Canonical: its usefulness

In the world of search engine optimization (SEO), it is important to ensure that search engines index and display the correct version of your web page. The best way you can use to achieve this is the HTML canonical tag.

How to add a canonical

An HTML canonical is added using a link tag in the <head> of the web page. It is used to indicate which page should be considered the "original" or "preferred" version by search engines. This helps search engines determine which duplicate links to use.

The syntax for this page canonical tag is as follows:

As you can see an absolute url is used, which is a recommended practice.

Why is the canonical important for SEO?

It is important that your pages are not double indexed by search engines. This prevents the value of the pages from being distributed across different URLs. For example, it happens that external parties add extra information to the link, creating a "double" link.

For example, Google adds a gclid and Facebook an fbclid parameter to the URL. If you do not capture this properly with a canon incal, you will get a double link.