Canonical tag
When developing a website, it is often the case that several versions of the same page are created, with the same information. This affects how Google sees your site, and duplicate content is therefore something you need to work actively with. You do this by using a canonical tag!
What is the Canonical tag?
When developing a website, it is often the case that several versions of the same page are created, with the same information. This affects how Google sees your site, and duplicate content is therefore something you need to work actively with. You do this by using a canonical tag!
What is a canonical tag?
A canonical tag is an element that can be added to the code of a website to guide search engines on how to scan pages with duplicate content. Pages with duplicate content make it difficult for the search engine to decide which of the pages to prioritize in the indexing and which to rank in the search results. By adding a canonical tag in the HTML code, you will tell Google which of the versions to prioritize in the indexing. This work is known as technical SEO.
The most common type of canonical tag looks like this:
<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.domenet.com/siden-som-skal-prioriteres/" />
For this article, the canonical tag will be:
<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.solidmedia.no/fagbegreper/canonical-tag" />
It is embedded in the HTML Head tag, which is part of the HTML document of a web page.
A common situation where canonical tags are important is in online stores that have a filter view of products. The filter views, where you can narrow down your search, mean that you can get different information on the same page. In such cases, it is important to add the canonical tag to the version of the page without any filters activated.
Benefits of canonical tags
Stay in control of how Google reads your page
Firstly, active use of canonical tags is useful because you maintain control over which page Google prioritizes to show in search results. The search engine only chooses one of the duplicates to show in the search result. If you have multiple duplicates of a page without canonical tags that show the search engine which page is the one you want indexed, the search engine will choose one of the duplicates.
Avoid internal competition
If several similar pages with variations in the URL are indexed and placed in Google's library, the search engine becomes confused. This is because the similar pages will start to compete internally for space in the search results. You may end up with Google favoring a page that is not optimized and has a lower conversion rate.
In summary
Canonical tags are yet another way to ensure a clean and readable page for search engines. By clearly telling Google which version of pages with similar information should be prioritized, you make it easier for Google to scan the page correctly. You also ensure that the content presented in the search results is what you want. The correct use of canonical tags is part of our practice in SEO work and something we guide our customers in.
