Canonical Tag: Its Importance in Search Engine Optimization

Ever since the inception of professional search engine optimization, duplicate content has long been a major concern for both web owners and search engines alike. Website owners, with the help of their e-marketers often need to create several pages listing the same set of products with different multiple URLs pointing to it for usability or other purposes; while detecting and consolidating duplicate pages is one of the most problematic areas when it comes down to the search engines' website indexing process for search engines by themselves cannot filter the clutter of duplicate URLs.

It is a widespread practice for a site to have several URLs representing a single web page. In this instance, if search engines know that these pages have the same content, their algorithms usually choose the page they think best answers the user's query. This may result in pages that do not rank well and divide the page authority and "link juice" which is supposed to be focused on a single version of a URL.

To resolve this issue, a canonical URL tag attribute was developed with the purpose of helping webmasters and website owners identify the single authoritative (or canonical) URL for a given page (canonical page) and therefore eliminate self-created duplicate content in the index.

What is Canonical URL Tag Attribute?

The Canonical URL tag attribute is quite similar to a 301 redirect. Thru the Canonical URL tag, webmasters or site owners tell the search engines that the multiple pages should be considered as one (which the 301 does) without actually redirecting visitors to a different URL.

The major difference between the two tag attributes is that though a 301 redirect sends all traffic, bots and human visitors alike, to a different page, the Canonical URL tag is just for search engines, where it is telling the search engines the preferred page (canonical page) URL to use when indexing a particular page.

What is a Canonical Page?

A canonical page is the preferred version of a set of pages with highly similar content that should be considered by search engines.

How, When and Why Should Professional SEOs Use this Tag?

How Should Professional SEOs Use this Tag?

The Canonical URL tag attribute is part of the HTML header on a web page, in the same section where you'd find the Title attribute and Meta Description tag.
The Canonical URL tag attribute should be placed in between the opening and closing "head" sections of your site's source code. Each canonical URL in the "href=" section should reference the page it is duplicating. You can also put the canonical tag on the actual canonical page.

When Should Professional SEOs Use this Tag? The Canonical URL tag attribute creates a lot of confusion with webmasters and search engine Optimization Company alike in when to use this tag.

This Canonical URL tag attribute should be used when a website:

- uses a large number of URL parameter that are dynamically generated - uses multiple domain names, inconsistent casing in URLs, or has a lot of URL rewriting
- that have a large number of URLs which may be used to access the same content
- that has "printer friendly" pages

Why Should Professional SEOs Use this Tag?

The Canonical URL tag attribute can help solve a range of SEO issues, particularly related to duplicate content, that have sometimes been difficult to overcome. Canonical URL tags are highly important and valuable in the identification of duplicate contents and its URL for it defines a relationship between a document and an external resource, the canonical URL.

They can also create the necessary link for the search engine optimization's (SEO) toolbox for it will provide the necessary support for standardizing a site's URLs (which has been a basic tenet of SEO) and cleaning up of the duplicate URL and content. Ideally, website owners (and their search engine optimization firm providing SEO services) wanted to have control over the way search engines index their site's content and how search engines apply link popularity between pages. If you have a kind of website mentioned above, and you don't want to deliberately suffer rankings and traffic losses and lowered relevancy and split link popularity (incoming link value), then website owners should use this tag.

Moreover, a Canonical URL tag attribute may help safeguard against accidental or deliberate site duplication and code theft. If a site's code is copied but doesn't remove the tag, then the site's URL is still going to be the source considered as original. Likewise, if some other domain name is accidentally or deliberately forwarding to the site's server, a canonical added to the original site will prevent potential duplicate content issues.

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