Reading Time: 7 mins 38 sec

In this article, we are discussing, how to troubleshoot canonical tag issues for SEO.

Canonization is an important component of technical SEO. 

If you’re interested in SEO, you’ve probably heard the term “canonical tag” at some point. 

But do you know Canonical Tag, why Canonical Tag is used, what are the benefits of using Canonical Tag, and how to create Canonical Tag for your blog?

If you are interested in knowing the answers to the above questions then read this article till the end. 

You can find detailed information about canonical tags in this article. 

Additionally, you will have no doubts regarding the canonical tag. 

Let’s go straight to the discussion of canonical tags and their importance for SEO in this article.

Read This: ChatGPT Vs Google Bard Vs Bing

What is Canonical Tag? 

Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft collaborated to create the canonical tag in February 2009. 

Whose primary duty was to inform the search engine of the most preferred page of any website or webpage. 

The canonical tag is primarily an HTML command. 

Which search engine bots can be found is explained in the head section of the blog.

Multiple URLs are often created for blogs within the same content or webpage, which prompts search engine bots to treat each URL as a separate page. 

The question of which URLs to index and which not to is a major issue for them. 

As a result, the blog has duplicate content or canonical problem.

Canonical tags are used to solve this problem. 

Search engines only index the page linked to the URL added to the canonical tag and ignore all other similar URLs.

The preferred URL of a website that should be indexed is identified by a canonical tag, which is used by search engines.

Definition of Canonical Tag

The canonical tag is an HTML tag that is written in the head section of the blog and informs the search engines that the URL they are currently indexing is the same one that we have added as the primary URL for our blog or webpage. 

If the same URL appears elsewhere on our website, it should be ignored.

Therefore, the main URL of your webpage is the URL that you have added to the canonical tag of the blog. 

Furthermore, all other URLs that link to the canonical URL are copies of the main URL.

Canonical Tag Basic Structure

<link rel=”canonical” href=”https://Example.com/” />

Purpose Of Using The Canonical Tag

Often two or more URLs are created for the same blog page. 

Duplicate content is a problem because search engine bots index all URLs as separate pages. 

The solution to this problem is the canonical tag.

You must be wondering why two URLs are created in any of our websites or webpage. 

Let us also tell you what he said.

The primary URL of my website is https://seowithsunny.com.

In different browsers, this URL will appear as -.

• https://seowithsunny.com (without www)
• https://seowithsunny.com(AMP version of website)
• https://seowithsunny.com. (without SSL certificate)
• https://seowithsunny.com/?m=1 (Mobile version)

Due to the fact that there are many URLs on our website, even though there is only one of us. 

As a result, search engine bots are not currently sophisticated enough to determine that all of these URLs belong to the same website. 

It is important to use the canonical tag to inform search engine bots of the main URL.

Search engine bots are able to differentiate between the main URL and duplicate URLs by using the canonical tag. 

here are no duplicate content or canonicalization issues in our webmaster tools (Google Search Console).

How to troubleshoot canonical tag issues for SEO

The two main ways to fix authentication problems are by implementing 301 redirects and/or including an “auth” tag on your site’s pages. 

The best course of action depends on the problem you’re trying to solve.

Implement site-wide 301 redirects for very similar pages

Fixed issues with HTTP/HTTPS and non-WWW and WWW.

Site-wide 301 redirects can be used to fix HTTP/HTTPS and WWW/non-WWW URLs.

If you host a redirect URL, you can create another link to send traffic to your website. 

This is the most direct and least risky method, but it does mean giving away some of your site’s juice for free by hosting another page with a link to it.

You can use the Google search bar and enter “HTTP redirect [host name]” or “www” to switch from HTTP to HTTPS. 

If your host has a help page on the subject, they should be able to describe how to do this. 

Alternatively, customer support may still be required when the need arises; contact them immediately.

We recommend that you ask the developers for assistance if you want to make sure that your website is up and running and that users can find it. 

They may also be able to set up redirects using .htaccess (Apache) or NGINX configuration files to make things easier for us.

According to Google, your traffic and rankings should be back soon after making this change.

In addition to redirecting your URLs, you may also need to update the robots.txt file or make other adjustments. 

Read This: 301 Vs 302 Redirects For SEO

Provide canonical tags to all of your site’s pages

Every page of your website should have a canonical tag specified.

This tool can be used to identify URL problems on sites with dynamic URLs, such as e-commerce.

If you want to control which pages become canonical, add a rel=canonical tag to your website.

By including this code on every page, canonical URLs help you make your website more accessible. 

Most content management systems have techniques that will make canonicalization easier for you, but it is inconvenient and not very practical.

Use the premium Yoast SEO plugin, for example, to automatically add self-referential tags like “canonical” to WordPress websites. 

HubSpot CMS users have modified their settings to automatically deliver relevant URLs.

There’s no need to worry because Shopify does this for its customers’ pages as well.

If you’re using a CMS other than the recommended CMS, it’s worth doing some research to see if your site offers an easy way to apply canonical tags to pages.

Use the canonical tag to route similar or duplicate pages to specific URLs

Fixed the issue of different URLs depending on the display device for the page.

If you own both a mobile device (m.) choose the website that will be the canonical version of your site from the web ([site].com) and computer ([site].com). 

We will use it as an example below is our authentic version as it is most likely your desktop page.

As soon as possible, make sure that every page on your desktop page has an auth tag that links to it.

When you’re done, give each page on your desktop page a canonical tag that directs your mobile site to a duplicate URL.

Google Chrome will show your mobile page in search results for mobile queries regardless of this canonical placement, but all links from each version of the page will be treated as ranked search result pages.

These instructions should be followed if you use AMP on your website and want to authenticate your AMP sites on their computer counterparts.

When creating your content, make sure other websites use the canonical tag

Fix issues with syndicated content and content appearing on multiple pages when copied.

To make sure Google knows where your content came from, make sure all supplemental websites that publish it use the rel=canonical tag. 

If not, they may give credit to some other site instead of yours and rank it above yours.

Read This: What Are Some Tips For Analyzing A Google Search Traffic Drop

Advantages of Canonical Tag

The benefits of using canonical tags are as follows:

• Eliminates the issue of duplicate content.
• The position is better on the search results page.
• The website is properly indexed.
• It is easy to tell search engine bots which pages should be indexed and which should not.

Best Way To Create Canonical Tags

I’ll show you how to create a canonical tag and add it to your website in the easiest way possible:

Step 1: Go to the Canonical tag generator website.

Step 2: When you enter your website URL and select the submit button, you will now have a page like this (see image below).

Step 3: At this point, your Canonical tag is ready. The next step is to copy and paste this code into the head section of your website.

Adding Canonical Tags to Blogger

By default, the canonical tag is present in Blogger; However, if you change themes, you may encounter canonical issues in Google Search Console as a result of the lack of canonical tags in some themes.

To add a canonical tag in Blogger, just follow the below steps.

• On the left side of the blogger dashboard, click on Theme Options.
• Click here to edit the HTML now.
• Search using Ctrl-F.
• The canonical tag should now be pasted below the head section.

WordPress canonical tag additional instructions

With WordPress, you don’t need to do much as this feature is built-in to any SEO plugin you use.

Note: My recommendation using Rankmath for the canonical tag

The Canonical URL option is available in the SEO plugin when you write an article in WordPress.

The canonical URL can be modified from here if you wish, otherwise, leave it alone.

Read This: How To Show Favicon In Google Search

Conclusion

In this article, we are discussing, how to troubleshoot canonical tag issues for SEO.

I have given you all the information related to the canonical tag. 

I sincerely hope that after reading this article completely, you must have got a better understanding of the importance of canonical tags for website ranking.

You can use the comment section to ask any remaining questions about your Canonical tag. 

Don’t forget to forward this article to your friends so that they can learn more about canonical tags.

Read Also

• Top 65 Technical SEO Interview Questions And Answers
• Does Bold Text Help SEO
• How To Create The Perfect H1 Tag For SEO
• Google Announces Five Changes Coming To Mobile Search
• Benefits Of Using Semrush

FAQ