Canonical Tag – The Definitive Guide from Zero42 Ltd

If you are looking for advice and guidance on what a canonical tag is and how you can benefit from it, then you have come to the right place. Here at Zero42 Ltd, we are a highly professional IT specialist with over 35 years of experience, based in Bournemouth covering Dorset, Hampshire & and Wiltshire. And, we specialize in Digital Media and SEO services, so are perfectly placed to provide you with up-to-date knowledge and advice on canonical tags.

What is a Canonical Tag?

A canonical tag is an HTML element which helps to indicate which version of a webpage is the correct one to index. This is useful if you have multiple pages on your website which have similar content as it helps search engines to understand which one is the most important to index. It is also helpful to prevent duplicate content issues, which can have a detrimental effect on your rankings.

By using a canonical tag, you can tell the search engine which version of the page should be indexed, and which ones should not. For example, if you have an article published on your website, but it is also published on a third party website, you can use a canonical tag to point the search engine to the original version on your website.

How Do I Use a Canonical Tag?

Using a canonical tag is simple – all you need to do is add a link to the version of the page that you want to be indexed into the area of the HTML code of each page.

This link should contain the code rel="canonical". For example, if you had a webpage located at http://example.com/about/, you would add the code into the area of the HTML code.

The Benefits of Using a Canonical Tag

Using a canonical tag can provide many benefits when it comes to SEO. By using a canonical tag, you can ensure that search engines only index the version of the page you want to be indexed. This can help to prevent any duplicate content issues which can have a detrimental effect on your rankings.

In addition, it can also help to ensure that search engines don't 'split the vote' when it comes to ranking your pages. For example, if you have several versions of the same page, search engines may rank them all separately – but if you use a canonical tag, you can ensure that the one version is the one that is indexed and ranked.

Conclusion

As you can see, using a canonical tag is an important part of any SEO strategy, and can help to prevent any duplicate content issues and ensure that the correct version of a page is indexed. Here at Zero42 Ltd, we are a highly professional IT specialist with over 35 years experience, based in Bournemouth covering Dorset, Hampshire & Wiltshire and specializing in Digital Media and SEO services, so we are perfectly placed to help with any queries you may have on canonical tags and many other areas of SEO.