Canonical URLs for products

A canonical URL informs search engines that certain similar URLs are actually the same – essentially by specifying that one of the URLs which can access a page is the preferred – i.e. canonical – URL.

Using canonical URLs has a large SEO impact, as it allows google and others to count all the various links to a page and using the sum of them to rank the canonical URL higher than it would otherwise be ranked.

To set up canonical URLs for products:

1. The product must be located in at least 2 groups, one of which is marked as the primary group (Figure 1.1).

2. The primary group must have a primary page set (Figure 1.2) – this is necessary since a group could be shown on several pages

3. The master template must render metatags (Figure 1.3)

4. When the primary group is visited in frontend, the canonical URL is not rendered as a meta tag (since we are visiting the canonical) (Figure 2.1)

5. When the non-primary path is visited, the canonical URL is rendered in the meta tag section (Figure 2.2)