Declaring duplicate content or near-duplicate content, whichever content you prefer, is the canonical tag, which means you're prompting Google which page to index.
What does Canonical Tag mean?
Canonical can be said to be the most preferred one among many URLs, Canonical does not mean duplicate. Canonical means preferred.
For example, if mango is your favorite of all fruits, mango is your canonical. Or if you like James Bond among all heroes, then James Bond is your Canonical.
From this example, we can say that one of the most favorite things among similar things is canonical.
Now if you look at it from the point of view of SEO, many times the website has largely similar content. And the search engines want you to tell them that among all these similar content, which is your favorite content i.e. which is canonical.
For this, you put the same link element in all the pages with similar content. Like
<link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/page.html"/>
It's a basic explanation that in a link you first specify the canonical relation and add the URL of the page. Let us now understand in some details.
There are two main reasons for having identical pages on a website. Technical issue and content issue.
Technical issue
Technical reason means your page is one but your page can be opened from different URLs. For example, if your page is - example.com /page.html then,
- https:// example.com /page.html
- http:// example.com /page.html
- https://www. example.com /page.html
- http://www. example.com /page.html
- https:// example.com /page.html/
Now you must have come to know that your same page can be opened from so many URLs. We, humans like you, make URLs look the same, but all these URLs are different from search engines.
All these URLs fight for space and split page rank. Maybe all your pages are different from each other, they are unique. But when the search engines find the same page with different URLs, the search engines get confused, which page should be indexed?
So, by declaring your preferred page as the canonical tag, you can remove this confusion of the search engines.
Content issue
When you use the same content, Exact Duplicate Content or Near Duplicate Content in multiple pages, the best practice is to tell the search engines themselves which page, which URL is preferred, which page or URL is specified.
Exact duplicate content appears exactly on another page and near-duplicate content is one which is almost identical content but with little very different differences.
what is the benefit of using canonical tags?
When you place canonical tags on individual pages and across all of those pages, and when you declare a single page as canonical or declare a preferred, you are telling search engines that the rank achieved by all pages Signals merge this one page.
The canonical tag serves to combine link equity or link signals. This is a great reason to use the canonical tag and use it properly.
How to add Canonical Tags
The way to use Canonical Tags is quite simple. Many plugins will be found on WordPress or all other platforms. If you use WordPress and you have the Yoast plugin, then you have to go to the edit window of the page, then you will have to go to the Yoast settings at the bottom and go to the advanced options. Here you will find a box asking you to enter the canonical URL.
By default, blogger provides this element in the header. If your site is a blogger then you don't need to do anything. This link element has to be pasted in the <head> section in HTML or a custom-coded website.
Add your canonical in every page which has the same content or similar, near-duplicate content. Evan your canonical page also mentioned which page is canonical.
For example, your website has four pages. Your website can even have up to twenty pages. Here we are taking four pages as an example. A, B, X, Y. Is not it?
If these four pages have similar or nearly duplicate content and you want Google to index your 'B' page and give this 'B' page by combining the page rank signals obtained by the remaining pages, how do you indicate to Google? can you give?
For this, you have to declare B canonical in A. X, Y page. And on the B page also B has to be declared as prescribed. Similarly, if you want to index 'X', you must declare X canonical in pages A, B, Y and also declare X canonical in X pages.
Some important points about canonical tag
The canonical tag is a sign, not an instruction
If you have used the canonical tag in your website and you are telling Google that https://www.example.com is my preferred page but the search is ignoring your URL and showing another version URL, then this It's not your fault.
Canonicalizing a single page does not mean that the search engine will not crawl the rest of the URLs. Search engines will also crawl all of your URLs and may lead you to another page, ignoring the canonical page you declared.
It doesn't mean that there is a problem with your setup. Or you should find the solution. The canonical tag is a hint, a suggestion. So it completely depends on the search engines whether they consider the page you declared as canonical or not.
Canonical tag and 301 redirects are both different
301 is an HTTP response code. The content asset that the browser receives from the server, which tells the browser that the URL in this HTTP, is now permanently moved to another URL.
In Canonical's case, all pages remain. Just have to tell the search engine which page is liked or canonical.
Canonical tags can also be used cross-domain
If you have the same content on two different domains, then you can set the page of one domain canonical. With this, the rankings received in both the websites will be single combined.
Self-referencing canonical tags
Again look at the same example, in pages A, B, X, Y, if B is canonical on A page, B is canonical on X page, B is canonical on Y page, then you should declare B canonical on B page as well.
That way, you're able to use self-responding canonical tags so that search engines don't have to confuse what is page B's canonical?
Conclusion
In this complete explanation of the canonical tag, I have tried to point out that the canonical tag is a sign, not a directive. Because of the similarity of multiple contents, Google indexes one of your pages, you may wish that Google indexed the other page rather than indexing your favorite page.
In this case, you can tell Google about your preferred page by using the canonical tag and using it properly. So that the page you want to index indexes the same page. But Google may or may not accept your hint.