Canonical URLs
A canonical URL is the version of a webpage you want search engines to treat as the primary one when multiple pages contain similar or identical content.
Why It Matters
This prevents duplicate content issues and makes sure ranking signals are consolidated to the correct page. If you have multiple pages that are the same, you can end up with none of them being ranked.
How to implement it
Lets say your blog post uses tags to group them. So you have a specific page for each tag (News, Product updates, Industry insights) with their respective blog posts.
These "tag pages" must have a canonical tag pointing to your main blog page (or the tag root). If not, search engines will ignore them altogether because they do not want to serve many pages for the same content.
The code is simple, goes in the header and should point to the main page for that piece of content.
<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.example.com/category/page/" />
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FAQ
What is a canonical tag?
It is a snippet of HTML code (rel="canonical") in the header that tells Google, "This is the original version."
When should I use it?
Whenever you have duplicate content, parameters in URLs (like ?sort=price), or syndicated content.
Can a page reference itself?
Can a page reference itself?