A canonical tag identifies your preferred version of a page among duplicates. Copying the homepage canonical onto every article can send a conflicting signal about which URL represents the content.
Check two pages from the same template
Open the source of two different published articles and find rel="canonical". Each should identify its intended canonical version. If both point to the homepage or a staging domain, inspect the template’s URL construction. Use the real public origin rather than a hardcoded development address.
<!-- Example for this article’s public URL -->
<link rel="canonical" href="https://your-site.example/blog/example-guide">Keep public references consistent
Compare the canonical URL with the sitemap entry and internal links. Remove accidental query parameters from the canonical when they do not identify distinct content. If a page intentionally duplicates another URL, make that choice explicit rather than generating conflicting self-canonicals for every variant.
Use a separate canonical verification step
SiteReadyFor.SI does not currently include a comprehensive canonical audit. Its sitemap and retrieval checks can give you the public URLs to inspect, but verify canonical tags directly and use search-engine inspection tools for their interpretation. The guides on this site use a shared URL builder to keep their own canonicals and sitemap aligned.