What Is Canonicalization and Why Does It Matter for SEO? | Friday SEO Tip

For this week’s SEO Tip, we’re diving into something a bit more technical, but trust me, it’s worth your attention.

Google recently shared a helpful video on their Search Central account that explains how to avoid duplicate content on your website. Duplicate content can confuse search engines, forcing them to choose which page to index and display on the SERPs (search engine results pages).

This is where canonicalization (yep, it’s a mouthful!) comes in. Check out the video above to learn more.

Canonicalization is a powerful SEO technique that lets you specify the preferred version of a webpage when multiple URLs contain similar or identical content.

By adding a simple piece of code to the back end of your pages, you can tell Google, “Hey, this is the page I want people to see when they search for relevant topics.” It’s a small change that can make a huge impact on your rankings and user experience.

Ready to dive deeper? Check out this video to see how it’s done on Google Search Console. (There’s also a great article from Search Engine Land on the subject!)

Mastering techniques like these is key to maintaining an effective SEO strategy. As always, feel free to reply if you have questions or need help implementing this on your website.