Canonical tag
A line in the page that says "this is the real address of this content". It resolves the fact that the same page is often reachable at several URLs — with and without www, with tracking parameters on the end, with and without a trailing slash.
Why it matters
Without it, search engines may treat those variants as separate competing pages and split the credit between them. One page ranking at position 5 becomes two pages ranking at 15.
How to fix it, step by step
Quick fix — usually under ten minutes, no developer needed.
- 1View the page source and look for: <link rel="canonical" href="...">
- 2It should point at the page's own preferred address, including https and your preferred www / non-www form.
- 3In WordPress, Yoast and Rank Math add this automatically. If it is missing, the SEO plugin is probably inactive on that page type.
- 4Make sure the canonical matches the address you actually want in search — the one your links use.
How to know it worked
Every important page has a canonical pointing at itself. Search Console's URL Inspection shows "User-declared canonical" matching the address you chose.
Others in Crawlability
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