What is a canonical link?

There may be times when it makes sense to have duplicate content or pages on your site. Canonical links are HTML tags that tell search engines which page is the primary source of your content. Without canonical links, duplicated pages and content can potentially have a negative effect on your site’s SEO.

Creating a canonical link

1. In the Snippets section of your Extras folder, create a new Snippet Folder named Canonical Links. This will hold all of your site's canonical links, so if a Canonical Links folder already exists, you can skip this step.

2. Create a new snippet in the Canonical Links folder, with the naming scheme canonical-my-primary-page (e.g. canonical-blog).

3. Click on “Edit HTML.”

4. Populate the field with the following tag, and replace /my-site/my-page with your site:

1. <link rel="canonical" href="http://drexel.edu/my-site/my-primary-page/>

2. Example:

   <link rel="canonical" href="http://drexel.edu/cms/components/overview/>

3. Remember, canonical tags designate the primary source of the content, so the link should point to the page which you think is the most important.

4. Click Accept, then Save and Publish your Snippet.

Adding The Canonical Link To A Page

1. Add the snippet to the head of the page where the duplicate content lives.

1. In Sitecore, navigate to the page with duplicate content.

2. Navigate to the Presentation Details.

3. Click "Edit"

4. Click "Controls"

5. Click "Add"

6. Click the "Components" folder, then click "Snippet".

7. In the Add to Placeholder field, type "HeadTag", and check "Open the properties dialog box immediately."

8. Point the Data Source to the Canonical link snippet we created.

9. Save and Publish your page.

Read about how to add components to your page.