How To Add Canonical Tag in Blogger or Wordpress?

How to Use Rel Canonical in Blogger and WordPress [Step by Step]

Search engines want to show the best results to their user, and clean URLs will help the SEO of your pages.

What is a Canonical Tag?

What is a canonical tag? A canonical tag (rel=canonical) is an HTML attribute that specifies the preferred version of a web page that has duplicate or similar content on multiple URLs.

It lets search engines know which URL is preferred for them to use in the search results and reduces the amount of possible duplicate content that could lead to a penalty.

Example:

In this case, the canonical tag alerts search engines that https://www.example.com/preferredpage/ is the primary version of the page.

The Importance of Canonical Tags

Shun Duplicate Content Confusion: Duplicate content can trip up search engines, funneling ranking power across several URLs.

Consolidation Ranking Signals: Using canonical tags enables all the ranking signals like backlinks and traffic to pass through the primary URL.

Increase Crawl Efficiency: Search engine bots won’t waste time crawling duplicate pages and can focus on your priority content.

How to Add Canonical Tag on Blogger and WordPress?

How to add a Canonical Tag to a Single Blog Post?

• Visit to your Blogger Dashboard.
• Edit the particular blog post to which you would like to add a canonical tag.
• Now, go to the HTML editor.
• We're nearly finished! Copy and paste the code below into the  of your blog post's HTML.

You can use a canonical link in the head of the latter to signal to Google that it should direct the latter to the former:

• Save and publish your post!

Applying Canonical Tags to Template As a Global

• Click on Theme in your Blogger Admin Dashboard.
• Click on Edit HTML.
• Find the  section of your blog’s template.
• Paste below code just before closing tag: canonicalUrl" />

This code will automatically generate canonical URLs for every blog post, with the help of Blogger’s native canonical data.

Handle NonCanonical Pages

For archive/duplicate pages You can edit your HTML templates to include a self referencing canonical tag only when it is neccessary to specify the prefered URL.

Adding Canonical Tags in WordPress

There are a number of ways to add canonical tags to your WordPress pages and posts, from doing it manually to using a plugin to automate the process.

Using SEO Plugins

The simplest way to add canonical tags in WordPress is by utilizing an SEO plugin such as Yoast SEO, Rank Math, or All in One SEO Pack.

How to Add Canonical Tags in Yoast SEO:

Step 1: Install and activate the Yoast SEO plugin first.

Step 2: When you are creating or editing a page on which you wish to set a canonical URL.

Step 3: Scroll to the Yoast SEO Meta Box.

Step 4: Tap on the Advanced tab.

Step 5: Type your desired canonical URL into the “Preferred canonical URL” field.

Step 6: Save the post (it will add an update).

Yoast SEO is going to automatically add a canonical to the section of your page.

How to Manually Add Canonical Tags

If you’d rather have more control and want to add canonical tags directly into your WordPress theme’s template files.

Step 1: Visit Appearance > Theme Editor in your WordPress dashboard.

Step 2: Edit the header. php (or similar) file being used to generate that page.

Step 3: Paste the code given below inside the `` of each webpage: " />

This creates a canonical tag for every page or post.

Using Functions. php for Dynamic Canonicals

You can also add canonical tags to the functions. php file of your theme.

add_action('init', 'add_canonical_tag');

if (is_singular()) {

echo F'{ \r \n \r \n'; get_permalink(). '" />';

}

}

add_action('wp_head', 'add_canonical_tag');

This code generates auto-making canonical tags for all single posts/pages.

Handle Pagination Canonicals

For paginated content, make sure your canonical tags are properly set by taking advantage of the following plugin-based or manual approaches. For example:

" />

Best Practices for Use of Canonical Tags

Use the full URL: Always put even the full URL (https:// or http://) so nobody gets confused.

Avoid Self-Referencing Canonicals If You Can help it: Not bad, but generally unnecessary unless you have duplicate URL parameters to deal with.

Object-Oriented Pagination: For paginated content such as news articles, it’s important not to roll all pages up into one URL.

Check Canonical Tags: You can check it via browser tools or SEO audit tools to make sure it is implemented correctly.

Deal with Cross Domain Canonicals: If you have content that shows up in multiple places, use canonicals wildcard to link back there.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Pointing Multiple Pages to the Same URL: Canonicals should not lie to Google and tell Google that multiple unrelated pages are actually all the same page.

Improper URL Configuration: Make sure your canonical URLs are not misspelled or that you have not forgotten any parts of them.

Competing Canonical Tags: Do not allow a page to have multiple canonical tags.