they mean, why SEOs should care, and how one can utilize them on their website.

What is a Canonical Tag?

Canonical meta tag, or  "rel=" canonical,” is an HTML attribute that indicates to the search engines about its page or another page of the site that is the ‘preferred’ or ‘original’ version of the page in question. The canonical tag is quite useful when several pages on the same site have the same or rather similar content. Search engines are known to recognize various pages, and this way you can ensure that one particular page is prioritized and indexed to avoid duplication, which has some adverse effects on SEO.

For example, you have two pages on your website, let’s say a product page and the same product page where a filter leads to a specific color—page A and page B accordingly. It is also important not to have a canonical tag missing because the search will consider both pages as duplicates and fail your rankings. When you have a canonical tag on a particular page and rel-link that to your main page, you are instructing the search engine on which page should be indexed and ranked.

Here’s an example of what the canonical tag looks like in HTML:

This line of code must be placed as the HTML head on any page with similar content to another page. If done, it instructs the search engines that the current page is a copy or a spin-off of the “primary” page linked to.

Why Are Canonical Tags Important for SEO?

Canonical tags are not only a technicality; they form a very important aspect of a clean SEO practice. Let’s look at the main reasons why canonical tags are essential for SEO:

1. Prevents duplicate content issues

One of the biggest issues that businesses face when optimizing their site for search engines is duplicate content. Duplicate content can occur when the same content appears on multiple URLs within a website, such as:

• The same product is displayed in multiple categories.
• A page was accessible through different URLs (e.g., one with and one without URL parameters).
• Content syndication is where the same article is published on different sites or subdomains.

Some points to ponder are that search engines, for instance, Google, do not know which version of the page to prefer while indexing or ranking. They might not even address all of them correctly, or even worse, they may end up considering your website as duplicate content. The canonical tag informs search engines which of the two versions of a page is the original and subsequently avoids indexing both pages.

2. Consolidates Link Equity

This is particularly true when there exist several pages that contain content that is relevant to a particular topic; they stand the chance of building up external links. In the absence of a canonical tag, these links are distributed between the pages and possess less ranking potential in each case. As more pages in the website have the exact content, it can be especially detrimental for your site if you wish that all the associated link signals, such as backlinks, should help only a single page about its rank.

Through the canonical tag, everything from link juice (backlinks, page rank, etc.) is transferred to the root page, thus enhancing its SEO rankings. What this consolidation of link equity does is ensure that the preferred page benefits from the entire link juice and other pointer metrics.

3. Avoids Google Penalties

As with any search engine, Google is very harsh on websites that have duplicate content. If your site comprises many pages that are identical or nearly so, Google may punish your site for having duplicate content. This penalty can lead to the lowering or exclusion of specific web pages from the search engine’s indexing list.

This is to decrease the risk of a penalty by informing Google of the location of your “master” or preferred page. This is also beneficial for Google, as it can target the appropriate page that it has to penalize for submitting similar content on the internet.

4. Improves Crawl Efficiency

Browsers visit sites to mean and know what is in the site. However, it consumes resources to crawl every page of a website, whether or not they are useful to identify and fix issues. Another negative effect of having multiple pages of similar or duplicate content is that you only lose the search engines’ crawl budget. This can result in certain relevant pages that may well be pertinent to a site being ignored or indexed less comprehensively.

You should use canonical tags because this can easily reduce the crawl ratio and make the focus of a search engine go toward the most important and authoritative of pages. By specifying which version of a particular set of duplicate pages is unique using canonical tags, search engines will be better placed when it comes to crawling and indexing the right page.

Common Scenarios for Using Canonical Tags

It is possible to use canonical tags in some scenarios. Below are some common scenarios where canonical tags are particularly helpful:

1. Product Pages with Variations

Typically, there are variants of products on e-commerce sites, and these variants are most commonly displayed on a product’s page. For instance, there might be a product that is available in different sizes, colors, or looks. Although each one of them is considered a different page, the content of the page, especially the written one, will mostly be the same or very related; in this case, it will be product descriptions and features, among others.

Another reason for avoiding it is the failure to use a specific tag, which can lead the search engines to classify each of the variations as a duplicate page, which is not good for SEO. This means that by putting the canonical tag on the variation pages that link to the useful product page, it is the principal page that will receive all the ranking indicators and advantages.

2. Faceted Navigation

Faceted navigation is typically used on big sites and is the most popular in-store site. The strategy enables users to sort products by various features, including size, color, price, and more. But this results in the generation of many variations of the same page based on URL address parameters such as? size = medium or? color = blue.

These filtered pages may have very similar content, so problems with duplicity arise. When you properly utilize your canonical tags on these filtered pages and point them to the main category or product page, you assist the search engines in focusing on the primary URL, which is crucial for search engines. 

3. Content Syndication

Depending on what you do with your content after you first publish it, you may find that your content is published in several places across the internet. On the one hand, syndication allows you to reach more people; on the other hand, there is often a problem of uniqueness as an article may spread to several sites at once.

To avoid such a problem, you can use the canonical tag for the specific content on your website, pointing to the copy that you have syndicated. This helps the search engine understand which version is the original one, keeping the website up to date.

4. URL Parameters

In other instances, URL parameters may be used in analyzing users’ behavioral patterns or to deliver dynamically generated content (such as session IDs or tracking parameters). The above parameters can produce several URLs addressing the same content and therefore lead to problems of duplication.

For example, it could look like this example.com/page?session=123 or example.com/page?sort=price. Despite the fact that the URLs are somewhat different, they signify the same content. It is possible to guide search engines to the primary URL and assist them in identifying it as such by using a canonical tag. 

How to Implement a Canonical Tag?

Following the above guidelines is not difficult to implement a canonical tag. Here’s a step-by-step guide:

Organize an Inventory of a Website or Domain

To begin with, you should determine which of your website’s pages include copywriting or contain nearly identical content. This could comprise product pages, category pages, or blog posts. You can try to use Google Search Console or other SEO crawlers like Screaming Frog or Sitebulb to discover cases of duplicate content.

What else does adding the Canonical Tag involve?

Once the pages have been identified, then the canonical tag needs to be inserted in the

section of the HTML of the second and subsequent pages or copies. The tag should lead to the URL of the current or the originally desired one.

For example, on a product variation page, the HTML might look like this:

1. Monitor and Test

Once you’re done with the addition of the canonical tags, one should check the performance of his or her website using Google Search Console and other SEO-related tools of choice. These tools will assist you in determining whether all the canonical tags are properly functioning or whether there is an indexing problem.

2. Maintain Your Canonical Tags

Canonical tags should be implemented on new pages or new content added to the website, and it is also good practice to run continual checks. In case of redesigning your website or if you update its contents often, make sure that the canonical tags are appropriate and correct.

Best Practices for Using Canonical Tags

To make sure your canonical tags are effective, follow these best practices:

1. Use Absolute URLs: Always use the full, absolute URL in the canonical tag (e.g., https://www.example.com/page) rather than a relative URL (e.g., /page). This makes it easier for search engines to recognize the preferred page. 

2. Canonicalize to One Page: Make sure that any two pages that contain the same or similar content link to one main page that is definitive. Do not use canonical tags while linking to some web pages, as this creates a lot of confusion among the search engines.

3. Don’t Use Canonical Tags for Different Content: Canonical tags can only be used when different pages have the same or similar content. Do not apply them to the pages containing completely different material, as this harms SEO.

4. Check for Errors: Check your canonical tags from time to time whether they contain any errors or dead links. If there is a broken link in the canonical tag, then search engines will not properly index your pages.

5. Avoid Using Canonical Tags on the Homepage: Your homepage is usually the strategic web page of your site; therefore, the canonical link tag to the homepage is not necessary. Canonical tags are more helpful for sites containing cloned content; many of the pages are similar to each other.

How Canonical Tags Enhance User Experience

While canonical tags are mainly used for SEO, they also improve the user experience in several ways:

1. Cleaner Search Results: To make users see the desired material, they should use the main links because search engines will display the page with the canonical tag at the top.
2. Improved Crawl Efficiency: Canonical tags assist the search engine in navigating toward the relevant page, and this makes the page be indexed more frequently and is helpful in ranking.
3. Consistent Content: No more ‘the same URL, different page’ issue: It will be much less confusing for users to navigate a website and find one URL containing multiple versions of one or more pages.

Conclusion

In the end, the canonical tag is one more important SEO widget, enabling its users to control the duplicate content issue, distribute the link juice, and improve their rankings in search engines. If these canonical tags are well implemented, then a website will be efficient, well-structured, and well-optimized for searches. Note that while canonical tags help the search engines, they are also favorable to users as they accentuate sensible distinctions between search results.

Monitoring your site and the usage of canonical tags are critical factors in perpetuating an effective line of SEO work over the long term. In this way, everybody benefits because internet users get a great experience and your site ranks well with search engines. Remember that SEO is always a process, and sometimes sitting down as users and exploring the tools that digital marketing has offered to us is the way to go about the problem, such as the canonical tags.

If you want to know more, then continue updating yourself and get a Professional SEO to help you expand your website. AHIT can give you additional information about other techniques that can be used for advanced SEO to boost your website even higher.