Embedded within the header section code for each of your web store pages is a canonical link (or tag). This link signals the source, or original, URL of a page to search engines.
When a given page on your web store can be accessed via several URLs, then the canonical link indicates to search engines which version of that page is the original version. This is also the case when there are multiple pages with different URLs containing only slight content variations.
The use of canonical links within your web store pages improves search engine rankings as search engines use them to consolidate links to duplicate or similar content. This means they assign a higher ranking value to those pages marked as the source URL.
An example of how this may look on your site is outlined below.
Say a robot lands on the following link:
http://www.mystore.com/shoes/category/mens_shoes
In the header, this page might include the canonical URL
<html>
<head>
<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.mystore.com/shoes/category/mens_shoes">
If a robot follows a link somewhere that lands the same page, but with a different address, such as:
http://www.mystore.com/footwear/category/mens_shoesThe canonical URL would point to the first category.
<html>
<head>
<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.mystore.com/shoes/category/mens_shoes">
Canonical and pagination tags
For the first page in a sequence, you will see a normal request for the category page and a request for page 1 (/1) of the sequence. The rel=canonical attribute for “/1” will point to the normal category page URL.
If the page type is ‘Article’ then a non-parameterized self-reference is added.
Each shopping and article page contains a <link> element with the attribute rel="canonical". If the page type is:
‘Home’ then the canonical attribute points to https://www.hostname.domain.
‘Product’, then a self-reference is added to the non-parameterized version of that product detail page.
‘Collection’, then canonical elements are added based on whether or not the listing includes pagination.
Note: You can use the HTML attributes rel="next" and rel="prev" to indicate to search engines that the relationship between individual URLs should follow a logical sequence.
If there is a previous page in the sequence, you will see the rel="prev" element referring to the previous page.
If there is a next page in the sequence, you will see the rel="next" element referring to the next page.
Canonical and language tags
When at least one additional storefront language exists, then the 'hreflang' tag is added to all pages. Multi-lingual sites which use sub-directories to reference the language version of the page use the canonical tags to do so.
