What is a Canonical URL and Should I Have One?
Here, a canonical URL plays a key role to indicate to the search engines which version of a web page is going to rank and should be indexed more often. Webs are increasingly intricate and there is huge variety in state representations of the same Web content, either by necessity or by chance.
This will lead to a condition known as duplicate content, which may confuse search engines, as well as be wasted in the chance of a page ranking well. From this point of view, webmasters can exploit the use of canonical URLs to tell search engines which version of a page is the canonical one.
Understanding Canonical URLs
A canonical URL is a URL hyperlinked to (by the owner of the website) to distinguish a “canonical” (or “preferred” version of a Web page.1) . This is achieved by means of the of a web site. The purpose of this tag is to furnish search engines with the information on which one version will have the authority over two or more pages, that also have identical or highly analogous content.
For instance the above URL on a Web page may point to the same Web page.
• https: //www.example.com/page/
• https: //example.com/page/
• https: //www.example.com/page?sessionid=123
• https: //www.example.com/page#section
/www.example.com/page/, “the site proprietor has announced to the search engine that this version of the page11 is preferred.
Benefits of Using Canonical URLs
- Avoiding Duplicate Content Penalties: Although Google doesn’t actually penalize duplicate content, the value of displayed content with multiple versions may seem to be lost for Google search engine ranking, because in the end, either version could be the one selected by Google search engine ranking. Canonical URLs are used to normalize or equivalent partition ranking signals towards a target version.
- Consolidating Link Equity: When a page is linked from several URLs, “link equity” or “link juice” can be spread among those URLs as well. When you implement a canonical URL, link equity will be assured to be pushed to the URL that you want to be searchable by search engines.
- Improving Crawl Efficiency: Search engines have limited resources for crawling and indexing. By providing canonical URLs, you can instruct them to focus on the most important pages, which will further lead to better crawl performance and ensure that, for instance, your most important content is crawled.
- Simplifying Reporting and Analytics: By directing the traffic to a single standardized URL it is considerably simpler to provide reporting tools and to present a clearer view of performance page and user activity.
When Should You Use thatt?
Canonical URLs are particularly useful in the following scenarios:
• E-commerce Sites: Product pages are usually the ends of URLs that normally lead to filtering, ranking and session IDs. Canonical URLs can help prevent duplicate content issues.
• Content Syndication: To publish the same article in multiple sites or websites, a canonical URL offers the possibility to decide which version should be prioritized as the main source.
• HTTP and HTTPS Versions: If the website is available via both http: and https:, please indicate the following canonical URL as https: (instead of http: to prevent (duplicate) content.
• WWW and Non-WWW Versions: Similar to protocol differentials, if your site is accessible with or without “www”, tagged with canonical tags, indicate preferred version.
• Dynamic Parameters: URLs with query and parameters are, in general, sources of duplicate content. Canonical URIs are also applicable because they can be employed in the merging of these variants to a single URL.
Read This: What is Link Building?
How to Implement Canonical URLs
- In the HTML Head Section: Place the following in the tag of the document: <link rel=”canonical” href=”https:/www.example.com/page/” tag.
Most modern applications like WordPress typically have plugins or native support for managing canonical URLs in a highly effective way.
- Via HTTP Headers: Where applicable the URLs can be stated for non-HTML files (e.g., PDF) by using an HTTP header.
Do You Need a Canonical URL?
The canonical URL generation process is essential in the context of SEO when a page is pointed to multiple URLs by a site. It also assists in simplifying site hierarchy to prevent duplicate content errors and to make sure that your page of choice has all the advantage from SEO work.
In general summary, canonical URLs is a key component of an optimally designed web site. They guarantee that the search engines will be able to determine, on a given pair of pages, which of the different pages should occupy the top, by giving as much relevance as possible to the SEO credit and the site metrics.