It goes without saying that search engines are getting advanced more and more. There is some doubts about it. Meanwhile, CMS-driven web where content can quite often exist on many URLs, it is not always clear in terms of the authoritative URL for a provided content. Also, getting content on various URLs tend to lead to several issues with those of link ranking signals being spilt across some variations of piece of content.
It is certainly quite complex standing out in the quite often hypercompetitive search landscape, thus you would definitely imagine that majority of businesses have such foundational SEO problems under control.
Thanks to canonical tag. Using rel=canonical, you can easily determine the authoritative URL for any content. Besides, Google and lots of other engines will then certainly consolidate link and rank signals for different types of variations of such content onto a signal URL. It is indeed if the rel=canonical in a proper way. This article is going to throw some spotlight on incorrect implementation of such URLS tend to exacerbate URL based duplicate content.
You can see a piece of content opening on different URLs. This tends to occur on one or many sites. It could be caused by subdomains. It tends to tale also due to CMS that tends to create several entry points due to subdomains. Besides, it tends to be running your site over HTTPS in line with Google’s latest recommendations.
There are a few bunch of situations that tend to lead to a great piece of content being widely available on various URLs, but also most common URLS such as dynamic URLs, mobile sites, and international sites with absence of proper geo-targeting, www and subdomain issues, content syndication, CMS producing various URLs and running your site on both HTTPS and HTTP.
You may observe a combination of such problems and it is in fact not uncommon to find several websites running on both HTTP and HTTPS and also have content widely available on the www and also non-www version of the website. It tends to quickly create a great situation where the same piece of content tends to available on different URLs. For instance, a site running with and without www and also over HTTP and HTTPS tend to produce four potential URLs for every important piece of content on your website.
- https://designandrank.com/page
- https://www.designandrank.com/page
- https://designandrank.com/page
- https://www.designandrank.com/page
Canonical Chaos
In a good world, your canonical URL is something that would definitely sort this out completely and also every of the four URLs would get certainly the same canonical URL specified. It tends to be any of the above, but if you are blessed with HTTPS, you may too run with HTTPS so it could be your canonical URL is https://www.designandrank.com. You would then definitely put this piece of code into HTML head of all other important versions.
<link rel=”canonical” href=”https://www.designandrank.com” />
Unfortunately, you may observe seeing quite a bit recently is that the presence of canonical tag, yet every page has a canonical matching the URL reflect in the browser window.
- http://designandrank /page canonical = https://designandrank.com/page
- https://www.designandrank.com/page canonical = https://www.designandrank.com/page
- https://designandrank.com/page canonical = https://designandrank.com/page
- https://www.designandrank.com/page canonical = https://www.designandrank.com/page
This is not perfect quite clearly. Moreover, the canonical tag is generally designed for resolving such problems, but in such instance, it exacerbates the great situation. Besides, there are several problems like this generally impacts confidence and trust. These two generally impact rankings to a greater extent. It is true that poor ranking tends to adversely impact on your business.
HTTPS and HTTP
Using HTTPS is certainly a great thing. Security matters a lot and using HTTPS is said to be a quite useful for ensuring a strong security. And the website is quick than it once was. Meanwhile, you have observed all manner of issues here, generally due to the site being indexed on both HTTPS and HTTP URL variations. Besides, you also see several canonical tags using both HTTP and HTTPS that tend to again further exacerbates several underlying issues that the canonical tag must resolve.
Here are several reasons that tend to occur such issues
- The site is opening on HTTPS and HTTP, and also the CMS has certainly no way to force the subdomain or protocol for canonical URLs.
- There are several developers who generally take a complete checklist approach to SEO, implementing the said tag without getting aware of what it is for and also populating the same with the address bar URL.
How to Connect Canonicals
In most of cases, there are a lot of duplicate issues that tend to be resolved quite conveniently. So, resolving canonical issues is certainly one way, but this can be quite tricky with web CMS software, so you will be able to utilize permanent HTTP redirects (301). This is generally the quickest and also the most logical approach in the page variation is indeed not crawled and also Google doesn’t need to analyse multiple pages. They generally follow some redirections:
- 301 redirection
- Correct canonicals
This is indeed always indirect if you can since it in fact deals with some duplicate content problems in the fastest and also highly efficient way. Then, the biggest question is that where this is not possible or also desirable, implementation of page-level canonical tags. This may in fact need some developer support. In general, for WordPress there is indeed a simple fix with use of the wpseo canonical filter from the WordPress SEO plugin. This is something letting you force both HTTPS or HTTP or the subdomain with some fairly basic PHP. Moreover, your developer can also quite often perform the same thing for helping you with other CMS and also some bespoke builds. This is indeed not terribly quite complicated – it only needs a clear understanding of why canonical generally exists.
Access URL for Ruling Them All
It is certainly not uncommon for a piece of content for appearing on multiple URLs. There is indeed no duplicate content penalty. Meanwhile, for a search engine to be quite confident in the correcting URL for returning and also ensuring all equity is generally consolidated in the most important version of a page, you also need accurate redirection and also several canonical URLs. Moreover, you simply add an SEO plugin or also getting your developer generally hack in a canonical URL is certainly not quite enough – it should be quite implemented in a way that generally ensures that every piece of content that is blessed with one authoritative URL.
