Duplicate without user-selected canonical – such a complex term, I can’t even say it in one go. Let’s make it simple! We’re going to find the missing piece of the puzzle to simplify it.
Imagine you’re searching for something online. Suppose you’re trying to open Google. And you typed “google.com”. But someone, at a different place opened Google through “www.google.com” and then, there’s this chance that one more person wanted to open Google and typed, “https://google.com”. That’s the same page but different URLs. This is just an example.
So, when there are similar but slightly different URLs on your website that lead to the same page but no one knows which one is real, it is called “duplicate content without user-selected canonical”.
This makes people confused. The people who are finding information get into a dilemma, as well as the search engine crawlers get into this trouble. Knowing which page is original helps the crawlers show the right search results.
But, why does this duplicate content appear? You should know one thing, not everyone knows how to build a website or post content on the website. Three possibilities result in this condition-
- The tools that are used to build websites that sometimes don’t make it easy to post content.
- People who don’t know how to post content, post it without selecting one version of that content.
- When the same content is tried to access from two different search engines or ways, different URLs for the same page get created and sometimes people forget to tag which one is original content.
But why worry? There are solutions to fix this problem too. We’re going to know it all in this blog. Let’s simplify it all and make the internet an easier place.
What is it?
Duplicate page without canonical tag, again the hard word. But is it that hard? No, it’s easy. You just need someone to simplify it for you. And as you’re always lucky, we’re the someone for you.
When the same content can be accessed through different without any original tag it is called duplicate without user-selected canonical. Here’s what happens when this situation occurs –
Twin Content: This is to indicate that the same content is posted on two different pages. It’s just like seeing the twins- you don’t know which one to consider as the main.
No Boss: None of the content is tagged as original. No one knows who’s behind it or who created it. No one knows where it belongs.
Even Robots Get Confused: In the process of ranking, when crawlers find the same content in two places, they also get confused and aren’t able to decide which one to index and rank first which affects SEO.
Impact on User: When users stumble upon this type of situation, with the same content at two places, it makes it difficult for them to decide whom to trust. This way, the audience gets confused too.
This is a confusing situation but don’t worry, as we get ahead, we’ll know more things. So buckle up!
What Does Canonical Mean
Canonical looks so professional and complex, right? But it’s simple. Haha! Canonical means, boss, or to be more accurate, the one who tells who the boss is. It tells everyone what to do.
Whenever you come across a term like “canonical URL” or “canonical tag”, just know that it’s telling you which one is original. It’s giving a signal to search engines to let them know which content is real and should be indexed.
For example, you write a great post to post on your website. But then you share it on different platforms too so that more people can see it and you can maximize the reach. But sometimes, different URLs are created for the same post and are treated as if they lead to a different page. How to know which one is real?
At this time, you use canonical tags. It’s just like creating a small code and inserting it to let the search engine know that this is the original version. And then, you insert the same code in every creation of yours to save it from getting lost in others.
In the example below you can see how we define canonical URLs in HTML so that even if there are many versions of a page google will index only the canonical page.
This way the URL selected by you becomes the boss of the content you wrote by using canonical tags, even when other URLs lead to the same page.
Reasons Behind Duplicate Without User-selected Canonical
Duplicate without user-selected canonical seems quite mysterious. But, there are some reasons behind it, and we’re going to reveal them.
Lack Of Awareness
- Most of the people who run websites and posts content, don’t even know what canonical tags are.
- They don’t know how much confusion is caused by duplicates without user-selected canonical tags.
- They seem to not know about the importance of website optimization.
Technical Limits
- When someone builds a website, the CMS or the website-building tool that is used for the process makes it hard to set the canonical tags.
- People who build websites make sure to make it easy to create content and post it, but they don’t prioritize the main part of SEO, i.e., canonicalization.
- People posting content don’t even know how to implement canonical tags on the platform they chose.
Sharing Content
- When someone shares a link or the URL without saying, this happens.
- The same content starts showing up through different URLs, which confuses the crawlers.
- Sometimes syndication happens through plugins, so, people are not aware of it, when and how it got duplicated.
Now you know, why duplication happens. All the reasons; unaware people, technical limits, content sharing, plagiarism as well as robots make this mistake.
But don’t worry, we have solutions too. Let’s go ahead to fix them!
Let’s Fix the Duplicate Without a User-selected Canonical Issue!
Fixing something might seem so difficult to be done by a normal person without any skills, but is it really? No, it isn’t. We just need to find things and make them work. You don’t need to hire someone, especially for this.
How To Fix Canonical Tags On –
WordPress
Installing an SEO plugin
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- Choose a trusted and reliable SEO plugin like Yoast SEO, and install it on WordPress. (Easy, isn’t it?)
- This plug-in gives the user a simple interface and features that make it easy to handle the issue of duplication without user-selected canonical.
Setting The Domain Format
- Now, you need to go to the settings of your SEO plugin and tell it the domain format of your website i.e., if it is with “www” or without it.
- It helps you consistently in showing how the URLs you are shown and helps search engines recognize them.
Setting The Canonical URL
- Now, when you create or edit a content post, scroll down to the SEO settings to set the canonical URL.
- You’ll see the option to set the canonical URL and you can set the source of content there.
- Just need to ensure that the canonical tag points to the original content only.
Regular Audits
- When you’ve performed a task, you need to regularly check it up too. Schedule regular Audits.
- Know all the possibilities of how the content can be duplicated and set canonical tags for every piece of content of yours.
How To Fix Canonical Tags In HTML Websites
Implementation Of Canonical Tags
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- Using a website management tool or text editor, open the HTML code for each webpage.
- Find the <head> section of the HTML code and insert the canonical tag using <link rel=”canonical” href=”https://example.com”>
Here is an example of a canonical used for this page.
- Then, replace the given code with the original webpage URL.
Implementation Check
- After using canonical tags for HTML websites, use tools like Google Search Console to find out if the code was implemented or not.
- Check if the search engines are prioritizing the original version over the duplicate version.
Sitemap Updation
- In case your website has an XML sitemap, ensure it includes the URL of only your web pages.
- This will help search engines choose you over duplicated content.
With these steps, you can easily fix this issue on WordPress as well as on HTML Websites. Fixing this issue helps search engines choose you over any duplicated content as well as gives you the credit.
Wrap-up!
We’re at the end of the blog and we hope you learned all about fixing duplicates without user-selected canonical tags.
Fixing issues is necessary, to help people, search engines as well as yourself to save from confusion. All the steps provided to fix this issue on WordPress and HTML websites will surely help you. Looking forward to helping you with more issues like this!