How to Correct a Docusaurus-Generated Canonical URL That Points to a Redirect?

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04-10-2024

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Fixing Docusaurus Canonical URLs that Point to Redirects: A Guide

Docusaurus is a popular choice for building static documentation websites, but sometimes its automatic canonical URL generation can lead to issues, especially when you have redirects in place. If your Docusaurus site is incorrectly generating canonical URLs that point to redirects, you'll encounter a frustrating experience where search engines might struggle to understand your website structure and index your content properly. This can negatively impact your site's SEO.

Understanding the Problem:

Imagine you have a page on your Docusaurus site at /docs/getting-started/. You then decide to move this page to /docs/beginner-guide/. However, if you're not careful, Docusaurus might continue to generate a canonical URL pointing to the old /docs/getting-started/ location, even though it now redirects to the new location. Search engines, seeing this conflicting information, will be unsure of the correct URL to index, potentially leading to lower search rankings.

Illustrative Example:

Let's say you have the following Docusaurus configuration:

// docusaurus.config.js
module.exports = {
  // ... other configuration
  baseUrl: "/",
  favicon: "img/favicon.ico",
  organizationName: "MyOrg",
  projectName: "MyProject",
  // ... more configuration
};

And your page at /docs/getting-started/ is now redirected to /docs/beginner-guide/. The issue arises when Docusaurus generates a canonical URL like <link rel="canonical" href="/docs/getting-started/" />, which points to the redirect, instead of the new location.

Solution:

The solution lies in explicitly overriding the canonical URL generation in your Docusaurus configuration. You can achieve this by using the onBeforePageBuild hook provided by Docusaurus.

Here's how you can implement it:

1. Add a custom plugin: Create a file named canonical-override-plugin.js within your plugins directory.

// plugins/canonical-override-plugin.js
module.exports = function canonicalOverridePlugin(context, options) {
  return {
    name: "canonical-override-plugin",
    onBeforePageBuild({ content, page, metadata, outDir, siteConfig, isDev, route }) {
      // Example: override canonical URL for /docs/getting-started/
      if (route.path === '/docs/getting-started/') {
        metadata.canonicalUrl = '/docs/beginner-guide/';
      }
    },
  };
};

2. Include the plugin in your Docusaurus configuration:

// docusaurus.config.js
module.exports = {
  // ... other configuration
  plugins: [
    // ... other plugins
    [
      require.resolve('./plugins/canonical-override-plugin.js'),
      {}
    ]
  ]
};

This plugin will detect when a specific route is being processed (/docs/getting-started/ in our example) and override the automatically generated canonical URL with the correct one (/docs/beginner-guide/).

Additional Tips:

• Avoid relying solely on redirects: It's best to directly update links in your documentation and make sure any external links point to the new location.
• Test thoroughly: Always test your changes to ensure that the redirects are functioning as expected and that the canonical URLs are being generated correctly.
• Use tools for debugging: Tools like the Google Search Console can help you identify issues with your canonical URLs and redirect setup.

Conclusion:

By using the onBeforePageBuild hook and creating a custom plugin, you can easily control the canonical URLs generated by Docusaurus. This ensures that search engines will correctly understand the structure of your documentation website, improving its indexing and ultimately boosting your SEO performance.