What Is Canonical Issue? and Why It Is Important in Seo
In SEO people ask what is a canonical issue in seo?. There are two cases :
Case 1: When multiple versions are available on search engine
If I have a website abc.com In Google this website is showing in 4 different forms. These 4 different forms are :
abc.com
www.abc.com
http://abc.com
https://abc.com
Explaination: These four versions are available in google. This means when multiple versions of websites are available on search engines. Then search engine assumes these URLs differently and assumes content duplication. This is a canonical issue. To fix this issue we put the code on the website :
<link rel=” canonical” href=”https://abc.com/”>
Case 2: To solve the content duplication issue on the website
If I have a website: www.abc.com having page1 URL: www.abc.com/page1 The content is the same on the home page and page1. So this is a case of content duplication search engines will confuse which to rank or which is the master page. Which page is the priority home page or page1? So if we want to give the home page priority we will put the code below in the heading section of page1
<link rel=” canonical” href=”https://abc.com”>
This means we will give priority to the home page. The home page will be the master page.
So in short if we have duplicate content on several pages of our website. To solve this issue we will put the code in copied versions of pages. When search engines index these pages, they will see the code rel-tag that content is duplicate. The search engine will give priority to the master page.
Canonical tags can be self – referential means we can put the code on the same page. For example www.abc.com we can put canonical code to its heading section there is no need to worry.