Non Canonical Tags
Non Canonical Tags
Canonical tags are one of the many important SEO techniques used in the field of search engine optimization. A canonical link component is a HTML element which helps webmasters avoid duplicate content problems in search engine ranking by defining the ” canonical” or “right” version of a page. It is defined in the newer version of the Black Book of SEO (3.0) that was published in April 2021. It has become one of the most fundamental principles in modern search engine marketing. If you want to maximize the potentials of your website or blog, the cardinal rule of SEO is to implement canonical tags in the various design and coding aspects of your website.
A Canonical link component carries a special value – the URL. The element’s meta-data contains the target’s title, description and keywords. On the other hand, a canonical tag corresponds to a specific page or document. The data for a page or document with no canonical target does not contain the target’s keywords and may not have a title.
How canonical tags help search engines? They help search engines in determining the correct version of a site as well as its structure. This helps in improving the ranking of websites on the search engines. The ranking of websites on the search engines depends on various reasons. These include the existence of relevant contents on the website, the existence of canonical tags, the existence of unique pages on the site and the existence of relevant links on these pages.
Duplicate content on a website increases the risk of duplication spam. This happens when someone visits your site and finds only one copy of the same content on your site. The search engines penalize such duplicate copies. They do this by removing them from search results, and they also try to track who has sent duplicate copies. One way of achieving the desired effect from canonical tags is to use all of the text that is relevant to the target keyword or phrase on each and every page on the site. This also avoids duplication spam.
However, using all of the relevant text on each and every page of your site can be very tedious. It consumes a lot of time to write all these urls. There is another way of achieving the desired effect using canonical tags. The HTML meta-tag provides options to control what you want the search engines to consider while indexing a website. This means that you can specify which texts are considered part of the website and which aren’t. With this feature, you avoid duplicate content penalties and at the same time improve your site’s rankings.
You may wonder what differentiates the two types of meta-tags. The difference is that for duplicate content, the meta-tag used for the duplicate page technically has the same value as for the original. However, when it comes to canonical tags, the value of the keyword or phrase is different. This way, you avoid getting penalized for duplicate content and instead enjoy a ranking boost due to unique, relevant content.
Another question that may crop up in your mind is how to apply canonical tags correctly. If you are unfamiliar with html, you should read ‘The Definitive Guide to SEO’, a special report by Webix. This thorough and in-depth guide will help you understand all about building a site and making it SEO friendly. To begin with, the canonical tag for a page is always beneath the title in the SERPs. So whenever you type in a domain name in the search box, the search engines will see your homepage first. Similarly, when you use the title tag, the search engines also list the homepage as well as the main keywords section.
To conclude, it can be safely said that both non canonical tags are necessary to promote your website in search engines. However, the former are best used for higher SERPs while the latter is best applied on low-end pages. With this in mind, you can now go ahead and make sure your web pages are optimised so that they get a better ranking.