Technical SEO FAQ · Redirects, Status Codes, Sitemaps & Robots
How do you handle conflicting canonical signals?
Map all signals:
- HTML canonical;
- HTTP
Linkheader if used; - redirects;
- sitemap;
- internal links;
- hreflang relationships.
If they point to different URLs, simplify the system.
Google treats canonicalization as signal collection rather than a single directive.
Related questions
- How do redirect chains affect SEO and crawling?
- How do you troubleshoot incorrect canonicalization at scale?
- How would you handle thousands of URLs returning 200 but displaying "not found"?
- How would you identify redirect loops?
- What happens when canonical tags point to 404 pages?
- What happens when canonical tags point to redirected URLs?
- What is the SEO impact of soft 404s?
- What would you check after a large-scale URL migration?
- When should you use a 301 versus a 302?