canonical URL tag

[vlad_mezoz]

Hello,

I was checking my ON page SEO,

and one of the things i see

Number of Canonical tags   2

Remove all but a single canonical URL tag

I didn't  fully understand, what is  canonical URL tag?

my website is http://novitasalonandspa.com

Thanks  for help

[William.Lau]

It's usually automatic. So you might've have a plugin like SEO all in one or Yoast that added the canonical URL.

I'm guessing thats the reason.

[vlad_mezoz]

Thanks a lot, it was in the header so i removed it,

so is it something that i have to do it all the time?

how this ended up in the header anyways?

Thanks again big help!

[William.Lau]

I can't remember off the top of my head but I believe it should be in sidebar when in wp-admin.

It should be under EDIT or Template. It is where it shows you all the HTML and CSS files. You can just go into 'yourtemplatename.html' and look for the canonical link and remove it.

The page you do that in has a big text box and on the right side a list of all the HTML and CSS files. I believe that is the spot, I don't have access to any WP domain ATM so can't give you direct names and tabs. But its there.

[vlad_mezoz]

Hello, Im really appreciate for detailed answer.

But how do i find these "canonical tags" in wp because seomoz tells me i have 2?

Thanks again

[vlad_mezoz]

Hello, Im really appreciate for detailed answer.

But how do i find these "canonical tags" in wp because seomoz tells me i have 2?

Thanks again

[StreamlineMetrics]

A canonical tag is to tell the search engines which version of the page should be indexed. Each page should have only one. For example, let's say http://www.example.com/index.php and http://www.example.com/index.php?utm=whatever are the exact same page except with different URLs, you will put the following canonical tag in the HEAD of this page -

This tells the search engines to ignore http://www.example.com/index.php?utm=whatever so they don't put that URL in the search engine results instead of your actual homepage.

[William.Lau]

That means you have two canonical tags in your code.

Canonical tags basically means which link is the primary link. This prevents Google from affecting your rankings due to duplicate pages.

I.E.

Page 1 = Original Link

Page 2 = Similar to Page 1 - Could be mistaken as duplicate page

You put a Canonical tag for Page 2 and reference Page 1 as the original.

For Google's interpretation: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html