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Remove invalid canonical tags A "canonical tag" is a tag that tells Google that a web page should be the preferred version compared to other similar pages. This tag is expressed as below <link rel=”canonical” href=”/page.html/”> Many web pages either do not have this tag or have a "self-referential canonical tag". This self-referential canonical tag tells Google that the page itself is the preferred version. This means that the site creator wants their page Bermuda Email List to be indexed (shown up in Google's search results). However, if a page has the wrong canonical tag, it can falsely tell Google that a non-existent or non-preferred version
of the page should take precedence. As a result, the page in question may not be indexed by Google. To see if a page has a canonical tag and which page it points to, use Google's URL inspection tool. If the canonical tag points to another page, you will see an "alternative page with canonical tag" warning within the tool. alternate-page-with-canonical.png If this is what you need and you want your page to be indexed, remove the canonical tag. important Canonical tags themselves are not bad. There's a reason why many pages have this, and it's likely intentional by the website administrator. If you find that your page has a canonical tag, please check to see if your page is actually the version recommended by Google. If the page is appropriate and Google doesn't need to index the page in question, you should leave the canonical tag alone. To quickly find inappropriate canonical tags across all your sites, use Ahrefs' site audit tool to crawl your site. Then go to
Page Explorer and apply the settings below. canonicals-filter-site-audit.png This filter looks for pages with canonical tags that don't point to themselves in the sitemap. Normally, pages listed in a sitemap are intended to be indexed by Google. So if this filter returns any results, it's a sign that further investigation is needed. The pages listed here probably have inappropriate canonical tags, or perhaps they shouldn't be included in the sitemap. Make sure your page isn't orphaned An orphan page is a page that is not referenced by other pages through internal links, or in other words, a page that is isolated like an orphan. Google crawls websites to find new content, but orphan pages without internal links are less likely to be discovered. It will also be difficult for website visitors to find this page. To check for orphan pages, crawl your site using Ahrefs' site audit .
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