What is a Canonical Tag?

A canonical tag is an HTML element used to indicate the preferred version of a webpage when multiple URLs have similar or duplicate content. It informs search engines which URL should be indexed and ranked, preventing duplicate content issues and ensuring SEO value isn't diluted across multiple pages.

Implementing canonical tags helps websites improve their SEO by consolidating link equity, avoiding duplicate content penalties, and enhancing crawl efficiency. By clearly defining the authoritative version of content, canonical tags enable search engines to index the correct page, leading to better rankings and more accurate search results.