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SEO Fundamentals

What is Canonical tag?

An HTML tag (`<link rel="canonical">`) that tells search engines which URL is the official version of a page when multiple URLs lead to the same content. Prevents duplicate-content penalties.

Common case: Shopify product variants (?variant=12345) create unique URLs for the same product. Without a canonical tag, Google sees them as duplicate competing pages, splitting ranking authority. The canonical tag tells Google to consolidate the ranking signal back to the parent URL.

How this shows up in your audit

Your Growth Blueprint checks the SEO fundamentals across your store — page titles, meta descriptions, headings, image alt text, and internal linking — and flags exactly which pages have problems, with step-by-step fixes written for non-technical store owners.

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