Working with Canonical Pages

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The rel canonical tag is an important tool for SEO website promotion. If search crawlers detect duplicate content on different URLs, their task is to select the main or canonical page from the general link mass. This is what rel canonical is used for: the presence of the tag indicates that this particular page is the main one.

This tag is most often used by online stores. Due to the fact that the same product can be available at different addresses due to sorting and filtering features, it is necessary to help search engines understand what exactly to display in the search results. Having found a canonical in the HTML code during scanning, crawlers will easily calculate the main link. So, this tag allows you to:

Speed ​​up indexing. By specifying a canonical page, you improve the visibility on page seo service of the resource in search results and speed up the crawler process.
Specify the main page. The same site can be located at several addresses. Canonical will help to avoid confusion when collecting statistics. Thus, Google Search Console, when forming analytics, uses canonical links. Do not forget about this if you use the service and want to get correct data.
Get to the top of the search results. Duplicate content negatively affects ranking. Rel canonical will help minimize the consequences of this problem.
However, not everyone needs to use this tag all the time. Let's figure out when it is really needed and how to set it up.

When should you specify the rel canonical attribute?
Canonical attributes play an important role in optimizing a resource for search engines. Unfortunately, it is not always possible to avoid duplicates. However, it is important to understand that canonicals are not a strict directive. Rather, they are an indication for crawlers, a kind of recommendation that robots can either take into account during scanning or ignore.

The latter most often happens if the quality of the texts posted on the canonical page is low or they are not unique, and if the page is linked to too many external links. Other factors also play a role. It is necessary to register the attribute in the cases described below.

Duplicate pages
The presence of duplicates is the most common reason for using the canonical attribute. If several links lead to a certain piece of content on your site (for example, as in the situation with the online store described above, where duplicates are formed due to filters and sorting), the tag will tell crawlers which option is preferable for indexing. This allows robots not to waste the “scanning budget” on studying the same material, but to immediately move on to the necessary one. This way, they will process new content faster.

Pagination
First of all, pagination pages are needed to break up a large piece of material into several parts. They are pages with links leading to other sections of the site. They contain articles and texts that continue the content on the main page in meaning.

Pagination simplifies portal navigation for users, but complicates it for search robots. In this situation, you should mark every page of the site with the rel=canonical tag, except for the first one.

Different protocols and subdomains
The site can support not only HTTP, but also HTTPS, and be hosted on different subdomains. It is important to understand that rel=canonical is a way to indicate to crawlers the preferred version that needs to be indexed when gluing such pages, because their content is the same. This way, robots will not perceive them as different portals with duplicate content, and will not lower your resource in search results.

Using Dynamic URLs
Such addresses make it easier for the user to navigate your portal. By making the appropriate settings in the CRM and giving visitors the opportunity to search for the necessary information by keywords, the webmaster creates dynamic links. At the same time, the address of the page where the sought content is located does not change. It should be marked as the main one using the canonical tag.

Mobile version of the site
One of the current requirements for web resources is the presence of a mobile version of the site. Most users view portals from smartphones and other gadgets, so adaptation to such devices significantly increases conversion. However, robots may well recognize the mobile version of the site as a duplicate of the desktop version. To prevent this from happening, mark all pages of the "main" portal created for PCs as canonical.

Using Upper and Lower Case in URLs
Webmasters recommend using an absolute URL, which includes not only the page address, but also the protocol name, domain name, and full path to the file. They are installed forcibly. If the address uses lower or upper case characters, such pages must be marked as priority using canonicals.

Working methods for specifying main pages
There are several simple techniques to leave a mark for search engine crawlers. You can choose the option according to your skill level.