Canoical tags how do i use them

[ClaireH-184886]

Hi i have this coming up on the report for my url www.in2town.co.uk but i am not sure how to use the canonical tag.

I am using joomla and would be grateful if anyone could please give me advice on how to use this.

Canonical URL Tag Usage

Moderate fix

<dl>

<dt>Number of Canonical tags</dt>

<dd>0</dd>

<dt>Explanation</dt>

<dd>Although the canonical URL tag is generally thought of as a way to solve duplicate content problems, it can be extremely wise to use it on every (unique) page of a site to help prevent any query strings, session IDs, scraped versions, licensing deals or future developments to potentially create a secondary version and pull link juice or other metrics away from the original. We believe the canonical URL tag is a best practice to help prevent future problems, even if nothing is specifically duplicate/problematic today.</dd>

<dt>Recommendation</dt>

<dd>Add a canonical URL tag referencing this URL to the header of the page.</dd>

<dd>many thanks for your help
</dd>

</dl>

[ClaireH-184886]

Thank you. will have a read now. Many thanks for your help

[KeriMorgret]

Dr. Pete goes into some detail about the canonical tag at http://www.seomoz.org/blog/which-page-is-canonical.

It's basically telling Google that "I can't fix this with a 301, but domain.com/page1, domain.com/page1/, and domain.com/page1.php are all really the exact same page even though it has three different URLs, and the canonical URL is the one that I want you to show as the real URL"

[Andropenis_Australia]

Hello,

It is generally used when you have two or more pages with very similar or the same content.

It basically tells the bots that you know th othr pag has similar content and it is bing don on purpose.

You use it in the link from the first similar page to the second simliar page, take a look here for a full explanation.

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394

Hope this helps, all the best