Meta Tag
< link rel = "canonical" href =
The Canonical meta tag is actually a link element. By adding it you define which URL is the original URL of a page. If you have a page with both a mobile and a desktop version, Google sees these as duplicate versions of the same page.
If the same information is available on multiple URLs, then there is duplicate content. The best solution is to prevent duplicate content from occurring. But in other cases, the canonical tag is the best way to resolve duplicate content.
Key Takeaway
- Always add the canonical tag in the HEAD section of your site. The URL of a canonical link can be a relative link. However, we advise you to use absolute links to prevent problems. The canonical link can only link to a page with the same domain name.
- Use the canonical tag to specify which page you want to show as a search result.
It is better to have the page https://www.yourdomain.com/restaurant/breakfast/eggs.html as a search result in stead of https://www.yourdomain.com/restaurant/menu-item?548733 - If you don’t explicitly tell Google which URL is canonical, Google will make the choice for you.
This might lead to unwanted behavior. By using a canonical tag you can avoid that.
SEO Influence Meter
The canonical tag has
some SEO influence!
Canonical Tag
The Canonical tag is an HTML link tag with “rel=canonical” attribute that is used if you have a single page URL that has the same content as other multiple page URLs.
By implementing the Canonical tag in the code, we tell the search engines that this URL is the main page and avoid indexing other duplicate page URLs.
In what cases does a search engine defines a page as a canonical URL?
- is the page served as http or as https
- the quality of the page
- the presence of the URL in your sitemap
- if your website is in different languages (that is, if only the header, footer, and other non-critical text is translated, but the body content remains the same, then the pages are considered to be duplicates)
Google sees all the above URLs as duplicate versions of the homepage. And to fix this problem, the canonical tag (rel=canonical) was invented.
Session ID URLs
These are the automatic system-generated URLs and commonly generated due to the tracking URLs, breadcrumb links and permalinks in CMS
http://example.com/properties/villa-331-luxury-rental?partnerID=18
http://example.com/target.php?session_id=rj3ids98dhpa0mcf3jc89mq1t0
Mobile URL
When using a special URL (m. example.com) for the mobile version of your website.
You can also have 2 versions – one is a mobile version and the other is a desktop version.
For the mobile and desktop version, you use a canonical tag.
HTML Code Canonical Tag Example
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