Rel="canonical" Wordpress 2015 Best Practice

[TimLlew]

There are forum posts about how to insert rel="canonical" tags in Wordpress, but I've read about lots of changes in this space recently (updates to Yoast, for example).

I'm having a problem with duplicate content on one of my sites, and it seems to be coming from multiple indexes of the same pages.  I'll have a blog post show up under the posts, then the archives, then the tags.

So, my question is, in early 2015, what are the current best practices for adding rel="canonical" tags in Wordpress?

Thanks!

Tim

[LynnPatchett]

Hi Tim,

Are you using the Yoast Seo plugin? If so a lot of things including canonical tag settings can be sorted out there. I don't think much has changed in terms of wp optimisation in 2015 - best practices from the past continue to be best practices now. From your description it sounds like maybe the problem isn't the canonical tag so much as your url (permalink) structure and/or the indexing of your archive and tag pages. Yoast has a good rundown on best practices in regards permalinks and general wp seo here and Dan Shure wrote a good blog post here on Moz which includes a good explanation of why and how to noindex certain pages (like archives and tags). The blog post is from a few years back, but all of the best practices he mentions remain valid.

[TimLlew]

Lynn,

Thanks so much for the response, I really appreciate you taking the time!

Tim