Progressive Web Application Development by Example

Defining a canonical HTTPS link

Another SEO practice you might overlook is defining the canonical link. Google and other search engines use this as a signal to know the original source of the content. In this case, any reference using an HTTP URL will be considered a duplicate of the HTTPS version. Take the following code:

<link rel="canonical" href="http://example.com/foo">

You should update this to the following:

<link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/foo">

This will avoid the duplicate content penalty, which in this case would dilute the link juice. By defining a canonical link, you are telling the search engine where to direct the ranking authority.