Is the Canonical URL the same as my Default host URL?

Publishing help SEO
1

I have a site archiboo.com and www.archiboo.com with the default being set to www.archiboo.com, should I ask Webflow to set the canonical site to: “https://www.archiboo.com”?

Thanks in advance,
John

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2

Hey @JohnO :wave:

I would recommend setting your Global Canonical Tag URL to the same as your default domain. When Webflow automatically generates a Sitemap it uses the default domain in the URLs for the Sitemap.

Setting your Global Canonical Tag URL to the same will make your sitemap and canonical URLs all the same and consistent.

Side note, make sure you DO NOT include a trailing / at the end of your canonical tag url. This will cause all sorts of problems :+1:

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Is it possible to change the canonical URL of a specific page when the global canonical tag is set…
Any other way to get this sorted…

For example:- https://www.example.com/abc has canonical tag as set by the global canonical tag url is https://www.example.com/abc. But, I need to change it to something like https://www.example.com/xyz

P.S:- It’s not a CMS collection page, it’s a static page.

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Hey @Ashish_Mishra in cases like that you would be better off to not use the Global Canonical Tag URL and manually add Canonical tags to pages. :+1:

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5

Quick question to add onto this: I’ll soon be changing my company’s name. I’ve therefore added a new domain to my website which reflects this new name. Though we haven’t switched over yet, I’ll simply be making our new domain the default domain so as to funnel everything through the new domain. However, in doing so, I imagine I should also update the canonical URL at the same time…maybe? I know SEO will take a hit no matter what, but wasn’t sure if maybe updating the canonical URL before / during / after made any difference to Google.

6

Yes, correct. You’ll want to change your canonical to, e.g…

https://www.my-new-domain.com

Use www as in my example, tf www is your default, just to minimize redirects.
Make certain not to put a trailing / after your domain, people make that mistake often.

Your SEO should not suffer, as long as your old paths and new paths are the same. Google no longer penalizes for redirects.

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7

@memetican Thanks for confirming and for the info :+1:

I didn’t know Google no longer punishes redirects - good to know!

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