Recommendation: Add a canonical URL tag referencing this URL to the header of the page.

[AllIsWell]

Please clarify:

In the page optimization tool, seomoz recommends using the canonical url tag on the unique page itself.

Is it the same canonical url tag used when want juice to go to the original page?

Although the canonical URL tag is generally thought of as a way to solve duplicate content problems, it can be extremely wise to use it on every (unique) page of a site to help prevent any query strings, session IDs, scraped versions, licensing deals or future developments to potentially create a secondary version and pull link juice or other metrics away from the original. We believe the canonical URL tag is a best practice to help prevent future problems, even if nothing is specifically duplicate/problematic today.

Please give example.

[Klarke]

Example:

http://www.xconomy.com/san-francisco/2012/12/12/google-gets-a-second-brain-changing-everything-about-search/

The page has a rel=canonical pointing to itself.  That is what the tool recommeds.

http://www.xconomy.com/san-francisco/2012/12/12/google-gets-a-second-brain-changing-everything-about-search/?adfadld

The page still has a canonical tag pointing to the preferred URL.

[ThompsonPaul]

Probably the best concrete example of why this recommendation is valuable is when using Google Analytics campaign variables to point to landing pages.

Say your regular website page is www.mysite.com/mylanding page.html. On that page, you place the canonical tag in the header pointing back at itself.

It seems redundant until you realize that in future, you might very well be linking back to that page from a social media post or banner ad using Google Analytics tracking parameters. So the page would now be indexed under the url www.mysite.com/mylanding page.htm?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=timeline-post&utm_campaign=mycampaign.

Google would see that new URL as a completely different page due to the extra parameters, but it would still have the canonical in the header pointing back to the plain version of the page URL, you would avoid duplicate content issues and splitting of page authority.

This demonstrates how the canonical tag can help prevent future problems even if it's not essential right now.

Make sense?

Paul

[JarnoNijzing]

I totally agree with Paul.

Another thing I noticed on one of my websites: I had the canonical code in the header. Someone copied my entire page and published it to their website (with canonical tag) so the openly told the search engines that my website was the original copy of the content.

another reason why it could work

regards

Jarno

[ThompsonPaul]

Hah! Really good point! Love it.

Stupid scrapers.

Paul

[ingageseo]

Just to confirm please please as I am little confused after my On page report

If a I have a page name eg "http://www.ilovetravel/destinations/cruise/asia-river-cruises/"

do I need to add a canonical url tag to the header of my page

[ThompsonPaul]

Short answer - yes.

Paul