Telling search engines which version is authoritative.
WHAT A CANONICAL TAG DOES
Declares the preferred URL for a page, so search engines consolidate signals on one version rather than treating variations as separate pages.
WHY IT MATTERS AFTER ENABLING HTTPS
Your pages may be reachable at four addresses: http and https, with and without www. Without a clear canonical, ranking is diluted.
WHAT TO DO
- Set one canonical form and redirect the others, with a single 301 hop.
- Ensure canonical tags point at the https form. An SEO plugin generates these from your site address, so updating the site address usually fixes them.
- Update your sitemap to the https URLs.
- Update internal links.
CHECKING
View the page source and find the canonical link tag. It should show the https, canonical-host version of the current page.
A COMMON ERROR
Every page declaring the homepage as canonical, which tells search engines nothing else on the site matters. Usually a misconfigured plugin.
AFTERWARDS
Add the https property in Search Console and submit the updated sitemap.
