Canonical Links 101: Why They're Important for Ecommerce
A canonical URL ("rel=canonical") is an HTML element that tells search engines a specific URL is the main version of a webpage. Why does this matter? When identical or nearly identical content appears across multiple pages of your ecommerce site, the search engines can become confused about which URL is the original or “correct” page. If they index the wrong page, this can harm your site’s ranking potential—and by association, your revenue.
Canonical tags are useful because they let the search engines know which version of a webpage you want to be indexed and to appear in search results. Canonical links live in the <head> section of duplicate pages and point to the preferred version of the page, which is known as the canonical page.
Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo banded together in February 2009 to introduce canonical tags, and businesses have been attempting to master them ever since. They are highly effective, but only when implemented correctly. Below, learn about canonical SEO best practices for ecommerce websites.
Canonical Tag SEO Benefits
Duplicate content is notoriously difficult for search engines like Google to sift through and index. Because the search engines will only index one version of that page, it’s important to make sure they choose the correct URL—especially for ecommerce businesses. Checking the correct canonical implementation is also an important checklist item for website migrations.
Ecommerce websites can have hundreds (if not thousands!) of category, product, and content pages. Canonical links help online retailers present the best version of their site to the search engines, as well as to users looking to make a purchase.
By identifying one version of a webpage to be the canonical page, webmasters can ensure that search engines index the preferred URL. This action cleans up your site structure and ultimately boosts ecommerce SEO performance, whether your store resides on Shopify, BigCommerce, or any other platform.
How Canonicals Can Help Your Ecommerce Site
In the above section, we mentioned that canonical URLs are especially important for online retailers. Let’s dive into why this is the case. If you discover a page on your ecommerce site that contains duplicate content, such as an extra product or category page, an SEO expert can create a canonical link pointing to the page you want to be indexed by search engines.
Users who have bookmarked the duplicate version or clicked a backlink from another page or website will still be able to view the content and make a purchase using that URL.
You might assume that your ecommerce site doesn’t have any duplicate pages. However, consider the following examples of unique URLs that all contain the same web page with identical content:
https://www.example.com/category/product.html
https://www.example.com/category/product.html?color=green
https://www.example.com/category/product.html?color=green&Size=M
Filters and faceted search are great for making search results on your site more relevant to users, but they can cause the same product pages to be presented again and again. They can also generate dozens to hundreds of products on pages with no content whatsoever.
By setting the canonical links on these pages to point to the main version, SEO experts can make these duplicate-content pages virtually invisible to search engines and raise the value of those core pages by association.
If a product page is linked to from more than one category page, this can also create the problem of multiple URLs for the same page with the same content. For example:
https://www.example.com/category-1/product.html
https://www.example.com/category-2/product.html
Establishing the canonical URL at the product level will remove these URLs from the eyes of the search engines and strengthen your ecommerce site’s search performance.
Why Use a Canonical URL Instead of a 301 Redirect?
One of the most common questions we receive from clients at Whitecap SEO is whether it’s recommended to use canonical tags or 301 redirects when managing duplicate content. While these two options do function somewhat similarly, they ultimately generate different results.
A 301 redirect places both search engine crawlers and human users on an entirely different webpage, without ever seeing the duplicate page. By comparison, canonical URLs allow the user to view all possible versions of that page, while telling the search engines which URL is the right one to index. In other words, canonicals offer the best of both worlds.
Canonical links are a valuable resource in any online retailer’s SEO toolbox. Interested in boosting your search engine performance and presenting the best version of your site to both users and search engines like Google? Contact the experts at Whitecap SEO and request your free quote.