How to Optimize Identical Webpages with Perfect Canonical Tags

October 04, 2023

How to Optimize Identical Webpages with Perfect Canonical Tags

Nurturing the Potency of Your Webpages: A Prelude

Evolving technology has fortuitously granted businesses access to digital marketing strategies. The internet, particularly, has given businesses the convenience of reaching a global audience via websites. But as a biz owner or a digital marketer, have you often wondered why few of your webpages with similar content perform better than the others?

Fundamentally, it’s essential to realize that search engines need guidance when multiple web pages have alike content. This involves selecting a dominant version for the varied similar pages – one that you’d wish the search engines to rank. To effectively command this, you employ a canonical tag. Through this discourse, we’ll familiarize ourselves with appropriate ways to solve similar pages utilizing a canonical tag.

Identifying Similar Content: The Initial Legwork

The inception point of this journey involves identifying the pages on your website sharing duplicate or similar content. This first step is paramount, ensuring precision while executing it can be an uphill task. To make this manageable, perform a content review on your website. Utilize resources like Screaming Frog or Google Search Console in your arsenal. Both these tools, among others, offer the facility to efficiently audit your website’s content to scout for duplicates or similar content.

Pinpointing the Preferred Page

Once you’ve successfully scouted for duplicate content on your website, it’s time to pick a principal page. As the business, you need to determine this based on the page you prefer that search engines index and rank in search results. This step is significant as it defines the page that’ll dominate amongst the similar content pages.

Emphasizing the Preferred Page: The Canonical Tag

With a preferred page distinguished, it’s time to pronounce this preference. Search engines, akin to humans, require communication. We articulate this choice to them through a canonical tag. This HTML tag efficiently communicates to the search engines about your preferred version.

Adding a canonical tag is a simple process. The tag has to be included in the head section of the HTML code of similar pages. It should further encompass the URL of your dominant page. A quick example to aid understanding – if https://example.com/product-page/ is your preferred page, a canonical tag on alternative pages should ideally look like: 

<link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/your-page/" />

Trial and Verification: An Imperative Exercise

Implementation is half the battle won. A verification process following the addition of the canonical tag is vital. This step comprises reviewing the implementation and ensuring the actions have produced the desired outcome.

Google Search Console again proves to be a great ally here. It helps scan for any redirection errors or warnings concerning canonical tags. By conducting a Google search, one can confirm if the preferred page ranks higher than its alternatives.

A Final Touch: Canonical Tag and Its Many Virtues

Deploying a canonical tag is indeed a fruitful approach to resolving the confusion caused by similar pages. It precisely informs search engines about the main version, avoiding content duplication issues and enhancing the visibility of the preferred page in search results. Following the steps mentioned above can help you swiftly incorporate a canonical tag in your website and ensure the search engines accurately recognize your preferred version.

FAQs

  • What is a canonical tag?A canonical tag is an HTML code component that identifies your preferred webpage from the many containing similar content.

  • How does a canonical tag work?A canonical tag offers search engines a clear directive that a particular URL is the main copy. This URL is then considered for ranking and indexing.

  • Where to add the canonical tag on a webpage?The canonical tag gets added in the head section of an HTML page. It carries the URL of the chosen webpage.

  • What will a canonical tag look like?A canonical tag will appear in this pattern, assuming preferred page as https://example.com/product-page/: 

<link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/your-page/" />