Cnonical Tag HTML | Complete Detail and Examples

Okay, guys so in this lecture I want to talk about the canonical tag. I want to explain what is It but first, I want to show you how do I know that Google needs us to use canonical URLs. So you know I always use google sources in order to show you that the things that I teach are 100 supported by google themselves. This is a source I found on google support that I say use canonical URL. They basically explain why do you need it but they don't really explain what is it and how do you implement it into your website. So this is what I want to teach you in this lecture.

Canonical Tag

So first of all what is the canonical tag and what do we need it for. For example, this is the URL of my website but sometimes, you can see this URL as well with UTM parameters. UTM parameters usually used for tracking, tracking promotional banners that you put on another website for example and you want to know how many people clicked this banner and moved into your website or for example on Facebook ads most of the Facebook ads you will click will have certain parameters. This is something very common in order to track clicks from a certain website into another website but when google sees this URL Googlebot may think this is the original URL of my website but this is also a URL that leads to my website.

So what happens Googlebot may think that those pages are different and they have duplicate content. They have duplicate content they have duplicate titles they have duplicate meta description everything is duplicate and google don't like duplicate content. So this is why we need to solve this issue. We want to make sure that Google knows that this is the original URL of my website and there is no other URL except this one. This is why we use the canonical tag. The canonical URL is basically the URL that would tell google that this is the URL of the website. This is the specific URL and the only URL of this page.

Canonical Tag HTML Code

• you press right-click
• view page source and
• search for canonical

okay, so this is the canonical tag on my website. You can see the syntax is linked rel equals canonical href and the original and only URL of this page. Now if I'll do the same with this page that contains the parameters

• View page source
• Search for canonical

and you can see that the URL of my website didn't change. The page still says that this is the original URL of my website. This is how we solve the issue of duplicate content or duplicate pages but,

Canonical Tag Example

<link rel="canonical" href="https://jamalitech.blogspot.com" />

How do we implement this canonical URL into your website?

So this is what I want to teach you if you're a developer you can create a certain code that makes this canonical tag on every page of your website but if you're not a developer that will be even easier.

• if you're using Joomla you can use this extension for Joomla canonical extension that will help you solve this issue of duplicate URLs
• if you're using WordPress you have the Yoast plugin which is a plugin that solves many SEO issues

So this is what I want to teach you about the canonical tag. These tags are very important. You must have it on your website on every page of your website. So if you already have a website I want you to check on the view source if your tag is there you should try also to enter your website with UTM parameters or any other parameters and still check if the canonical tag didn't change.

Conclusion

This is how you can know the tag is working fine for your website and will solve any duplicate pages issue on your website. If your canonical tag is missing if you're using Joomla use the canonical extension, if you're using WordPress use the Yoast plugin and this is how you solve canonical issues. That's it this is everything you need to know about this topic and about how do you solve duplicate page issues.