How to Set Up a Canonical Tag for Your Duplicate Webpages

Understanding and properly using canonical tags can be crucial for the SEO health of your website. They communicate to search engines which version of a duplicated page should be considered the "original" and thus be prioritized in search results. Let's delve into the why and how of setting up canonical tags.

Why Use Canonical Tags?

In the realm of SEO, duplicate content can confuse search engines. If similar content appears at multiple URLs on your website, search engines may need help deciding which page is more relevant to your customer inquiry. By using a canonical tag, we are guiding search engines on which page is the correct page that your visitors need to view. Technically, we call it the "preferred URL".

I decided to talk about the recent SEO audit done for www.cleanplanet.co.nz, one of the cleaning service companies in Auckland.

They have two landing pages for care cleaning services, as below.

https://www.cleanplanet.co.nz/car-grooming/

https://www.cleanplanet.co.nz/car-valet/

and currently using the https://www.cleanplanet.co.nz/car-grooming/

However, this page has mistakenly made a canonical tag and marked the preferred URL as https://www.cleanplanet.co.nz/car-valet/, and that page has a 301 redirect to the car grooming URL. I am sure the search engine spider needs clarification about deciding which preferred content relates to car cleaning on the www.clarnplaent.co.nz site.

Due to this severe mistake, this business vertical is not getting search engine visibility, and potential customers can't find them when they search for cleaning service-related keywords.

Therefore, I developed this small guide to do canonical tags properly. At the same time, remember to do periodic website audits to find these mistakes on your website.

How to Implement a Canonical Tag

1. Identify Duplicate Content:

Before setting up a canonical tag, it's essential to identify which pages have duplicate content. Tools like Screaming Frog or SEMrush can help scan your website for duplicated content.

1. Choose the Preferred URL:

Decide the best version of the content you want search engines to display in the search results. This version will have the canonical tag pointing to it from the duplicate page or pages.

1. Insert the Canonical Tag:

The canonical tag code should be added to the head section of a webpage. Here's the basic format:

1. <link rel="canonical" href="https://www.cleanplanet.co.nz/car-grooming/" />

You can replace https://www.yourdomain.com/preferred-url/ with the URL of your preferred page and add it to the header section of the duplicate page or pages.

Google suggests that besides canonical tags, you can also use redirects. If you are using multiple methods, search engines love it. However, do extra care on correct implementation.

If you are the site owner or an SEO specialist, you may need a web developer's support for this fix. Some CMS such as WordPress, Shopify, and Magento has their own built tools to do this, and SEO specialist should be able to manage it.

However, if you are a business owner who feels your website is not appearing on search engines or does not have enough web traffic, get support from a web development agency to do a website audit to see whether the website is indexable.

Things to Remember

• Self-referencing Canonical Tags: Even if a page has no duplicates, having a self-referencing canonical tag is a good practice. It ensures that if any duplication does occur in the future, search engines will know the original source.

• Avoid Mixed Signals: Ensure other signals, like internal linking and sitemaps, align with your canonical tags. If your canonical tag points to URL A as the primary version, but your internal links and sitemaps point to URL B, you send mixed signals to search engines. This is a common mistake I have seen on many websites; once we change, we must remember to update all the places.

• Consolidate Link Signals: Remember, the purpose of the canonical tag is to consolidate link signals. This means that like, shares, backlinks, etc., that different page versions receive will be reduced to the canonical version, strengthening its SEO presence.

Once you have done this practice, remember to rerun the audit to see if the implementation is done correctly; the search engine console, screaming frog, or any other SEO audit tool will help you to check this. Finally, you should see your website listing for the targeted keywords soon.