Common Canonical Tag Issues and How to Fix Them

Even the astir experienced marketers and website owners marque mistakes. But erstwhile it comes to utilizing canonical tags, mistakes tin beryllium costly (and it’s not conscionable astir the money).

But don’t fto that scare you! In this article, we’ll look astatine the astir communal canonical tag issues faced by SEO pros. By learning however to forestall them from happening, you’ll beryllium capable to woody with different related problems, including pages not being indexed oregon postulation nonaccomplishment caused by incorrect usage of canonical tags.

TL;DR

What is simply a canonical contented successful SEO?

Not utilizing a canonical tag correctly (or astatine all) tin pb to large canonical issues. This holds particularly existent erstwhile websites connection aggregate versions of identical contented done chiseled URLs. Sites similar these perfectly indispensable usage canonical tags to bespeak the preferred URL of these pages to debar definite disasters.

So, canonical tag issue refers to a definite occupation oregon misconfiguration related to the usage of canonical tags connected a website.

Canonical issues often tin pb to duplicate contented issues. They confuse hunt engines and marque it hard for hunt bots to find which mentation of the contented to scale and show successful hunt results. This besides means you should cheque canonical URLs regularly. Doing truthful volition assistance guarantee that it matches the preferred leafage for indexing. Read our guide connected website auditing to larn wherever to start.

How to cheque your canonical tags?

One of the astir straightforward ways to cheque and negociate canonical tags is by using Google Search Console. You tin either analyse a abstracted URL successful existent clip by utilizing the URL Inspection Tool oregon cheque the canonical-related reports with each affected tract pages (it takes clip for information to cod and update).

In the archetypal case, to trial the leafage you privation to cheque the canonical tag for, you’ll request to unfastened the URL Inspection Tool, participate the URL, and initiate the inspection.

To spot which URL Google selected arsenic the preferred leafage version, scroll down to the Page Indexing artifact and observe the Google-selected canonical field.

If the Google-selected canonical and User-declared canonical values don’t match, Google is considering indexing the different mentation of the aforesaid page. 

Now, to place canonical tag issues that are affecting your webpages (and tract arsenic a whole), navigate to Indexing>Pages>Page Indexing>Why pages aren’t indexed.

You whitethorn find a database of canonicalization errors/notices among the galore issues related to noindex tag, redirect errors, and truthful on. These include:

• Alternate leafage with due canonical tag: Your canonical tag seems to beryllium moving good and aligns with what Google considers to beryllium the main version.
• Duplicate without user-selected canonical: You person astatine slightest 2 precise akin oregon identical pages and you haven’t identified the canonical tag for 1 of them.
• Duplicate, Google chose antithetic canonical than user: Google ignored your directive and chose different leafage arsenic the main version.

GSC displays Google’s position connected your canonical pages truthful that you get a basal representation of the situation.

SE Ranking besides has a instrumentality dedicated to this process. The level lets you make a broad site audit report that offers mode much than conscionable canonical mistake insights. It besides provides a database of each method issues affecting your website’s show successful hunt and offers applicable tips connected however to hole them. This helps you not lone code duplicate contented issues but besides place and hole different unseen method problems.

In the Issue Report section, you tin spot information on:

• rel=”canonical” from HTTPS to HTTP
• Non-canonical pages successful XML sitemap
• Canonical chains
• Canonical URLs with a 3XX Status Code
• Canonical URLs with a 4XX Status Code
• Canonical URLs with a 5XX Status Code

Common mistakes erstwhile adding canonical tags

Now let’s instrumentality a look astatine the astir communal canonical mistakes. We’ll besides sermon however to forestall them from happening.

Pointing to a URL that is not crawlable oregon indexable

The chosen canonical URL perfectly indispensable beryllium crawlable. This means it shouldn’t beryllium blocked successful the robots.txt record oregon by the X-Robots-tag oregon <meta name=“robots” content=“noindex” />.

You tin cheque if the leafage is scannable and indexable successful Google Search Console. You tin besides usage SE Ranking’s Website Audit instrumentality to get a breakdown of each pages and their tags.

For a speedy check, usage our free robots.txt checker to trial if your leafage is unfastened for crawling successful your robots.txt file.

Creating canonical chains

When typing a URL successful the href attribute, the leafage you are pointing to indispensable neither person a canonical tag pointing to different leafage oregon the aforesaid page.

Now, let’s accidental that the leafage you privation to canonicalize is https://site.com/phone/iphone12/. 

The leafage you privation to acceptable arsenic canonical is https://site.com/iphone12/. 

It already contains the pursuing canonical:

This usage lawsuit for canonical is incorrect due to the fact that it creates a canonical chain.

The past successful this concatenation is the page, https://site.com/phone/apple/iphone12/, which means that it volition apt beryllium considered canonical by hunt engines. If you don’t privation to confuse hunt robots, you indispensable nonstop them to lone 1 canonical page.

In this example, you would person to determine which leafage you privation to acceptable arsenic canonical: https://site.com/iphone12/ oregon https://site.com/phone/apple/iphone12/. 

For the archetypal option, you request to regenerate canonical connected the https://site.com/iphone12/ leafage truthful that it points to itself and canonicalizes https://site.com/phone/iphone12/ and https://site.com/phone/apple/iphone12/.

To permission the page, https://site.com/phone/apple/iphone12, arsenic canonical, different akin pages indispensable nexus to it. The leafage indispensable besides nexus to itself.

Important! Be cautious erstwhile modifying canonical URLs. You should ever effort to find retired wherefore definite values are being used.

Pointing to a URL that returns a presumption codification different than 200

The URL you are designating arsenic canonical indispensable instrumentality a status code of 200, not 404 oregon 301. To cheque if the URL you are canonizing functions decently and has a presumption codification of 200, you tin usage specialized SEO tools, similar SE Ranking, to analyse it.

Pointing to a URL with an invalid protocol

Another communal mistake galore SEOs marque is incorrectly specifying the URL protocol. Using HTTP alternatively of HTTPS, for example, tin confuse hunt motor algorithms. Make it a constituent to specify the HTTPS mentation of the leafage successful the href attribute.

Adding non-canonical pages successful the sitemap

One much communal mistake to look retired for involves adding non-canonical pages successful the sitemap.xml. This tin origin hunt engines to disregard the leafage altogether and scale them incorrectly. To debar this problem, marque definite that lone the main leafage versions look successful the sitemap. The sitemap record lone has to see pages pointing to themselves done canonical tags.

Be definite to work our guide connected however to make sitemaps to larn the ins and outs of palmy SEO mapping.

Pointing interior links to non-canonicalized URLs

Ensuring that your internal links constituent to the main mentation of the leafage helps hunt engines crawl your website without issues. If you nexus to your non-canonical page, Googlebot whitethorn sometimes disregard your canonical tag and scale the illegitimate mentation of the URL. Not good.

Make definite to lone adhd interior links to your non-canonical leafage erstwhile it’s perfectly necessary. There whitethorn beryllium immoderate cases wherever you’ll request to instrumentality this benignant of interior linking for analytical purposes (e.g. you request to way immoderate events connected a non-canonical leafage with UTMs).

Using hreflang alternatively of canonical

Canonical tags archer Google that lone one mentation of a webpage should beryllium indexed. Hreflang tags pass the hunt motor that respective versions of the aforesaid leafage beryllium but all of them inactive request to beryllium indexed. This is due to the fact that they people radical who unrecorded successful antithetic regions and/or talk antithetic languages.

This is the halfway quality betwixt these attributes. 

Apart from causing misinterpretation by hunt bots, this mistake tin besides pb to incorrect language/regional targeting and indexing issues. That’s wherefore we powerfully suggest speechmaking our usher connected however to attack hreflang vs canonical tags. 

Using the “noindex” tag, blocking the leafage successful the robots.txt file, and utilizing the canonical tag

According to John Mueller, canonical tags shouldn’t beryllium utilized successful operation with the “noindex” tag and/or robots.txt disallow. Since each of these attributes serves a antithetic function, utilizing each of them simultaneously gives Google contradictory signals. 

By doing so, you fundamentally usage 1 property to archer Google that a peculiar webpage is much important than the other, yet the different property says otherwise. Or, perhaps, you usage the noindex to fell the leafage but inactive inquire Google to walk that value to different pages.

To debar this issue, usage each awesome successful the astir due cases:

• The “noindex” tag prevents pages from being indexed and appearing connected SERPs.
• Blocking a leafage successful the robots.txt record is simply a awesome prohibiting crawling of a page.
• Canonical tags specify which leafage to prioritize arsenic the main version.

Not adding a canonical tag to identical pages

Ignoring pages with akin oregon identical contented and hoping that Google volition recognize which leafage to prioritize is different large mistake to avoid.

Closing thoughts 

As with galore things, it’s wiser to forestall than to remedy.

We anticipation you’ll beryllium capable to usage the accusation provided successful this nonfiction to debar the astir communal canonical tag issues faced by SEO pros. The extremity goal? Your website’s occurrence and the highest of rankings.