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    4. Missing Canonical Tag for a PDF document

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    Missing Canonical Tag for a PDF document

    Technical SEO
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    • ahmadmdahshan
      ahmadmdahshan Subscriber last edited by

      Error: Missing Canonical Tag
      But URL is not a webpage it is a PDF document, is this fixable?

      Tom.Capper 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • equipmentmanual
        equipmentmanual @Adnan-farooq last edited by

        @Adnan-farooq said in Missing Canonical Tag for a PDF document:

        i don't think that we used canonical tag for PDF document i think no option is visible on moz 👎

        Hitachi Workshop Manual Instant Download PDF at your fingertips. Access valuable resources for quick and efficient equipment maintenance and operation. Don't miss out on this essential source for Hitachi machinery enthusiasts.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • equipmentmanual
          equipmentmanual @Adnan-farooq last edited by

          Hitachi Workshop Manual Instant Download PDF at your fingertips. Access valuable resources for quick and efficient equipment maintenance and operation. Don't miss out on this essential source for Hitachi machinery enthusiasts.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • Adnan-farooq
            Adnan-farooq last edited by

            i don't think that we used canonical tag for PDF document i think no option is visible on moz 👎

            equipmentmanual 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • Tom.Capper
              Tom.Capper Subject Expert @ahmadmdahshan last edited by

              @ahmadmdahshan

              There's two answers to this.

              One is that whilst it's best practice for all URLs to have a canonical (even if it's self-referencing), if this resource has no duplicates, it's not mandatory.

              The other is that yes, you can add a canonical tag to a web page. You'd have to do it at the HTTP header level.

              https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/consolidate-duplicate-urls#rel-canonical-header-method

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
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