Canonicals
There are many doggos in the world, and each one is unique and special and beautiful, therefore each dog would need a self-referencing canonical tag to highlight their uniqueness. However, some pages on websites may not all be unique, and canonical tags can be used here to prevent duplication.
What is a Canonical Tag?
A canonical tag is a small piece of code added to a webpage's HTML, serving as a way to inform search engines about the primary or preferred version of that page. This becomes especially valuable when your website contains duplicate or similar pages. Canonical tags play a pivotal role in guiding search engines on which URL should appear in search results.
Why are Canonical Tags Used?
The primary purpose of canonical tags is to mitigate issues related to duplicate content, both on your website and within search engine results. Duplicate content can adversely impact your website's crawl budget, as search engine crawlers spend unnecessary time inspecting multiple versions of the same page, rather than discovering other crucial pages on your site.
It's crucial to keep in mind that there are multiple ways to access a page, including variations like www. or non-www., trailing slashes or lack thereof, UTM tracking codes for advertisements, emails, or social promotions, and sometimes dynamically generated URLs from content management systems (CMS) that may go unnoticed. Search engines consider each of these as unique pages, which is where canonical tags come to the rescue by resolving potential duplicate content issues arising from these variations.
Self-Referencing Canonical Tags
For pages with genuinely unique content and no duplicates to canonicalise to, it is advisable to use self-referencing canonical tags. A self-referencing canonical tag essentially points to the same URL. For instance, the canonical tag for the current URL would be:
<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.seo-dogs.co/canonical-tags/">
Canonical Tag Implementation
Canonical tags are also referred to as "rel canonical" because of their implementation using a rel link attribute. For example, if you intend to canonicalize Page A (https://www.example.com/all-dog-breeds/) to Page B (https://www.example.com/dog-breeds/), the canonical tag on Page A would appear as follows:
<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.example.com/dog-breeds/">
It is crucial to avoid sending mixed signals through canonical tags, as this can confuse search engines and lead them to disregard the canonical instructions you've set. For instance, you should not canonicalise Page A to Page B and then canonicalise Page B back to Page A. Similarly, avoid canonicalising Page A to Page B and subsequently redirecting Page B to Page A.
Further Resources
To delve deeper into the concept of canonicalisation and gain a better understanding of canonical tags, you can explore additional resources: