Rel Canonical URL Code Tool




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About the Canonical Tag Generator

Use this tool to generate a rel=canonical URL code to add into your html head to help search engines know the location of the webpage that has the content you originally intended to publish as unique. Follow the links below to see the official documentations from Google, Yahoo!, and Bing.

The official documentations from the major search engines on the proper use of the canonical markup:

Let Me Give You My Personal Canonicalization Secrets

To avoid any confusion, I want you to know that people on the Internet are talking about the same HTML canonical link element in SEO whenever they use the following terms:

Here is an example of a canonical link element:

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/article-page" />

It is as good as a 301 redirect - a.k.a permanent redirect. However, the canonical link element only works on the same domain while a 301 redirect would work across domains. But, unlike 301 redirects, the canonical link element saves you the hassle of having to wait for the technical department to do the job for you. It gives you the ease of implementation and ability to achieve the same results much faster.

The part where it says rel="canonical" is the link tag's attribute which sets up the page for canonicalization. The part where it says href="http://www.example.com/article-page" is also an attribute. However, its job as an attribute is to define for the search engines the canonical URL. This canonical URL must always be the URL that holds the original content which you want to get indexed and ranked in the SERPs.

Most blogging platforms and CMS (Content Management System) platforms have built-in canonicalization by default. You just have to make sure that the canonical protocol implemented by your chosen web publishing platform uses canonicals the way they are meant to be used.

Here is a video that can get you started in the correct path about canonical tag usage for any website your are optimizing to be more search engine friendly:

So, simplifying it would mean that whenever you have duplicate content across multiple pages, make sure each page doesn't use its own URL in its canonical tag. Only your original page should do that. Then, get the original page's URL and put it in each duplicate page's canonical tag. If you can do that, either manually or automatically dynamic, you can achieve up to 100% reduction in your website duplicate content issues.

I'm sure you'll understand more of this after watching this next video below:

Make sure to check out the 5 common mistakes with rel=canonical that you must do your best to avoid when choosing a suitable web publishing platform or when you are building yourself a custom website. To find out what those common mistakes are, click here.

Canonical Tag Importance

Canonical tag solves duplicate content issues in SEO. You have a duplicate page issue whenever the same web content is shared across multiple pages inside or outside your domain. Search engines refuse to index duplicate pages simply because it would never make sense to have duplicate search results. Thanks to Google, Yahoo!, and Bing for supporting the canonical protocol which is easier to use than the server side 301 redirects. If you know basic HTML, using a rel="canonical" link tag doesn't really require the help of your company's web developer/programmer or IT guy. It's that easy.

Canonicalization is very useful when solving these common duplicate content challenges that SEOs encounter every now and then. On-site duplicate issues occur when your web publishing platform permits you to publish the same exact content under different categories, labels, or tags which generates for you separate page URLs for each copy of the same content.

In February of 2009, the three major search engines announced a joint "effort to help reduce duplicate content". The old post features a video of Matt Cutts being interviewed on the day of the announcement.

Now you know how search engines Google, Yahoo!, and Bing let you indicate on each of your original content page a canonical link element pointing to itself as the original work. To sum it up, the only way to fix your duplicate content issues to make sure of the following: