Blog

What is a Canonical Tag?

by | May 16, 2017 | blog | 0 comments

You might have heard the word “canonical” before. What even is a canonical tag, and why is it important for SEO?

A canonical tag, or canonical link element, is an HTML link attribute that is used to tell search engines that they are referencing the correct page, or master version of a page. Telling Google, “hey, don’t look over there, this is the same content and the correct URL is here. Show this one in search results.”

This piece of code references the URL that you want search engines to find and rank. In many cases these will be self-referencing, in others, you will be telling search engines which version of the same page, or duplicate page, is the correct one to rank in search results.

Assignment: Find a Canonical Tag

Try this:

  1. View the Source Code of the page
  2. Do a Find Search, command F shortcut, for “canonical”
  3. If there is one on the page, it will look like this in the HTML code:

Often canonical tags are used to solve for systemic URL structure issues or extensive duplicate content. For example, on a retail site if you have a black dress that lives under the dress category and the black category you might have two product pages with two different URLs but the same exact content.

Writing a Canonical Tag

If your CMS, content management system, does not have a field for a canonical link element, you can code the element into your template. Let’s use the example of the black dress product above to write canonical tags.

URL examples:

www.example.com/product/dresses/black-dress

www.example.com/product/color-black/black-dress

In this case, you would only want Google to find one of these product pages so your site can avoid being flagged or penalized for duplicate content. So, your solution if you want both pages live is to implement canonical tags on both pages. (If you only want one of the pages live, you might use a 301 redirect, to redirect not only search engines but the user to one version of the page.)

Canonical link examples:

To specify that the www.example.com/product/dresses/black-dres URL is the primary URL, you would place the following self-referencing canonical tag on the page:

<link rel=”canonical” href=”www.example.com/product/dresses/black-dress/”>

On the page you do not want Google to show, www.example.com/product/color-black/black-dress, you would add the same canonical tag:

<link rel=”canonical” href=”www.example.com/product/dresses/black-dress/”>

When Google next crawls your pages, it will know to look at the single URL because the content is identical.

Wondering if you should place a canonical on a page? Run through this checklist:

  1. Do both versions of the page need to be live? If so, yes.
  2. Is the page content almost 100% duplicate? If so, yes.
  3. Is this the preferred version of my page I want Google to index and rank? If so, yes.

SEOism: Can I use canonical as a verb? We do all the time. Who’s keeping score anyways.

Warning: relying too heavily on this tag to tell Google which URL is supposed to appear in search results can be problematic. If you are canonicalizing to a URL that is not the same content, chances are Google will overlook these tags, chalking this up to user error.

Monika Choudhary

Web Developer

Monika is competent professional with 10+ Years of Experience in the Website Design and Development. She is having a great expertise in developing responsive e-commerce, real estate, social networking, jobs portals, classified, corporate based websites & her expertise includes WordPress, Woocommerce, Magento, Shopify, Codeigniter, CakePHP, Laravel. She is detail oriented, driven worker who enjoys fixing code and creating something beautiful websites from scratch. Quality Work & On time delivery is always her aim. Always trying to achieve client satisfaction level, she will not only work with you to develop an amazing website with high coding standards, she will also ensure it engages with your potentials to drive more conversions and leads.

"What does karma mean to you?"

"To me, Karma is the result of a person's actions and I believe that what happens to a person, happens because they caused it with their actions. Doing things with a good intention is what matters to me the most and that is what I always remember when working for my clients. I have realized that in this industry where there is a lot of competition around, I am working for my clients with a good heart and a positive vibe. That's what keeps me going."

"Who is your dream client and why?

"My dream client would be a company or an organization who passionately wants to build a strong online presence in the digital world. The one that’s easy to work with and that inspires you and makes work not feel like work is the dream client for me. I would love to guide them from the initial stage to build up their recognition through clean and advanced coding on the web."

Leighton Hendrick

Digital Marketing

+20 years of marketing, public relations, communications, advertising and internal and outside sales experience.

Extensive experience in developing and managing all levels of product and offering campaigns including marketing collateral, Web site content, SEO, paid media and social, inside sales call campaigns, sell sheets and management of campaign success metrics.

Demonstrated success in launching new products and corporate brands, developing demand generation programs, and creating internal and external communication pieces.

Exceptional collaborator with the ability to build relationships with trade media and manage large-scale corporate initiatives and events.

Proven ability to create and manage lead generation and call campaigns that result in the successful conversion of new and unique clients. Creator and Editor-In-Chief of IT Compliance Magazine, a quarterly publication with over 2,500 international C-Level readers.

Cassie Boca

Founder, CEO

Cassie taught herself SEO in 2006 when she was working at a small business that needed to increase visibility but didn’t have any budget. She understands the financial challenges startups and small business have in that they have to wear every hat and prioritize what they work on based on what will have the largest impact to the business. There are never enough hours in the day, but consistently Cassie found her time spent increasing rankings in organic search, ensuring locations and contact info was accurate online, building positive reviews, and spreading positive news about the companies she worked at.

In the last 10+ years, Cassie has seen it all, but always comes back to her passion for helping inspirational companies grow. As a consumer, she tries to limit her purchases to companies she believes in (ok, she still goes to Target… she’s a human) because as consumers we have the ability to help companies succeed. If we all purchased from companies that aligned with our personal beliefs, not only would companies step up but we’d see a shift in the brands that we interact with daily. She calls this being a “conscious consumer”… sometimes we think she made that phrase up, but the more time we spend with her the more we find ourselves buying only from companies we know the founders or love their mission.

Enough business talk, Cassie is passionate about connecting with like-minded people, traveling and is a pretty badass skier. She loves to chase winter seeking powder fields, and on a powder day you may even get a FaceTime call from a chairlift or the backcountry.

What does karma mean to you?

To me, karma is the intention behind our actions. Good karma, to me, means doing things with good intent, a pure heart, and positive energy. When starting a company, it was critical that I start it with good karma. In writing our mission statement you’ll see that our mission has the intent of helping consumers find companies they are proud to wear their logo or recommend to a friend…what I call being a conscious consumer. When I realized my intent behind starting this company was coming from a place of wanting to increase visibility of companies putting good into this world, I knew we had to include karma in the name.

Who is your dream client and why?

My dream client isn’t a company any of us have heard of. I’d love to hear from a young startup doing something inspirational, I mean, my passion is for increasing visibility so it’s not much of a challenge if a company comes to me and they are already hugely successful.

If I had to pick a company that already exists, it would be Charity Water. Their mission and vision inspire me so much, I had all of my wedding guests make a donation there instead of buying us gifts. But again, Charity Water has great visibility already so I’d love to find a company that isn’t there yet where I feel we can change the trajectory of their company through the work we do.