Rand Fishkin stated earlier this year that canonical URL tags were the “most importance SEO advancement since sitemaps”. So what’s all the fuss about and who needs to be doing this?
Experienced SEOs may be on top of this already – here we’ve created our own explanation of the canonical URL for beginners. Read the WebMarketing Group lowdown on the importance of canonicalization, and learn how to use it.
So What Does it Do?
Canonical tags will redirect search engines to one core page of your website to eliminate issues of duplicate content. Unlike 301 redirects, you are only able work within your root domain and you will not actually be redirecting your web visitors. This clever piece of code is for Google’s eyes only.
“But I don’t have any duplicate content” you might say.
There are circumstances where duplicate content is created unintentionally. Although you’re not about to get penalised or anything drastic, search engines may get confused when indexing your pages. If Google’s confused, it doesn’t bode well for your rankings.
Here are just a handful of issues which could occur on your website:
• Dynamic content – this isn’t glaringly obvious to most and you could be creating duplication which can’t be helped. This could be a dynamically created menu or links pointing to the same product in a different size / colour.
• Gateway pages – there are many reasons to have several gateway pages leading to your website, but how is a search engine to know which page to include or exclude in its index? Using a canonical tag will communicate what they need to know; that they are essentially all a part of the same place.
• Printer friendly PDFs – from online catalogues to order forms, terms and conditions to instructions, menus to user guides; the list could go on. There many reasons to use printer friendly content on your website, and without a doubt, this is duplicate content. The canonical URL will help you ensure that your web viewing pages are indexed, not your printer friendly versions.
Matt Cutts explains the canonical tag to WebProNews:
Using the Canonical Tag
We all know the adverse effects of duplicate content when it comes to search engine rankings. So the less of it, the better. Search engines aren’t psychic and their bots aren’t quite advanced enough to always know which page you want indexing. This can cause major problems when it comes to your web rankings, but canonicalization can help you indicate to search engines that any self-created duplicate content on your site is a copy of another page.
Please see these enlightening info graphics, as seen on SEOMoz:
The code for the canonical tag can be placed within the HTML header on a any web page, so it’s as easy as creating no-follow commands for outgoing links. Through canonicalization, you can tell search engines that a certain page is a reproduction of another. So the page you want search engine spiders to redirect to to should be placed in your code like this:
<link rel=”canonical” href=http://www.websitename.com/product1 />
You can learn more about how to implement the canonical link element in 5 minutes with Matt Cutts. We hope this has been useful. Happy canonicalizing from WMG!
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