The Basics of Canonical Linking
by on Jun.29, 2010, under Web Design
As a San Diego web development company, as well as a San Diego web design company I have been approached by many companies, lately, to build a canonicalization tag for their websites’ pages.
The main reason for the existence of this tag is to give another page more authority over the page in question. I wondered why anyone would try to give more power to a page other than the page that is being visited, and here is what I found out.
First of all, this has to do a lot with search engine optimization and how you can direct all important links to one source instead of splitting it between different pages.
The canonical tag works just like a 301 redirect except for that you stay on the page that you visited instead of redirecting you to another page.
If you are a web design company and you would like to give priority to subpage on your site over the home page, then you will insert your tag on the home page and point it to the subpage you choose.
The user will not see the difference but the subpage will be more important that the home page for that search term.
