What is a Canonical tag?
When developing a website, it often happens that multiple versions of the same page are created, containing the same information. This affects how Google views 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 you can add to the code on a website to guide search engines on how they should crawl pages with duplicate content. Pages with duplicate content make it difficult for the search engine to determine which of the pages it should prioritize in indexing and which one should rank in the search results. By adding a canonical tag in the HTML code, you tell Google which of the versions they should prioritize in the index. This work falls under 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 placed in the HTML head tag, which is part of the HTML document of a website. A common situation where canonical tags are important is in online stores that use filtered product views. These filters, which allow users to narrow down their search, can generate different information on the same page. In such cases, it is important to add a canonical tag to the version of the page without any filters activated.
Benefits of canonical tags
Maintain control over how Google reads your page
First, actively using canonical tags is valuable because it lets you maintain control over which page Google prioritizes in search results. The search engine will only choose one of the duplicates to display in the search results. If you have multiple duplicates of a page without canonical tags that tell the search engine which page you want indexed, the search engine will choose one of the duplicates on its own.
Avoid internal competition
If multiple similar pages with variations in the URL are indexed and stored in Google’s index, the search engine will, as mentioned, become confused. This is because the similar pages will start competing internally for visibility in the search results. As a result, you may end up with Google favoring a page that is not optimized and has a lower conversion rate.
Summary
Canonical tags are yet another way to ensure a clean and readable site for search engines. By clearly telling Google which version of pages with similar information should be prioritized, you make it easier for Google to crawl the page correctly. You also ensure that the content presented in the search results is what you want. Proper use of canonical tags is part of our standard practice in SEO work and something we guide our clients on.
