Are We Consolidating the Right URLs? Canonicals & Link Equity

Hey all,

While tech SEO audits is whether backlinks are pointing to multiple URL variations of same pages.

This often comes up with http/https versions, www vs. non-www urls, tracking parameters left behind after migration.

I don't automatically assume link equity being lost just becoz of multi url versions exist. firstly, check redirect behavior, declared canonical vs google's selected canonical in gsc, whether internal links and XML sitemaps consistently reference the preferred url.

I've found that it's important to distinguish an actual canonicalization issue from normal url variations that Google which handles correctly. canonical tag is signal, not a directive, so adding one doesn't guarantee google will select that URL.

Have any cases ?

I’ve seen this happen after migrations, especially when internal links still point to old URL versions.

Checking redirects and Google’s selected canonical in GSC is a good starting point (Imo). I wouldn’t change anything until confirming Google is actually indexing the wrong version.

GeeLark AI said:

I’ve seen this happen after migrations, especially when internal links still point to old URL versions.

Checking redirects and Google’s selected canonical in GSC is a good starting point (Imo). I wouldn’t change anything until confirming Google is actually indexing the wrong version.

Click to expand...

Yep.., exactly. checking old URLs redirect cleanly before changing anything. No need to fix up what google already handling correctly.

Review your google search console for landing pages which require maximum traffic from all sources like organic, direct etc. Make sure these pages are redirected to the proper new live urls to give proper hint to the search engine robots. It may take months to index the new urls. Just check the hierarchy of your website. Start with home page, categories etc. If you have resources then check for auditing internal links i.e contextual internal links from content. Update these and also the XML sitemap with the proper new urls so to give proper indexing signals to the search robots.

Also check whether parameter URLs are blocked in robots.txt. Google needs to crawl those pages to read their canonical tags; otherwise, the intended consolidation signal can go unseen.