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What Is Canonical URLs & Why Is It Important for Your Site?
Last updated: Nov 07, 2024
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A canonical URL is the main version of a website. You want search engines to index the canonical URL if your website contains several pages with identical or comparable content.
By including the "rel=canonical" link element in your web page's HTML code, you can affect search engines' final determination of which URLs are canonical.
To figure out more about canonical URLs, read the explanation below!
What Is Canonical URL?
A canonical URL is the main version of a series of duplicate or nearly duplicate pages considered by Google. This is given top priority to prevent search results from displaying repetitious content that offers no original value.
The canonical URL example is like https://yoursite.com/blog/. On the other hand, if your URL appears like this: https://yoursite.com/blog/?page=1, it is a non-canonical link. If Google is offered those two links, the search engine will choose the canonical one to index and rank the pages.
Then, why is canonical URL important? You must note that Google only indexes canonical URLs of your web pages. Therefore, if you have duplicate content on your website or nearly duplicate pages, Google will automatically index the canonical one.
In addition, Google will consider the page to be canonical if you properly configure your canonical URLs. Google will, however, use its best judgment to select a canonical for you if there is not a declared canonical for exact or nearly duplicate pages.
Yet, if Google does so, the link it chooses might not be the URL you want it to index. Therefore, explicitly setting a canonical URL will increase the likelihood that it is the correct one.
Canonical URL and SEO, What’s the Relationship?
Since canonical URL influences what pages Google should index, it will help you identify duplicate content issues on your website.
Search engines could find it challenging to choose which page to show in search results when several URLs point to the same bit of content. Or, you might have nearly the same content, like American and British English versions of similar content or pages. This is where canonical matters to avoid keyword cannibalization.
When you have a duplicate content issue on your website, that content might target the same keywords and have a similar purpose. As a result, it will harm each other’s rankings since the search engine is unable to identify which website is the most pertinent result.
Another impact on SEO, when you have this issue, is that it will weaken the impact of backlinks, hurt the site’s credibility, waste crawling resources, and reduce the number of crawled pages.
Therefore, setting a canonical URL will tell Google what page to index and rank, helping it to decide the right pages.
Canonical URL and Canonical Tag, What Is the Difference?
When you are working on canonical URLs, you will encounter canonical tags. The canonical tag is a part of HTML code defining the primary version of the exact or nearly duplicate pages on the website.
The function of canonical tags is to tell Google which page version it should index, rank, and reveal to the search results. You can find canonical tags in the <head> section of the HTML source code looking like this:
<link rel=”canonical” href=”https://yoursite.co/this-is-the-url/| />
In brief, the canonical link tag instructs the search engine to evaluate the version of a page that is identified within the canonical URL for ranking purposes, disregarding all other versions.
Canonical tags usually link to the desired page from an alternate page. Yet, there should be a canonical tag on every canonical page that links to its unique URL.
How to Employ Canonical URL
If you plan to set canonical URLs on your website, you can adhere to the best practices below:
1. Audit the Website
First, you must audit your website to see the existence of duplicate content, such as identical articles with different URLs, alternative versions of similar A/B testing pages, or creating URLs with tracking parameters.
To audit your website, you can utilise tools like Site Audit by Sequence and see the complete results.
2. Determine the Canonical Version of Pages
Now that you already found the duplicate content, you must choose the version you want Google to index, rank, and show in search results.
Some considerations you can take into when determining the canonical version are:
- Prefer the most user-friendly URL.
- Choose the URL having the most internal links.
- Choose the most informative one.
- One version may be the canonical URL if it has continuously fared better in search results than others.
Remember to only specify one canonical link on each page so that Google is not confused about your content.
Moreover, do not inadvertently add two canonical tags to your page's HTML code and avoid manually adding more canonical tags if you have already established the canonical tag using a CMS setting.
Another tip: do not add rel=”canonical” to the HTTP header if you already have it on the HTML.
3. Consider the Trailing Slash Usage
Trailing slash will be like this: https://yoursite.com/ and non-trailing slash will look like this: https://yoursite.com. You must consider these types of slashes because if you have a similar URL both having or not having trailing slash, Google may perceive them as different URLs.
Therefore, you must be consistent across the website and reference your canonical link correctly.
4. Utilise Absolute URL
When working on canonical links, you must reference them using absolute URLs instead of relative URLs.
Absolute URL includes your domain and will look like this:
<link rel="canonical" href="https://yoursite.com/blog/" />
And relative URL will look like this:
<link rel="canonical" href="/blog/" />
By using absolute URLs, search engines are certain of which pages should be indexed. Even though HTML standards support using relative URLs, utilising the absolute one will prevent misinterpretation.
5. Employ Self-Referencing Canonical Tags
Self-referencing canonical tags are tags on a page pointing to the preferred page’s URL in its HTML code. These tags tell Google the right page to index and show in search results.
Using a self-referencing link helps avoid problems brought on by wrong URL parameters, even if a page is duplicate-free.
Conclusion
Those are the information about canonical URLs you should know. In conclusion, canonical links are essential to make your content crawl optimally. This link also prevents duplicate content issues on your site from harming your SEO efforts.
In addition, to make sure your site is well-crafted and performed for both search engine and human users, you must employ effective SEO best practices. Regarding this, you can rely on SEO Service by cmlabs. So, book a meeting now and tell us your SEO needs for free!
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