Importance of SEO Training
SEO training is the best way to gain knowledge of the essential SEO techniques and procedures that can get websites in the top ranks of the search engine results. This training will give you a better understanding how the search engines work to rank the websites and what are the best processes to implement for getting websites in top SEO rankings. Techniques for implementing SEO activities will vary from website to website and hence, needs best understanding of the process and clever thinking to know about which is the better way to implement various processes to get a website ranked in top SERPs. SEO training will teach you how to do this, how to implement various techniques across various kinds of websites and what are best practices to implement these techniques according to websites. Right from the basics to the advanced techniques all could be learnt for effective optimization through SEO training.
No doubt that the practices in an SEO process keep on changing with changes in search engine algorithms, but still there are certain standard techniques or procedures which search engine algorithm still sticks on to fetch the result pages for user query. There are certain standard website optimizing processes that do not change with the changing algorithms. A few of them include optimization of title tags, description tags and keyword tags, quality link building for website, content optimization for the website etc. One of such efficient SEO techniques which seem to be never changing is the canonical tag implementation technique.
What is a Canonical Tag?
Many a times there would be pages in a website with similar or duplicate content which can raise an issue with listing of the website in search engine results. Canonical tag tells the search engine that these are not duplicate pages but just a page similar to the preferred page. This tag is usually placed inside the less preferred page pointing to the page that is more preferred. This will avoid confusion for the search engines on duplication of pages and which one is the preferred version.
How to Implement Canonical Tag in Website?
There is a specific syntax for implementation of canonical tag in websites having pages with similar content and slightly differing urls. This is as follows
<link rel=”canonical” href=”link of the preferred page/preferred url which you want Google to index”/>
By placing this tag in less preferred page you can tell Google that this is a less preferred page and can also show the much preferred page that you want it to index.
For example, consider there is web page built for jeans under men clothes section as www.abc.com/menclothes/jeans and there is another page developed for the same but specifically for blue jeans with url as www.abc.com/menclothes/jeans?color=blue. Here suppose that content for both the pages is same, then urls for both pages are varying slightly and therefore, here there are chances that Google will consider these as duplicate pages thereby indexing them in a wrong way. So we can tell Google that these are not duplicate pages. To do this you will have to place the url www.abc.com/menclothes/jeans (preferred page) with canonical tag in www.abc.com/menclothes/jeans?color=blue (less preferred page).
Using canonical tags will impact your website’s performance in positive way and will avoid search engines from indexing your website in a wrong way due to existence of such duplicate content pages with slightly different urls. Hence rel=canonical is a good tool for eliminating the issues of duplicate content from your website with search engine point of view.
Following are a few things that you should take care while implementing the canonical tag in duplicate pages.
- Make sure that the preferred page or target page that you are placing in canonical tag exists.
- Check that the target page mentioned in the canonical tag doesn’t contain a noindex robots meta tag.
- It is important to include canonical tag within the <head> of the page or the HTTP header.
- Only one canonical tag is allowed for one page.
- Never use rel=canonical for a paginated series or series of pages with continued content.
- Preferring using complete or absolute URLs instead of relative or short urls for target page url in canonical tag.
- Avoid adding a canonical tag from a category or landing page targeting to a featured article.
