Is Canonical Issue Gulping All the Strength

of Your Website?

What is Canonical in Website or SEO? Most Important canonical is not an issue, but it’s a term which means

the “preferred one”.

When a website generates the multiple URL addresses for same page and displays the same content on the page then it would be counted as the canonical issue within the website.

If same content on the website is accessible with different URLs then it is considered as bad for Search Engine Optimization because the links which need to be directed to the single page is get divided into the multiple URLs and hence it splits the popularity of that page or Website.

we have a website www.example.com:

There are four versions of the same page available on different URLs

http://www.example.com/

http://example.com/

http://www.example.com/index.php (or .html)

http://example.com/index.php (or .html)

The content on each URL is same. And in this way links would be pointed to different URLs instead of single homepage URL, which will result in giving links credit from Search Engines to individual pages, which will not be combined to one URL address only. Which is called as Canonical Issue

Example to understand the most common canonical issues

Solution to overcome canonical issue

301 redirection (also know as Permanent Redirection) by directly editing the .htaccess file on Apache Server.

Placing Canonical tag (rel=canonical) in webPages of websites

Solving canonical issue by 301 redirection via .htacces file

1. Open your .htaccess file.

2. If you have existing codes in your .htaccess file, then add the below code just below of existing codes. It is the most common code which can be used to redirect all the URLs to the single URL address only (applicable with Apache Server only)

What Are Canonical Tags And Why Use Them?

Here is an example of canonical tag(“the preferred one”):<link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.example.com/bamboosheets”>

This code needs to be added on to the duplicate pages or the generating URLs like

Canonical tags are used to highlight canonical URL One must set the canonical tag to the simplest URL

Canonical tag are part of the HTML header on a web page and are similar as nofollow. The only difference is the use of “rel parameter”

For paginated content, always use rel=”next” and rel=”prev” tags.

Canonical URL is the purest version of all the URLs in the group.

Important Points of Canonical Tags :

What Google Suggest for Canonical Issues?

Google suggests number of ways to define a canonical URL for content (or equivalent content) available through multiple URLs:

Set your preferred domain

Indicate the preferred URL with the rel=”canonical” link element

Use a sitemap to set preferred URLs for the same content

Use 301 redirects for URLs that are not canonical

Indicate how to handle dynamic parameters

Specify a canonical link in your HTTP header

Prefer HTTPS over HTTP for canonical links

It is highly recommended to make sure that your website URLs are organised and redirected appropriately.

You must choose one canonical URL that all other URLs will be redirected to (either by 301 or rel=canonical tag).

And also, make sure to set the canonical tag before the search engines decide that your website is created to deceive them.

Canonical tags are great ways of avoiding penalties for duplicate content.

A Word of Caution