Amazon Canonical URL - How to Change It?
If you’re a seller on Amazon it’s important to focus not only on optimizing for Amazon’s search engine, but other search engines too, most commonly Google of course. After all, it’s not always Amazon’s marketplace where users begin their shopping journey; often, it’s on Google, where they scout for ideas and compare prices before landing on your Amazon page.
This makes it essential to optimize your product listings to attract external traffic, and that’s when Amazon’s canonical URL comes into play. Should it be structured well, and it acts like a beacon for search engines, essentially telling them that this is the most relevant product page according to a user’s search query.
In this article, we are going to cover what Amazon Canonical URL is, how to set it up, and answer the question of whether there is an actual way to change it.
What is Amazon’s Canonical URL?
A Canonical URL is like a signal to search engines, telling them which page is the original source of content. When there are several pages with the same or similar information, search engines might get confused about which one to show first. This can result in them treating these pages as duplicates.
By using Canonical URLs, you help search engines know exactly which page to prioritize, ensuring that your main content gets the visibility it deserves.
Canonical URL Structure
As shown in the image, you can find the Canonical URLs keywords right after the “amazon.com/”, consisting of words separated by hyphens.
In this example, it consists of 5 keywords: “Glass”, “Pitcher”, “Lid”, “Leak-proof” and “Container”, all of which together comprise the Canonical URL for this product on Amazon.
So, what does it mean to your product?
If a customer makes a search using this precise set of keywords, the product it belongs to will be shown at the top of the search results page.
Clicking on it takes you directly to the product page instead of a generic search results page. This strategy bypasses the competition, driving significant traffic to the product.
Why Canonical URLs matter
Canonical URLs play a crucial role in both web development and SEO by ensuring that search engines view multiple pages with similar or identical content as one unified source. This process, known as canonicalization, is vital for several reasons:
1. Avoiding duplicate content
Search engines like unique and useful information. If they find multiple pages with the same content, they might think it’s duplicate and lower your site’s ranking. Canonical URLs help organize these pages, keeping yours safe from penalties.
2. Improving Page Authority
By combining different URLs into one main URL, any positive reputation those pages have is also combined.
3. Better User Experience
When people see multiple pages with similar content, it can be confusing. Canonical URLs guide users to one clear source, making it easier to navigate and improving their experience.
How to Create a Canonical URL
We can suggest 2 ways how you can edit the Canonical URL and have the one that best describes your product, starting with the simplest:
1. Setting up a Product Title for the first time
When creating a listing and setting up your product title for the first time, you’re actually setting up the canonical URL.
If you want to have a good URL, you need to choose 5 top searched highly relevant keywords and put them in the beginning of your title. Although it’s not guaranteed that all of them will make it to the canonical URL, the majority should.
You can only have 5 words in your Canonical URL, so once you make a final decision and list these keywords in your title, make sure to separate them with a hyphen “-”, which will increase your chances of getting these particular words in your URL.
Once your Canonical URL is formed, you can always change your title again, and this time make it more meaningful while keeping your listing URL the same.
Although, there are some things to consider before you do that:
1. As a new seller, including your brand name is optimal, but is generally recommended only for known businesses, otherwise, it might not bring any value to you. Of course, Amazon proposes that you MUST include your brand name at the very beginning of your product title, but if you don’t do that to avoid it getting in your Canonical URL and Amazon approves your listing anyway, you can always edit your title and add your brand name later.
2. Hyphenated words count as a single word, meaning you can use them to add even more keywords to your Canonical URL without exceeding the 5-word limit.
2. Turn to Seller Support
In Amazon Seller Central, you can navigate to the top right corner and click on “Help” -> “Get help and resources”.
Then, go all the way down and choose the option saying “My issue is not listed”. In the newly opened description box, address your issue and leave a link to your existing product listing. Don’t forget to list an updated version of the URL you’d like your canonical one to be changed to.
So, your final message should look something like that:
“Please update my Amazon listing URL from “https://www.amazon.com/Hat-Fedora-Straw-Beach-Sun/dp/B0C7BDN4W1/“ to “https://www.amazon.com/Summer-Straw-Panama-Hat-Beach/dp/B0C7BDN4W1/”
Most of the time, Amazon will fulfill your request, but it might take you more than one attempt. If approved, it takes them 48 hours on average to update your current URL.
Final Thoughts
Amazon Canonical URL are crucial for your product listings and knowing how to use them can really help your SEO results on the platform. They help Amazon indicate which version of a product page should be indexed and ranked, preventing issues with duplicate content and strengthening your product ranking. Having good Canonical URLs is also essential to attract customers who use other search engines rather than Amazon to look for products, which ultimately leads to increased traffic and higher sales.
Looking to elevate your product listings and SEO performance? Contact us today for expert assistance in optimizing your URLs and take advantage of our comprehensive SEO services.
