What Is URL Canonicalization And How To Implement – Do you wish to face penalties for adding duplicate content to your website? The answer would be an obvious no. Everyone does their best effort to make their content unique. But despite of the efforts, if you are still facing the penalties then you really need to know about the concept of canonicalization. Here we will throw some light on what is URL canonicalization and how can you implement it.

What Is URL Canonicalization And How To Implement

There are certain features that you should definitely consider while making your website completely functional and responsive. If you want your website to completely thrive into the search engine results then URL canonicalization is something you really need to implement. You must enable and implement this tag on your website for your own advantage. You can get variety of benefits if you will use it in the appropriate way.

Table of Contents

What is URL canonicalization?

URL canonicalization on a whole can be a bit difficult to understand. Canonicalization in search engine optimization means normalizing or redirecting to a single domination version of the multiple URLs. This is really essential for the optimization of the website. The major purpose of cananicalization is to fix stem from multiple uses of a single content that appears in various locations on one website or multiple websites. Search engines will select the best version and state others as duplicate. Therefore, to prevent yourself from this situation you must implement canonical tags.

How to correctly implement URL canonicalization?

Now you might be thinking what is the best way to apply URL canonicalization to your website. Well, this is not a long process. We do not have to type in lines of codes to correctly apply it. You just need to add a canonical tag and that will do all you work. A simple rel=”canonical” tag is more than enough to implement URL canonicalization to your website. Through this tag Google will get to know which content is original and which is duplicate. Below mentioned are some of the tips to correctly use this tag.

If you are thinking to add a canonical tag to the second page of the URL then it is a bad idea. Google will never index this URL. You should definitely avoid doing this.
A website having too many canonical tags could prove to be really harmful. So adding too much canonicalization tags is definitely not a good idea. This will invite a lot of errors and hence you will have to face penalties.
You should use both canonical tags that are capable of differentiating the mobile version of website and desktop.
Do not commit the mistake of adding canonical tag after <head>. Search engine bots will not accept it for their own reasons.
Do not point a canonical URL to a website having a non 200 status code.

Advantages of proper URL canonicalization

With the proper use of canonical tags on the website you could prevent yourself from multiple of conditions. Implementation of the URL canonicalization is extremely important. Below mentioned are the advantages that will justify the previous statement the most extent.

You will not have different URLs for the same content.
Mobile website will not display the same content of the same URL.
Your website will be prevented in case of sharing syndicate content or duplicate content.
URLs having HTTP will not result in the same content.
Same categories and tags will result in the exact content.

Conclusion

If you were looking for the ways to correctly apply the URL canonicalization then I hope this have been a bit of helpful to clear your queries. URL canonicalization is a extremely delicate process and should be done with care. If done in a wrong method, it has the ability to harm your website. Therefore, if you are planning to implement this process on your website then mentioned above are the best ways to ponder on.