A canonical tag (aka "rel canonical") is a way of telling search engines (Google in particular) that a specific URL represents the original source of a page.
This means that all SEO power of an article will be attributed to the URL that is added to its "rel=canonical" HTML tag.
Using the canonical tag prevents problems caused by identical or "duplicate" content appearing on multiple URLs.
When editorial teams publish articles on their site, Voltax automatically uses the articles' URLs as the "Canonical" by default.
In cases where a different "Canonical" should be added, Voltax enables editorial teams to customize the articles' canonical URLs via the Publisher's "Article Customization" screen.
To do so, follow these steps:
1. In the Publisher's article customization dashboard, activate the Canonical URL toggle
2. Insert the URL that should be used as the article's Canonical
3. Click on Publish / Update to save the changes
Important notes:
- If the "Canonical URL" field remains empty, the article's URL will be used as the "Canonical"
- The "Canonical URL" must start with “http://” or “https://”
- Articles with an external canonical URL are recommended to be excluded from RSS