Canonical Tags | What are they and My Understanding | SEO Tutorial

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Canonical tags were created by Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, together in 2009 to help website owners solve duplicate content issues (if you have different versions of the same page)easily and quickly. 

According to Ahrefs, a canonical tag (rel=“canonical”) is a snippet of HTML code that defines the main version for duplicate, near-duplicate and similar pages. In layman's terms, if you have similar pages in different URLs, you can use canonical tags to verify which version is the original or main version and must be indexed.

Why does Canonicalization Matter?

Having a duplicate page or content is a complicated matter, when search engines crawl URLs which has similar or identical content, there can be a lot of SEO issues. If the crawlers have to go through so much duplicate content they can miss some of your unique content. Largescale duplication can also dilute your site ranking ability. and lastly, if your website does rank, search engines can pick up the wrong URL and consider them as "original". Hence, the use of canonicalization can help control duplicate content.

Rules of Adding Canonical Tags

If you want canonical tags to work properly, they must be used consistently as well as correctly:

  • Use complete URLs, Including the entire domain name.
  • Be consistent with the spelling and symbols used in your domain name, for example use of a slash at the end of the URL or the use of cases in the name.
  • You can use Google Webmaster Tools on how Google must handle parameters and exclude those page which doesn't contain any unique content. 

What does a Canonical Tag look like?

Simple and consistent syntax is used for canonical tags. They are placed at the <head> section of a web page:

For example:

<link rel=“canonical” href=“https://example.com/sample-page/” />

Canonical Tag
Example of Canonical Tag







Here’s what each part of that code means:
  1. link rel=“canonical”: The master (canonical) version of this page can be found at the link in this tag.
  2. href=“https://example.com/sample-page/”: This URL will take you to the canonical version.
Why are Canonical Tags important for SEO?

Google doesn't like or encourage duplicate content or page because it makes it difficult for them to choose:
  1. - Which version of a page should be indexed (there will only be one!)
  2. - Which variation of a page should be ranked for pertinent queries.
  3. - If "link equity" should be divided amongst several versions or consolidated on one page.
The amount of duplicate data on your website might also influence your "crawl budget," which means Google may end up spending more time scanning duplicates of the same page than finding other valuable information on your site.

Canonical tags address each of these problems. They enable you to instruct Google regarding which version of a page to index, rank, and consolidate any "link equity."

Difference between Canonicals and 301 Redirects

A 301 redirects users and search engines, but a canonical tag keeps them on the URL and is visible only to the search engines.

A canonicalized URL will be tracked, however, a redirected URL won't be recorded in your statistics.

Use canonical tags if you want a URL that users can visit; if not, redirect the user.

What I derived...

Just keep in mind that canonical tags are a signal to search engines and not direction. They are not that difficult to use and they need some time to get used to in the beginning.

Both the user-declared and Google-selected canonical can be seen using the URL Inspection tool in Google Search Console.

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