Dealing with Duplicate Content: Canonicalization in Detail
Introduction:
In SEO, duplicate content refers to the situation where the same or very similar content is accessible via multiple URLs. These duplicate pages can be inadvertently created in various ways, such as having both HTTP and HTTPS versions of a page, www and non-www versions, UTM parameters, pagination series, and more. Search engines often struggle to determine which version of the page to index and display to users in the SERPs, leading to potential SEO issues.
Review:
The article provides a detailed explanation of the concept of canonicalization, an SEO technique used to indicate to search engines the preferred version of a page that we want to show to users. Canonicalization involves adding a code snippet to the header section of an HTML page to inform Googlebot of our preferred page version. The article explains how canonicalization helps address the challenges search engines face in determining which duplicate page to index and provides technical factors that can help send a stronger canonical signal, including using HTTPS, clean URL structure, internal linking, hreflang annotations, sitemaps, and external links.
