Canonical URLs: what to get right first

We end up explaining this on discovery calls often enough that it deserved writing down. If you only fix one thing about canonical URLs this quarter, make it the first item below.

Search work compounds slowly, which is why it gets abandoned about two months before it would have paid off. The failure mode is not doing it wrong, it is doing it once and assuming it stays done.

Start here

Canonicals tell search engines which version is the real one. It is worth being explicit about, because assumptions differ quietly. Most teams find the first pass takes an afternoon and the maintenance takes minutes a month.

Then this

Parameters and print views create duplicates quietly. The reasoning matters more than the rule, because the rule has exceptions. It is the sort of thing that looks like polish right up until it costs you an enquiry.

Eventually

Self-referencing canonicals are a safe default. Small and consistent beats large and occasional here. Anything you cannot measure here, you are deciding by taste, which is fine as long as everyone knows it.

In practice

Technical fixes remove obstacles; content earns the position. Both are needed and they are not interchangeable. Three things worth confirming about canonical URLs before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Self-referencing canonicals are a safe default — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

If you are not sure where your systems currently stand on this, it takes us about an hour to find out.