In this article we will address the canonical error that appears on every website. What is happening nowadays is that there is a lot of information overlapping one another, within the site itself. The feeding of sites with new posts and pages ends up always being around the same theme and due to that fact, many pages, posts and even, the placement of digital factsheets or PDF’s/images have a lot of similar content between them. Google realizes that there are similar canonical URL’s and will choose one of them as the main one. This choice is usually made for the page that was built first, this may not be the best choice, it is up to the SEO professional to solve this canonical error the best way.
Canonization
The first way where we see the canonical error is in the domain of the site itself, this can be accessed by multiple URL combinations, for example:
As we already realized, this process will become a canonical error for Google. The easiest way to see how Google has indexed a page is to use the URL inspection tool in “Google Search Console”, this will show the canonical URL selected by Google. Or access the free “Screaming Frog” Software to identify the canonical URL’s with errors so you can fix the problem.
There are three ways to resolve the canonical error on websites:
Through .htaccess;
Organizing the links of the site manually, through the header of each page;
Using plugins, in case we are in wordpress, such as “Rank Math”.
1st option: in .htaccess, from www to non-www, put the following code:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mestreseo\.com\.br [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) https://www.agenciamestre.com/$1 [R=301,L]
2nd option: manually, in the header of each page, through the canonical tags, which inform the search engines that the URL in question is the main copy of the page: rel = “canonical”:
<link rel=”canonical” href=”https://www.website.com/pagina/” />
3ª option: in wordpress you can use plugins like “Rank Math”, to do these canonizations, on any page or post, go to the ‘advanced’ tab of the Rank Math meta box, go to the field and set the canonical URL for that same page.
Conclusion
The main thing to know when we are solving this canonical problem is that we first have to define which URL we want to use, and then put it on all pages that contain this error and are similar to each other.
Today, many companies need immediate results, but the truth is that they cannot afford to implement SEO internally while leveraging with the priority of their business focus. If you still can’t handle these steps or don’t have the time to put them in place, Bringlink SEO ensures you get the brand visibility and growth you deserve.
Talk to us, send email to bringlinkseo@gmail.com.
References
Google – https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/consolidate-duplicate-urls?hl=pt-br