Evidence review
What to inspect before changing anything
Start with the delivered website and the real user journey. Record the current state so the team can distinguish an observed problem from an assumption and compare the same surface after deployment.
- 01List protocol, host, slash and parameter variants
- 02Inspect canonical tags and redirect chains
- 03Compare sitemap and internal-link targets
Implementation
A practical improvement plan
Make the smallest coherent change that solves the observed problem. Keep normal code review, accessibility, security and product checks in the loop instead of optimizing for the scan alone.
- 01Choose one production origin and path format
- 02Self-canonicalize unique pages
- 03Redirect true duplicates consistently
Verification
How to verify the result
Verification should test the intended outcome and the most likely regression. Use the production delivery path whenever headers, caching, rendering or third-party services affect the result.
- 01Fetch every variant and follow redirects
- 02Confirm the canonical returns 200 and is indexable
- 03Check Search Console after recrawl
Common pitfall
A shortcut to avoid
Pointing distinct pages to one canonical can remove valuable content from search rather than consolidate duplicates.
Further reading
Primary guidance and references
These sources provide standards, security guidance or the interpretation framework used to keep this guide bounded. Product-specific implementation still requires review in the actual codebase.