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Canonization is the process of making a text or image canonical, which means it is accepted as being from the original source. Canonization can refer to any act of revising, endorsing, or approving a text or image for inclusion in the canon of a religion, culture, or other civilization.
What are the most common canonicalization issues?
One of the most common canonicalization issues is a lack of cross-links on your site. This problem can be caused by forgetting to add a rel=canonical tag to your URL, which is a simple way to eliminate duplicate content on your site.
Another issue with canonicalization is including a lot of information in one page title. You may have seen pages that have a page title that is too long and includes words that don’t also appear in the page’s content. For example, “Superior Furniture: Your One Stop Shop for Quality Furniture.” When you have a page title like this, Google might think it’s not about what’s actually on the page and could penalize you for the “over-optimization” of your content.
It can also happen if you have more than one set of meta keywords or descriptions, which can confuse search engines and result in penalties.
How do you fix these issues?
You may have been wondering what canonicalization is and how it relates to SEO. In this post, we’ll explore just that.
In general, Webmasters will want to ensure they’re using the right structure for their site’s copy so that Google can crawl them correctly.
How are canonicalization errors discovered?
Naturally, webmasters are keen on making sure their canonicalization is accurate. However, sometimes the issue is found before it becomes a problem.
For example, if you’re linking to pages on your site that have similar titles and descriptions, Google will highlight the issue. You can then aptly address the issue by changing the page URL to ensure the pages are distinguishable by title and description.
Another way issues arise is if you use multiple filenames for one file type. For instance, if you upload an image with two different names (e.g., “post-made-from-paper” and “paper-texture”), Google won’t be able to tell which page should show up in search results when someone searches for either of these file names.
The easiest way to address this issue is to give both of these files unique names (e.g., “post-made-from-paper” and “wooden-texture”).
Last Updated on January 4, 2022
Aires Loutsaris is a content marketing specialist working with some of the world’s biggest VC funded startups and eCommerce companies. He has 15 years of experience in organic search optimisation and content writing with over 2500 students enrolled in his Udemy SEO course. An ex-head of two award-winning agencies, he has lectured at the University of the Arts, London College of Fashion on content marketing and has consulted for all three of the Universities he studied at: The Open University, The University of Hull and Kings College University of London. Feel free to connect with Aires on LinkedIn or Facebook.