When you use Google Search Console, you often see the message “Alternate Pages with Correct Canonical Tag” to identify and fix crawling, indexing, and ranking issues on your website.
Google finds duplicate pages with valid canonical tags and will not consider them to have duplicate content. If the canonical tag is used intentionally, there is no reason to worry. This report can sometimes help identify SEO-related issues.
What is a Canonical Tag?
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| What is a Canonical Tag? |
A canonical tag, also known as the “rel=canonical” tag, is an HTML element used to identify the preferred version of a webpage when multiple versions of similar or identical material exist. The canonical tag allows website owners to manage duplicate content issues while also providing search engines with information about the primary or authoritative version of a particular page.
Canonicals can also use the current URL of the page, a practice known as self-referential canonicals. Let’s take an example where you have two very identical pages on your website:
abcz.com/page1abcz.com/page2
Both pages have comparable content, but you want search engines to only index the canonical version of the page (in this example, abcz.com/page1).
To do this, add a canonical tag to the HTML code of both abcz.com/page2 and abcz.com/page1. This tells search engines that abcz.com/page1 is the canonical version of the page and should be indexed.
How to find the canonical URL of a site?
To minimize duplicate content on your website, you should check the Canonical URL. There are various tools that can be used to help you check this and can be done quite easily, two of which are as follows:
1. Using Google Search Console (GSC)
First, you can use Google Search Console which is a fairly basic and easy-to-use tool. But make no mistake, this tool can be used well to check Canonical URLs, because it can provide quite extensive data and information. It makes sense, because this tool is a facility provided directly by Google.
To be able to find Canonical URLs with GSC, you can go to the indexing report page. To ensure that your website is secure, you need to check the following sections:
- Alternate page with proper canonical tag
- Duplicate without user-selected canonical
- Duplicate, Google choose different canonical than user
By utilizing the various features provided, you can see which pages are detected as duplicates.
2. Utilizing Website Auditor
The second tool that can be utilized in this case is Website Auditor. This is a sophisticated audit tool for checking various aspects related to the SEO system, including Canonical URLs.
You only need to open the Site Structure section, then select Site Audit, then pay attention to the Redirect section. There, you will find a section that says 'Page with rel = canonical'. This tool can tell you about all pages that contain the canonical tag. In addition, you will also know which pages are included in the canonical list.
Those were two ways to check the canonical URL on your website. To manage a website and various social media, there are indeed various aspects that are important to pay attention to. You should also pay attention to the type and ideal number of content pillars.
Do I need to fix an alternate page with a proper canonical tag?
You can choose not to take any action, as Google uses the “Alternate Page with Proper Canonical Tag” message to convey when a page has been canonicalized correctly.
These pages will still be successfully crawled, indexed, and ranked by Google. This notification happens to thousands of websites across the internet, all of which have excellent search engine rankings.
However, it is important to note that you may find pages in this section of the Google Search Console report that you actually want indexed. Additionally, these pages will not be indexed by Google if they find modified pages, regardless of whether they contain the correct canonical tag or not.
Additionally, if you run a large website and notice a lot of pages experiencing this issue, it may indicate that there is a budget issue and that your internal linking structure needs attention. Therefore, while there may not be a need to “fix” this issue, it is certainly something that requires further investigation.
How to fix an alternate page with a canonical tag?
If you have understood the previous explanation, then now you can check whether your website has a problem with the canonical URL or not. If it turns out that there is a problem, then it should be fixed immediately.
In general, there are two main ways to fix this problem. First, by implementing a 301 redirect. Second, by adding a canonical tag to your website page, then there are various other ways that also need to be considered so that the results are maximized.
1. Use canonicalized pages correctly
Verify that the page is listed under Coverage > Alternate pages with a valid canonical tag and assess whether this page needs canonicalization. If any pages are identified as inappropriate for canonicalization, change the canonical link to redirect to the relevant page. Proceed to the next step after making these changes.
2. Check Internal Link Structure
Check the URL pattern of this page to see if it is canonicalized correctly. You will most likely find AMP pages, page variations, and URLs that contain UTM tags. In general, this is fine. However, there are a few instances where this can be problematic.
a. Overloading of Page Variants
Sites with multiple versions of a page are difficult to manage. For example, if you run an eCommerce site and create URLs for shoes in different colors and sizes, you may soon end up with 25 URLs per product.
In practice, only a small percentage of your URLs are likely to get organic traffic. Determine if this is the case for you and whether you need to make (some) versions of this page unavailable to search engines, for example by using # in the URL.
b. Rogue UTM tags
However, something is wrong if a team member includes UTM tags in internal links in the main menu, sidebar, footer, or body text. This should not be done because it weakens the transfer of page authority and messes up your Google Analytics stats.
Let ContentKing crawl your site to give you a complete picture of all the URLs on your site and how they are accessed. Filtering your URLs is much easier and faster in ContentKing than in Google Search Console. Also, Google Search Console samples your data, but ContentKing gives you a complete view.
3. Look for Crawl Budget Issues
You determine how you link to your own information, but you can’t control other people’s links to you. Take note of URLs you don’t recognize when researching the list of sites that have Alternate pages with the correct link. official tag status.
If you have a site with a few thousand pages but hundreds of thousands of pages with this status, you should use a robots.txt file to prohibit search engines from scanning these URLs. This saves money on your crawl budget. If you have a site with 10,000 or more pages, we recommend that you think about crawl budget difficulties.
4. Implementing 301 Redirects for All Duplicate Pages
The first way that can be done is to implement 301 Redirects or 301 redirects for each page that is detected as duplicate. This method can be applied to canonical issues on WWW or non-WWW sites and HTTP or HTTPS.
Actually, there are various ways that can be done when implementing this 301 redirect. However, if you want the easiest, simplest, and least risky way, then you should prepare a redirect via your website hosting.
You can check whether the hosting you use for the website has provided a support page and explains how to do this redirection. In addition, to get more complete and valid information, you should contact the hosting provider for assistance.
If it has been changed or redirected, then you may see various changes in Google rankings and your website visitor traffic. But don't worry, this is a normal thing to happen and can recover on its own in some time. Until the website is completely recovered, you can check it regularly.
5. Adding Canonical Tags to All Pages on Your Website
The second way is to add canonical tags to all pages on your website. The method is quite easy, namely by adding a rel=canonical tag to each page on your website.
Although the method is easy, it may take a lot of time if you have to add it to each page. Therefore, it is a good idea to contact your website management system to ask for information on whether there is a practical way to do this for all pages of the website.
6. Pay Attention to This if You Have a Mobile Version of a Site
If the website has two types of addresses, namely desktop and mobile versions, then you need to choose the address that will be the canonical. Usually, website owners will prioritize the address for the desktop, so that it is easier and more familiar to visitors.
An important step that needs to be taken is to make sure that the desktop address has an independent canonical tag. Then, add a canonical tag to each mobile page and direct it to the desktop URL on your website.
7. If Other Websites Publish Your Content, Make Sure to Use Canonical Tags
Still related to canonical tags, another important step you need to do is to ensure that canonical tags are also used on other websites that publish your content.
Therefore, these websites also need to use tag=canonical, then redirected to your website URL. If not, Google may have difficulty seeing the original source of the content. It could be that your website's ranking is actually lower than the secondary website.
Conclusion
The “Alternate page with proper canonical tag” status usually indicates that you have optimized duplicate content correctly. However, canonicalization in SEO is a complex issue, and you should always double-check its implementation. Using Google Search Console to address alternate site issues and installing the correct canonical tag is essential to keeping your website healthy and well-optimized.
By following the steps provided in this tutorial, you can ensure that search engines accurately understand the relationship between multiple versions of your content, thereby improving your site’s exposure and ranking in search results....