Canonical URL
A canonical URL designates the preferred web address that search engines should index and rank as the authoritative version of a page’s content, especially amid duplicates like varying parameters or protocols.
Canonical Tag
A canonical tag serves as the HTML mechanism—<link rel="canonical" href="preferred-url">—placed in the page’s <head> section to explicitly signal this preferred URL to crawlers, guiding them to consolidate ranking signals without redirecting users.
While the URL is the target itself, the tag is the directive tool; together, they combat duplicate content dilution, boosting SEO by focusing equity on one version.
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