Canonical URL tags help I am not sure what this is

[gemfirez]

I am trying to get an A grade on my webpage and this is one of the critical steps canonical URL tags I cant find much information as to what this even is never mind fixing it. Thanks I am a total newbe at this any advice is appreciated

[Jbla]

It's tag that tells Google which url for given post is most preffered. This helps avoid problems with duplicate content. Use if you  have www and non-www url or post with same content within different categories.

Here's more from Google

[gemfirez]

Thanks very much for your reply

I am still a little confused how do I know what to change it too ? is there a tool that allows me to see what google url prefers I am selling on etsy does that make a difference ?

Thanks,

Jen

[JustinTaylor88]

Hi Jen

There are some useful blog posts on here which help with understanding the use of a canonical link listed below.

You would place the link on the duplicate content pages, and link these through to the page that you want the link juice to go to. The pages still appear from a user perspective but google does not see them.

http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/canonicalization

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/canonical-url-tag-the-most-important-advancement-in-seo-practices-since-sitemaps

You can use the seo moz crawl to see which pages are duplicates.

Hope this helps

[Jbla]

I think Etsy does all that stuff for you automatically. If you check source code of your store at Etsy it already has rel canonical, so no need to worry.

Make sure your URL for on page report looks like this www.etsy.com/shop/yourshopname

It's how canonical is build.

[Thos003]

The canonical isn't really for feeding google URLs in the a preferred format, it's more for cleaning up duplicate content issues.

Let's say I could track traffic and conversions on my website by adding a source code to a link. So I create a link on SEOmoz. You can reach my page www.bulwarkpestcontrol.com/pest-control.php with the url string http://www.bulwarkpestcontrol.com/pest-control.php?src=seomoz and that link is now indexed by Google. Well now I have duplicate content and google must decide which page get's placed into their index. Adding a canonical to the main page

<link rel="<a class="attribute-value">canonical</a>" href="http://www.bulwarkpestcontrol.com/pest-control.php" />

, tells google which page they should place in their index and it helps me avoid splitting my links.

This also applies heavily to shopping carts where the parameters in a URL determine the content, and products that overlap in categories can cause duplicate content issues. Creating canonicals will help avoid indexing issues.

So the point to canonicals is to determine what URL gets indexed and gets the juice for links when there are duplicate content issues created by varying URL stings that lead to the same content.

If you are simply trying to fill in a canonical for a URL to get a "A grade" on a SEO checklist then you will just create the canonical for each page using the exact URL for that page.

[gemfirez]

Thanks so much everyone huge help

[Dr-Pete]

Unfortunately, I don't know Etsy well, but I think Thomas is right on track - you don't necessarily want to pre-emptively add them, especially if you're not clear on how they work. Typically, it's more for preventing duplicate content issues. We're re-evaluating how we grade the canonical tag, since this is a bit confusing. It's a good practice on some pages (like your home-page) that naturally tend to have more than one version, but adding it sitewide can be tricky.