Google search console provides variety of features to analyze our website performance. A canonical tag is an onsite SEO aspect that tells search engines the page is having similar content to another page and that which one is the master page.
The syntax for this code is as below:
<link rel=”canonical” href=”here comes URL of similar content page”>
This tag is placed in the code of the respective page (either page from the similar ones). Apparently there is no harm of having this notification in your google search console however, if you unnecessarily add pages of the similar content would affect your search ranking. Hence you’d be deprived of potential traffic that was meant to conversions.
Google search engine also identifies similar content pages and stores/indexes only the parent version of the page. That’s the reason you see few pages are indexed and rest duplicate aren’t.
Here is example of how you see this notification in your google search console.
How to Fix?
Just after the report seen in the image above, you’ll find reasons why your pages weren’t indexed. Simply select on the link “Alternate page with proper canonical tag” and it’ll get you to the list of page with canonical tags/duplicate content.
You may proceed and fix the issue by having unique content pages with no duplicate throughout your website pages. Once done you may validate in the google search control and you’ll see no further notifications any such.
The image below is a reference where you can see “Validate Fix” button that you can click once your resolve the issue.
There can be multiple reasons behind why your pages are not indexed, like:
Alternate page with proper canonical tag
Duplicate where google choose different url to index than the user
On site SEO or on page Search engine optimization is a process of optimizing your website for search engine ranking.
There is no complex theory but an understanding of how we can make the things compatible to real life examples. The more we’ll understand real life scenarios of search queries, the best we’ll be playing in our SEO tactics.
Here is a quick guide to boost the possibilities of your website ranking in search engines through specific keywords.
• Title
First of all your title inside the header must be optimized with upto 80 characters at max. And then your major keyword must also be included in the title and the title tag.
• Description
Description tag inside the head must be placed and optimized with maximum 150 characters along with the inclusion of core keywords same as in the title tag.
• Content.
Your content on the page or inside the body, must also be worthwhile to have to the point and detailed information of what people are looking for. It must also be filled with the keyword you used for title and the description tags. Be sure to not to over stuff or flood the content with repetition of keywords.
• Page.
Then comes the turn of your page loading time while the people start browsing for it. A recommended time is less than a second but as we understand speed of the network at user end differs, also nowadays more and more additions are made on the pages including sliders, animations, tickers and so on, the delays could be expected but still must not exceed 2-5 seconds at full load.
if it is a landing inner page, then we can expect a swift load not exceeding than a second is highly favorite to search engines.
• URL.
Your Universal Resource Locator refers to your domain name and the address of your specific page. A recommended practice is to have your core keyword inside your main URL (Domain name i.e WebHostingProposal.com contains the keyword “web hosting” that refers to their main business.) Or at least create a landing page (inner page) that should include your keyword inside the URL. For example if your business is brand clothing and your main domain name is Shop4Ease.com which doesn’t include any term regarding brands except the word shop, so you can create a inner page with your brand’s name like shop4ease.com/clothing/nike, this would refer to both keywords you are dealing business in like “Clothing” and the brand “Nike”
• H1, H2, H3 tags.
Same refers to your heading tage h1, 2, 3 those have significant values to search engines, so must have at least one H1 heading of your core keyword and same with H2 or H3.
• Meta tags
Meta tags are the keys to draw search engine’s attention, as we discussed on the top, title tags, description tags, and the keywords tag are most prominent those must include your keywords.
• Images
Images on your site must always be kept as lighter as possible, try using jpg, jpeg formats instead of png, tiff, gif etc those hold a heavy weight and disliked by search engine bots. Then your images should also have alt tag, title and description tag too.
• Permalinks
Your permalinks mean your inner page addresses or inner pages urls. These must always be kept optimized with keywords and informative titles those could possibly refer to search queries.
• Placement in meta tag
As discussed before, meta tags are placed in header and must be optimized as discussed above.
• Title Length/ post title length
Title of the website and urls should be short, specific to what you are going to write about. Too long titles aren’t liked by the search engines.
• Keyword Stuffing in Description
Same goes with description which should be concise and to the point with a single keyword, no repetition etc.
• Page Load Time
Page load time as discussed above, for home page 1-3 seconds or 5 seconds at max depending upon use of sliders and animations, but for inner pages it should be less than a second.
• Sitemap
Sitemap should also be incorporated with the site. It shows a structure of your website in a more convenient way to search engines.
• Robots file
Robots file tells search engines about your site, it should also be there in.
• Google Analytics
Create account with google for the analytics of your site visitors and other functionalities.
• Final SEO Score
Always keep an eye open for overall SEO score since seo is not a one time effort, it is a regular process to keep the website favorite to search engines.
