Canonical URL

A canonical URL is the preferred version of a web page when multiple URLs contain identical or very similar content. It's specified using the rel="canonical" HTML tag in the page's head section, telling search engines which version to index and rank. Canonical URLs help prevent duplicate content issues that can dilute your SEO performance by splitting ranking signals across multiple similar pages. This is essential for e-commerce sites with product variations, content management systems, and sites with URL parameters.