Search and the web
Canonical URL
The one address a piece of content declares as its real one, so that every variant of it consolidates into a single entry rather than competing with itself.
The same page is usually reachable at several addresses — with and without a trailing slash, with tracking parameters, over both hostnames, in a printable version. Without a declared canonical, a search engine has to guess which is the original, and the ranking signals split across the copies.
A canonical must point at a URL that actually answers with a 200. Pointing it at an address that redirects is a common and quietly damaging error: every page then describes itself by a location it does not live at.
A site served on www that canonicalises to the bare domain — or the reverse — asks the engine to index an address that only redirects. Pick the host that answers, and make the canonical, the sitemap and the structured data all name that one.
A definition is free. Being answerable for the figure it produces is the part that is bought, and this term is a working part of the engagements below.
- Web design and development for Dubai, built search-first
- Search architecture is a build decision, not a later engagement.
- SEO and GEO for Dubai and the UAE
- You are indexed as an entity, not as a set of pages.
- Express Site
- A fixed scope at a published price, because what is fixed is the number of rounds.
The definitions are the easy part. Whether the figure on your dashboard was computed this way is a different question, and usually the more expensive one.