Canonical Links

According to Yoast, a “canonical link,” is an HTML element that helps webmasters prevent duplicate content. It does so by specifying the “canonical URL,” which is essentially the “preferred” version of a web page. Most of the time, this is the source URL. Why do we acknowledge the difference? Well, simply put, using canonical URLs will improve our site’s SEO.

The idea is simple. If you have several versions of the same content, you pick one “canonical” version and point the search engines to it. Doing so solves the duplicate content problem where search engines don’t know which version to show in their results.
In other words, if you are putting up a ground-up wire, chances are that it will be similar to what is on other websites, especially if other media houses have used that same article. You should then make it clear to Google that this was published somewhere else first – hence, using the source URL as your canonical link.

How do you add your canonical link or URL? It’s simple and as easy as adding a link under the “advanced” tab of the Yoast section of WordPress. See example below:

For more information on canonical links, read here.