Canonical link tag

Google and the other search engines have introduced a new tag, which can be used when dealing with duplicate content.

Canonical link tag
The Canonical link tag is used directly in the html code on the page, and it ensures that the page is indexed correctly as the “original” or preferred page for the content – if you have duplicate content.

If you have more than one page with the same content, you can use the canonical tag to point the duplicate pages to one page. When you use the tag only the “original page” (the page you refer to in the canonical tag) will be indexed, and all Page Rank/link juice is transferred to this page.

See Matt Cutts explanation of the canonical tag here:

Read more on Google’s webmaster blog and read more on Matt Cutts blog.

Take away:

• Duplicate content can damage your rankings.
• Deal with duplicate content.
• Canonical link tag can be used for dealing with duplicate content.
• Canonical link tag is a supplement to robots.txt and 301 redirects.