OnCrawl guide- SEO basics: Canonical URLs
12
OnCrawl guide - SEO basics CANONICAL URLs Knowledge Base www.oncrawl.com
Transcript of OnCrawl guide- SEO basics: Canonical URLs
OnCrawl guide - SEO basics
CANONICAL URLs
Knowledge Basew w w . o n c r a w l . c o m
OUR DATA
It has been created in order to avoid duplicate content issues and optimize your SEO.
OUR DATA
Rel canonical is a tag in the header of your HMTL that tells search engines which piece of content is the original and
which one is a duplicate.
OUR DATA
Some pieces of content can appear in multiple places of your website and thus be seen as duplicate content. Duplicate content is actually deeply penalized and rel canonical provides search engines a way to know which version of the content is the original, gives credit to that primary one, links the copy to the right URL and thus displays the good version in the search engines results.
Canonicalization is essential to create a well optimized website and offers a better user experience,
OnCrawl offers the possibility to spot your rel canonical easily.
OUR DATA
You can see if your canonical are set up correctly, and if they are matching or not.
OUR DATA
BEST PRACTICES TO CANONICAL
There are multiple situations where canonical should be used for duplicate content:
- Multiple URLs: e-commerce websites which offer filter options like prices, sizes, colors, categories have a lot of URLs with duplicate content
- HTTP, HTTPS, WWW: a search engine can see http://www.mywebsite.com, http://mywebsite.com and https://www.website.com as different websites and will index them as such
BEST PRACTICES TO CANONICAL
- Mobile URL: mobile URLs like m.mywebsite.com are seen as duplicate content
- Country URL: content remains the same even if you are using specific country URLs. However, if the language is different, you may want search engines to offer separate results
- Session ID URLs, breadcrumbs links, printer friendly versions, permalinks: they are automatically generated
HOW TO OPTIMIZE YOUR CONTENT WITH
REL CANONICAL?
Here are the few rules you should respect if you want to integrate your rel canonical correctly:
- Verify that the rel canonical target exists otherwise you will get a 404 error
- Check that the rel canonical target does not have a noindex robots meta tag
? ?
HOW TO OPTIMIZE YOUR CONTENT WITH
REL CANONICAL?
- Insert the rel canonical link in either the <head> of the page or the HTTP header and not in the <body>
- Include no more than one rel canonical per page. When more than one is specified, all rel canonicals will be ignored
- A large part of the duplicate page’s content should also be on the canonical version
? ?
For any questions about canonical URLs, feel free to drop us a line
@Oncrawl_CS
w w w . o n c r a w l . c o m
START YOUR FREE TRIAL
w w w . o n c r a w l . c o m
