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Canonical Tag

TLDR

Canonical tag (or rel=”canonical”) is a property within your <head> code that tells search engines that a specific URL is the “best version” of any given web page.

What is a Canonical Tag?

Canonical tag (or rel=”canonical”) is a property within your <head> code that tells search engines that a specific URL is the “best version” of any given web page.

Using canonical tags, prevents issues when identical or very similar content might be used on multiple pages.

In other words, we use canonical tags to make sure that search engines know which page version should be served in search results and we wouldn’t have duplicate content issues.

What is the Global Canonical Tag URL in Webflow?

In Webflow Site Settings > SEO > Global Canonical Tag URL, you can set your rel=”canonical” tag.

It’s called global, because here you will be able to add the default domain version and it will be populated within each individual page head.

<link href="<https://your-domain>[/slug]" rel="canonical">

What Happens if You Don’t Set Global Canonical in Webflow?

If you leave your global canonical default domain field empty in Webflow, rel=”canonical” annotation will not be published within the head code for any of the pages.

In most cases, this can be considered a technical SEO mistake and can be fixed by defining the main domain version.

However, there are unique scenarios, where setting global canonical would not be the correct way, and a better solution is to add canonical tags for each page and CMS collection, manually.

But before we jump into that, let’s understand why you need canonicals for SEO in the first place.

Canonicalization Importance for SEO

Some tasks that are easy for humans, might not be easy for robots or crawlers.

One of those things is “knowing that two pages are identical”.

People usually think in terms of pages. This is our homepage, this is our blog page, this is our pricing page.

Crawlers “think” in terms of URLs.

One Page Can Have Multiple URLs

Here’s a few different URLs that crawler might find:

http://sayu.studio/
https://sayu.studio/
https://www.sayu.studio/
https://www.sayu.studio/?utm_source=twitter

If you paste any of these links into your browser, you will see the same page, the same Finsweet homepage.

But in Googlebot's eyes, these are 4 different and unique URLs.

Canonicals Explain to Crawlers Which Pages Are The Same

That’s why if you visit any of the before mentioned URLs and inspect source code, in the <head> you will find this line:‍

<link href="https://www.sayu.studio/" rel="canonical">

This metadata allows crawlers to understand that…

Ah, ok, so https://www.sayu.studio/?utm_source=twitter is actually the same page as https://www.sayu.studio/, no need to crawl that again.

Search Engines Can Pick Their Own Canonicals

What happens if you don’t set canonicals on your website?

Search engines will try to choose a canonical.

That’s why if you inspect any page in your GSC, you will see two canonical fields under indexing:

If you forget to set a canonical tag, you're likely going to see the “Duplicate without user-selected canonical” error in your Google Search Console.

Now you know how to fix duplicate pages without a canonical issue if you ever see it.

Just set canonical tags!

When Not to Use Global Canonicals in Webflow

There are exceptions where auto-generated canonical tags may not be the best choice.

Duplicated Pages

The most common scenario is duplicate pages.

In most cases, this is done to have identical pages for marketing campaign variations, track different offers or similar situations.

In other words, it’s not uncommon to see the need for almost identical pages.

A Pricing Page Example

Let’s say you have a pricing page.

You need to create a few pricing page variations with a few unique details. But the layout and 99% of the content stay the same.

This might be needed for paid ad campaigns or to test different prices.

So you click “Duplicate page” in Webflow, change a few words, add new prices, and you have a duplicate.

That’s when you should add rel=”canonical” towards the original pricing page to specify that this is a duplicate.

You might even have more pricing page variations:

/pricing
/pricing-2
/pricing-3
/pricing-sale

Those aren’t exact duplicates, yet they still serve the same search intent: users want to learn more about your prices.

These pages should have correct canonicals in their custom code head (page settings) leading to the main pricing page.

In this case:

<link href="https://www.your-domain.com/pricing" rel="canonical">

To sum up:

If you create a duplicate page with minor changes, add a canonical tag to indicate it's not the primary version.

This is necessary because your website should have only one page per specific user action or intent.

For multiple pages with the same purpose, use canonical tags to mark the preferred version on all duplicates.

Rule: If Two Pages Serve the Same Purpose, Pick One!

Search engines rely on you to identify the best version of a page on your website and its main user goal or problem.

Having multiple pages serving the same purpose can make search engines question your authority and judgment.

This could result in lower rankings for those pages.

Users don't want to see several similar pages, like multiple pricing pages, as it creates confusion about which information is trustworthy.

This is why canonical tags are essential.

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