How to Fix Alternate Page with Proper Canonical Tag

If you see Google Index Coverage Issues in your Google Search Console, it might be alarming. Not all indexing issues are something to be completely alarmed by. You might have noticed an Alternate Page with Proper Canonical Tag exclusion warning on your account.

Here is what Google says regarding this error,

This page is a duplicate of a page that Google recognizes as canonical. This page correctly points to the canonical page, which is indexed, so there is nothing for you to do.

What is a Canonical Tag in the First Place?

A canonical tag is an HTML element that helps webmasters prevent duplicate content issues in SEO by specifying the "canonical" or "preferred" version of a web page. Some times the canonical tag can get messed up when a page is duplicated or the SEO settings are edited.

This can cause problems with the Search Engine. Since duplicate content is a major red flag for search engines, they pay a lot of attention to canonical tags.

How to Fix Alternate Page with Proper Canonical Tag

If you want to fix your alternate page with proper canonical Tag issues, you should check your canonical tags to make sure that the canonical tags match the page URL. Additionally, you should double check that you don't not have duplicate pages on your site where the canonical might be slightly different but not correct.