![]() The right option depends on the canonical issue you’re trying to resolve. There are two main ways to fix canonical issues on a website: by implementing 301 redirects, and/or by adding canonical tags to your site’s pages to tell Google which of several similar pages is preferred. For example, one option you could try is going to Google, typing in site:, and reviewing all of the pages in Google’s index to see if there’s anything there that surprises you. The other issues can be more difficult and time-consuming to discover. But if any of those URLs fail to redirect to your preferred URL, you have a canonical issue. If all of those URLs redirect to one of those URLs (for example, each of those AuthorityLabs URLs redirects to ), then you do not have those canonical issues on your site. How to Determine if Your Site Has Canonical IssuesĬanonical issues caused by HTTP/HTTPS or For example: The good news is that these canonical issues can all be fixed. The bad news is that there are lots of ways to unintentionally create canonical issues on your site. Syndicated content: If you publish your content on multiple websites or allow it to be syndicated-for example, you publish each new blog post on your website and on Medium-it can create canonical issues.URLs that change based on the device used to view the page: If you have a different website for desktop and mobile users (m.com vs.com) or if you use AMP (amp.com vs.com), it can create canonical issues.URLs that change based on user interactions: Some sites-ecommerce sites in particular-generate different URLs based on search parameters or filters.Again, this issue creates duplicates of every single page of your website.This issue creates duplicates of every single page of your website. HTTP: If your site is secured by an SSL certificate, it’s possible that it loads when typing in both the HTTPS and HTTP versions of your URL. There are lots of scenarios that cause canonical issues, but here are a few of the most common, according to Google: What Are Some Common Causes of Canonical Issues? It may only consider the links pointing to URL 2-not the links pointing to URL 1-when ranking the page, which could cause your rankings to suffer. Then, Google chooses URL 2 as the canonical version of your page. Say you have 100 links pointing to URL 1 and 10 links pointing to URL 2. The third issue is caused by a combination of the two issues above. This diversifies your link equity across multiple pages, diluting it. Second, if your content is accessible via multiple URLs, other sites may link to different URLs when citing the content on your site. Here’s a great video from Google’s John Mueller explaining how the search engine selects a canonical URL when multiple URLs on a site display the same or similar content: This can be a problem if Google selects a URL that isn’t the URL you would prefer to be indexed. So when it discovers duplicate pages, it selects a canonical (default) version of that page and excludes all other versions of the page from its search results. There are a few reasons why canonical issues are problematic for SEO.įirst, Google doesn’t want to include duplicate content in its index. This creates a duplicate content problem, which can be an issue for SEO. The exact same page displays for each of those URLs, but because each has a different URL, search engines understand that as being four different pages. ![]() They’re often the result of not having proper redirects in place, though they can also be caused by search parameters on ecommerce sites and by syndicating or publishing content on multiple sites.įor example, a website might load its homepage for all of the following URLs: How to Determine if Your Site Has Canonical IssuesĬanonical issues most commonly occur when a website has more than one URL that displays similar or identical content.What Are Some Common Causes of Canonical Issues?.Worse, it can dilute your link equity, which could harm your search rankings.īy learning how to identify and fix duplicate content issues on your website, you can avoid canonical issues and all of the problems that come with them. Canonical issues caused by duplicate content are a really common SEO problem for websites. Having identical or very similar content on more than one URL can result in indexing problems.
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