Canonical Linking
Canonical linking is something that most people are familiar with but are unsure when to implement it or the exact reason why to do it.
In short, a canonical link tells Google that certain pages contain duplicate content and that the site should not be picked up and penalised for any duplicate content within those pages.
On our site, we are experimenting with different landing pages for our main AdWords training page. We have 3 other variations of this page with duplicate content on them so we needed to add a canonical link on the duplicate pages to let Google know we have done this. Our CMS is WordPress so all we did was add a plug-in called SEO no duplicate. All you then need to do is add the main page URL (the page that is the core focus) in the canonical link plug-in on the experimental pages and click update.
Once this is done, view the page and then view page source, press control F and search for canonical to make sure that the link has successfully been added to the experiment pages.
This process should be applied to any pages on your site which you know have duplicate content from another page (normally the main page which is the main focus) The last thing you want is to be hit by a duplicate content penalty so make sure you add in the canonical links to avoid this.
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