Duplicate Content and Canonical Tags: What You Need to Know

Alternate page with proper canonical tag 

A canonical tag is an HTML tag that is used to indicate the preferred or primary version of a web page. It is typically used to resolve issues related to duplicate content, which can occur when the same content is available at multiple URLs.

The purpose of the canonical tag is to tell search engines which version of the page they should index and show in search results. 

For example, if you have a page that is accessible at both example.com/page1 and example.com/page1?sort=asc, you can use the canonical tag to specify that the version at example.com/page1 is the primary version, and the other version should be treated as a duplicate.

If you are seeing a message about an "alternate page with a proper canonical tag," it means that there is another version of the page that has a canonical tag pointing to it. This can be a problem if the alternate page is not the primary version of the page that you want to be indexed and shown in search results.

To fix this issue, you will need to identify the alternate page and determine why it has a proper canonical tag. One possible reason is that the page was created intentionally as a duplicate of the primary page, and the canonical tag was used to prevent search engines from indexing both versions. In this case, you may need to update the canonical tag on the primary page to point to itself, or remove the canonical tag from the alternate page.

Alternatively, the alternate page may have been created unintentionally, for example due to a misconfiguration or technical issue. In this case, you will need to investigate the cause of the issue and take appropriate action to resolve it. This could involve redirecting the alternate page to the primary page, fixing the technical issue that caused the duplicate content, or taking other corrective measures.

Overall, it is important to ensure that your website has a clear and consistent structure, with a single primary version of each page that is designated as the canonical version. This will help search engines understand your content and improve the visibility and ranking of your website in search results.

Duplicate Content and Canonical Tags: What You Need to Know

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