ARI Canonical Go-Forward Process

Purpose

This document will explain the process an SEO rep must follow to identify the correct canonical page on which to implement SEO optimization work. A Canonical URL is the preferred URL for a particular page and it can be found by checking the page source or looking in GSC. A canonical URL can point to itself or to a different URL in the page source, and it is the only URL that should be used for internal linking. In other words, you should ensure that you are not linking URLs within the link structure that canonical to a different page. Selecting the correct canonical page to optimize is important because canonical pages are selected by Google to be crawled and indexed in favor of other inventory pages that include the same inventory filters, but are selected out of order. Those pages are not crawled and indexed by Google, and therefore do not show in search results. By making sure we are optimizing canonical pages only, we are ensuring that Google can crawl and index these pages and improve search results rankings promptly. We are also working to reduce and eliminate duplicate content pages when we identify canonical pages to post content to.

Procedure

Inputs

A keyword focus has been selected to optimize an inventory page and the SEO rep must filter the inventory to select a destination page URL to post content.

Step 1: Go to the All Inventory page and select the appropriate filters to narrow down the inventory to get to the page you want to optimize.

Example: You need to optimize an inventory page for new Ski-Doo snowmobiles. At this point, the order in which you select these filters doesn’t matter because the destination URL will need to be compared to the canonical URL and adjusted if needed. In this example, filters are selected from top to bottom to create the following URL: https://www.lakesareapowersports.com/search/inventory/type/Snowmobile/usage/New/brand/Ski-Doo

Step 2: Right click on the page and select "View Page Source".

You can also use the shortcut CTRL+U to view the page source, and another tab will open that looks something like this:

Step 3: Compare the canonical URL to the one you created by selecting filters.

The canonical link can be found towards the top of the page source code, labeled with “<link rel="canonical" href=". As you can see, the canonical link does not match exactly with the URL that was created by selecting filters from top to bottom. You will need to modify the destination page URL you created to match the order of the canonical URL listed.

Outputs

The canonical page has been identified and selected as the destination page URL to post content and is included in the internal linking structure.
The canonical page is crawled and indexed by Google, and therefore shows in search results and improves in rankings after optimization.

FAQs

Additional Reading