Redirect Duplicate Pages to Canonical Pages

[sharminakter]

For example, if you have a .docx and a .pdf version of the same document online, you can use this method to indicate your preferred version.

However, you must be able to modify your server configuration.

In the .htaccess file, specify a canonical URL by adding code that looks like this:

URL redirects send Google (and users) from one page to another.

Redirection is the best deduplication method if you don't need to keep alternate versions of the page. But you don't want to remove the URLs completely.

For example, when you have HTTP and HTTPS dominican republic phone data versions of the same page. Google prefers HTTPS versions. So it is good for your SEO to redirect the HTTP version to the HTTPS version.

Google recommends using 3xx redirects (server-side redirects) for the fastest results.

This includes 301 redirects, which you can learn about in our guide to 301 redirects .

List Only Canonical URLs in Your Sitemap
“All pages listed in a sitemap are suggested as canonical,” according to Google .

This means that it is best to only submit canonical URLs (and non-duplicate pages) in your sitemap . And leave out alternate URLs.

There is no major problem with leaving duplicate pages in your sitemap. Google will decide which version is canonical.

On the other hand, it can be problematic to leave your favorite URLs out of your sitemap, so keep your sitemap up to date.

Canonical Tags: SEO Best Practices
If you don’t implement canonicals correctly, Google may ignore them. And that can hurt your SEO performance.