SEO · NinjaOps Guides
Canonical Tags for Affiliate Sites: Duplicate Content Without the Penalty
Query strings, tag pages, and syndication create duplicates. A self-referencing canonical tells Google which URL is the real one, consolidating ranking signals instead of splitting them.
How to fix it
- Add a self-referencing
<link rel="canonical" href="...">to every indexable page. - Never canonical a page to a URL that 404s, redirects, or is noindexed.
- Watch parameter URLs: decide index vs canonical explicitly.
- For print/share variants, canonical to the original.
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