Rel=canonical: How To Use Canonical Tag Effectively In Your Web Development
You’ve seen it on the web. You may even use it yourself, but do you know what it is? In this article by expert website developer we will tell you how to correctly implement the rel=”canonical” tag in your website and why it’s so important. So let’s get started. What is a Canonical Tag? As web development company experts will tell you, the canonical tag is used to specify the preferred URL of a page. The tag prevents duplicate content and stops search engines from indexing multiple pages with the same content. For example, if you have two identical pages except for the URL, they may be listed as separate pages in search results. The Canonical Tag can specify which one should be preferred over the other. When should you use a canonical tag? Search engines use canonical tags to avoid duplicate content issues and provide a better user experience by showing them the most relevant result in their search results when they search for similar content. If you want to set up canonical tags for your site, then here are some reasons why you should do it: SEO Benefits: As mentioned above, canonical tags help search engines and users to know which version of a page is the original one. If there is more than one URL with the same content on your website, it will be difficult for Google or other search engines to decide which URL should rank higher. So by setting up canonicals for each URL with different parameters (i.e., different query strings), it will help Google identify which version is original and return it in its search results list along with other URLs that point towards this particular page; this way there won’t be any duplicate content issues, and users will get their desired result in their search results list. Better User Experience: By using canonicals on your website, you’re making sure that users get to see only the best versions of pages they’re looking for on your website; this also improves their user experience because they don’t have to navigate through multiple pages before finding what they’re looking for. What does a canonical tag look like? A website developers in mumbai canonical tag is a simple way to tell search engines which version of your content is the original. It looks like this: <link rel=”canonical” href=”http://example.com/article-2″ /> The link element has a single attribute, rel. The value of that attribute is canonical. The href attribute contains the URL for the page you want to identify as the original. That’s it! How to implement canonical tag? There are four ways to specify canonical URLs. These are known as canonicalization signals: HTML tag (rel=canonical) HTTP header Sitemap 301 redirect* Setting canonicals using rel=“canonical” HTML tags. The rel=canonical tag is the easiest way to specify a canonical URL. Add this code to the <head> section of any duplicate page: <link rel=“canonical” href=“https://example.com/canonical-page/” /> Example Let’s say you have an ecommerce website selling red shirts. You want to set up your content so that users are redirected to https://yourstore.com/shirts/red-shirts/ when they click on any content or links related to red shirts, even though that page’s content is accessible via other URLs (e.g., https://yourstore.com/offers/red shirts). Simply add the following tag to any duplicate pages: <link rel=“canonical” href=“https://yourstore.com/shirts/red-shirts/” /> Remember that if you’re using a CMS, you don’t need to touch the code of your page. There’s an easier way! How to set up canonical tags in WordPress. The experts at leading website developers in mumbai recommend that you install the Yoast SEO plugin. This plugin will automatically add self-referencing canonicals to your site. Go to the “Advanced” tab on each post and page to set custom canonicals. How to set up canonical tags in Shopify. Shopify, by default, adds self-referencing canonical URLs to product and blog post pages. You can set custom canonical URLs by directly editing template (.liquid) files. To know more about it, go to Shopify. Setting canonicals in HTTP headers Although you can’t place canonical tags in PDFs, which do not have a <head> section, you can use HTTP headers to set canonicals. You can also use canonical HTTP headers on standard web pages. For example, let’s imagine we’ve created a PDF version of this post and hosted it in our blog subfolder. Here’s how our HTTP header will look for that file: HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Type: application/pdf Link: <https://example.com/page.html>; rel=”canonical” Setting canonicals in sitemaps Google recommends that only canonical URLs—the Web pages you want to be indexed—be listed in your sitemap. This is because Google views the pages listed on a sitemap as suggested canonicals and uses them. However, it’s not always the case that they will choose URLs in sitemaps as canonicals. Setting canonicals with 301 redirects When you want to divert traffic away from a duplicate URL to the canonical version, use 301 redirects. For example, if your website is reachable at these URLs: example.com example.com/index.php example.com/home/ Choose a single URL as your site’s canonical, and redirect all URLs leading to that page. You should do the same for secure HTTPS and HTTP versions of your site. Please choose one canonical version of a page and redirect the other versions to it. For example, the HTTPS version of example.com (https://example.com) is the canonical version of the site; all of the following URLs redirect there: http://example.com/ http://www.example.com/ https://www.example.com/ Canonical tags vs 301 redirects One common question about search engine optimization is whether canonical tags pass link equity (PageRank, Authority, etc.) like 301 redirects. In most cases, they do, but this is a complicated question. Remember that these two approaches produce very different results for search crawlers and site visitors. If you 301 redirect Page A–>Page B, search engines will treat Page B as the canonical version of your site, but human visitors will not be redirected. If you rel-canonical Page A–>Page B, search engines will know that Page B is the canonical version of