On-page SEO cannot be completed until Canonicalization is
talked about. So let's talk about canonical tags today in the chapter on SEO.
Why the canonical tag is used? And is it necessary to use it? I will try to
tell all things very well.
When was the canonical tag launched?
In February 2009, the canonical link element was launched by
Google, Bing, and Yahoo. The purpose was to remove duplicate URLs on the
website.
What is the canonical tag?
The canonical tag is nothing special but an HTML command that we
have to place on every page of our website or blog. Let me tell you that the canonical tag is used inside the tag, so before you close the tag, put the
canonical tag in it.
Canonical Tag
Element:
You can see how easy
it is. Write canonical in link rel then URL in Href.
Why use canonical
tags and what are its benefits:
Canonical Link Element was started to identify the Duplicate
URL on the website. Here, you should not be confused with the word duplicate,
because it is considered more than the name of different URL version of the
same page.
Let me give you an example -
A) digilearnings.com/
B) http://digilearnings.com/
C) https://www.digilearnings.com/
D) www.digilearnings.com/
E)
www.digilearnings.com/index.html or .aspx, .php etc.
Look at the above five URLs carefully. Here the page is the
same, example.com but different URL versions are being prepared.
If you write only example.com on the browser, the website
will open or if you type all the four URLs, the website will open. Saying the
same website is opening from different URL version.
Now the first thing that is being generated is that search
engine crawlers index which URLs and which URLs should not be indexed.
Secondly, due to the creation of different URL versions of the same website, the content is also being duplicated.
Canonical tags are used to get rid of these two situations.
Now what we will do is put this canonical tag inside HTML on the home page of
our website -
The advantage of applying it will be that the search engine the crawler will index only the page with the canonical URL and will skip the rest
of the version. In this way, duplicate URLs of our same page will end and the search engine will consider only URLs with our canonical tag as the master copy.
Keep in mind that you have to set the canonical URL as you
wish. Insert the same URL inside the canonical tag of the URL version you want
to index in the search engine.
If you are not a developer and don't know how to put canonical tags on your website then you should hire a Digital marketing company, they will add canonical tags in your website.
A special question in
which even big SEOs get confused -
Do canonical tags and 301 redirects behave the same? The
answer is yes, but not to some extent. This question is quite tricky and is
mostly asked in SCO interviews. So let's understand this a little bit.
A.) 301 Permanent redirects are used to protect the link
equity of your web page (page rank, page authority, link juice, visitors).
B.) Canonical Tag does not completely protect link equity as
they are used in the context of web crawlers rather than using site visitors or
page visitors.
For example,
If Page A is
redirected 301 Permanent to Page B -
The user will move to Page B as soon as they land on Page A.
In this way, the visitor of that page will be protected rather than loss and
the equity of the page will also be protected.
If a Canonical Tag is placed on Page A -
Here the search engine crawler will know that the canonical
tag is placed on Page A, so I only have to index it but the user can go to page
B other than Page A, so here the user is not redirected anywhere. Apart from
this, Page, A equity is also not completely safe because of another version of the same page is also active and shares some amount of traffic even if it is not an
index.
Some important points regarding canonical tags:
1.) Having a canonical tag reduces the risk of duplicate page
indexes.
2.) Pages with canonical tags crawl more quickly than other
pages.
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