Canonical Tags

[rbernard1004]

I found instructions for Canonical Tags on Weebly (see below) but I don't understand the part about putting it on the duplicate page because my site does not have duplicate content pages. An online SEO checker brought up not having Canonical Tags as a red flag. How can I use this to improve my SEO?

[Instructions:The canonical tag is a basic set of html that you can to any page. It's important to always self reference, basically you have to put the canonical tag on your source page and have it link to itself and also put the tag on the duplicate page and have it link back to the source. 

• Go to the Pages Tab > Select Your Page > SEO Settings > Header
• Copy paste the following html <link rel="canonical" href="https://www.youroriginalcontent.com">

Important Note: Do not add the canonical tag to a Blog page because it will place that one URL on all blog posts which would basically tell Google that every blog post your write is the same as your blog homepage. ]

[Adam7 · Accepted solution]

That code is easier than it might think to add. On any page of your site (except for a blog page), add the tag to the page's Header Code field (Pages > Page You want to Edit > SEO Settings > Header Code 😞

<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.mysite.com">

The code above can be used for your home page, and for any other page just add the page URL after it like so:

<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.mysite.com/mypage.html">

Also, do you have SSL enabled for your site? If not, be sure to change "https" to "http".

[rbernard1004]

Thank you! So just to clarify, I only need to add it to one page and not every page?

[Adam7]

If you want it to have a different canonical URL you'd need to add it to each page, then edit the code to reflect that page's URL.

[1352]

So there is no way to embed canonical tags in individual Weebly blog posts? 301 redirects won't work because the site names are different.

[Adam7]

Hmm... you could try including it at the top of a blog post with embed code element. It won't show visually, although I'm not sure what Google will think with it further down in the page.

[whitemonkey]

thanks for the clarity. omg    even a simple travel blog  gives me a never ending work load.. lol

https://whitemonkeytravels.weebly.com

[EDJ1]

I tried your link which seems perfect but when I add the link 

<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.mysite.com"> - publish my website and it isn't showing up in the code when I hit CTRL U to view the code.

[Bernadette3]

Can you post a link to your site, @EDJ? Thanks! 

[EDJ1]

The canocial link doesn't show up after publishing. I can't show my website because it is a law website.

[Bernadette3]

That's understandable, @EDJ. Where did you put the code? If you used Settings>SEO>Header make sure to save (bottom right corner) before publishing (top right). 

[boydcm]

Hello, I am having the same problem except my 2 pages coming up with duplicate content are as follows

https://www.poolservicebakersfield.net/index.html

https://www.poolservicebakersfield.net/

I understand that I am supposed to add the code to the HTML in the header. But am i missing something? What page am I supposed to add it to? 

[Bernadette3]

Hi @boydcm Click on Settings>SEO then paste the code in the Header section. Make sure to Save and Publish. 

[boydcm]

Hello Bernadette. Thank you for the help. So i should add it to "https://www.poolservicebakersfield.net/"  in order to remove the https://www.poolservicebakersfield.net/index.html form the search engine? I just dont want to affect negativly affect "https://www.poolservicebakersfield.net/" so i am asking for clarification. thank you

[Bernadette3]

That is correct.  

[boydcm]

Hello Again, is there just a way to remove the /index page?

[Adam7]

It wouldn't be possible at this time to remove the ability to load the homepage from /index.html. 

[ejpolinsky]

Could you help me also? I followed the instructions, but on the home page, the code shows up in the header. For all the other pages I did the same thing, and they don't show up in the header after publishing. I don't want the code to be visible in the header on the home page. What do I do? Thanks! elizabethpolinskylcsw.weebly.com

[Adam7]

It looks like you're missing the opening and closing carats to the tag, @ejpolinsky. You have this:

link rel="canonical" href="https://www.elizabethpolinskylcsw.weebly.com"

But it should be like this:

<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.elizabethpolinskylcsw.weebly.com">

[ejpolinsky]

This is so helpful. Thank you so much!

-Liz

[Adam7]

Not a problem!