I find my brain spins at some of the issues regarding seo - I just cant seem to make them make sense
Could elements pages have a flag to set the canonical flag for example ?
It will not be necessary as it will be the only version of the page on the website. The advantage of a flat file, static website.
The web crawlers can see the original date of the file. They can also track any changes to the file from the server log files.
So you’re good to go right away!
Canonical applies to scenarios like blogs, where multiple versions of the same page exist.
Adding the Canonical tag informs the crawlers that this page is the original, while the others are part of the website and not intended as duplicates to spam the search engines.
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There’s a good YouTube video on Google’s Documentation page about it, clears up some misconceptions if you are wanting to learn more.
Points duel noted - thank you guys !!
I guess my point was - RW is specifically designed for people like me who will typically struggle with issues like Canonical … so whatever can be done to eleviate the issue - all the better.
Thanks Dan I have read that doc. I am (only) marginally wiser : )
I think Flash is right - blogs can cause problems
Canonical In my case …
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I have 25 flagged (canonical issue) pages - they are all downloadable PDFs on www.dibleymarine.com
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and this one … Find Us on Google Maps, Dibley Marine Yacht Design
Any clues on either would be very much appreciated
Jol
PS. (I also have lots of ‘Crawled / Discovered - Currently not indexed’ pages - if anybody can help at all I’d really appreciate it).
SEO is hard - I think when you have a complex site - perhaps when you have an old site that has been reworked several times
Ta - Jol
Can you post a screenshot or two from your Google Search Console showing the things Google is complaining about regarding those 25 PDF pages?
A general answer though, for the PDF files, Google states that rel="canonical" link doesn’t work. You’d use rel="canonical" HTTP header instead.
There’s a nice article that explains how to do that here (scroll down to the section titled HTTP Headers Using .htaccess (non-Text/HTML Types): and read from there onwards. Not sure if you’d be able to do that though, it depends on your web hosting provider and your hosting/server environment.
If you have any free time on Fridays, feel free to join our Office Hours, would be cool to go through the above and see if it can be implemented on your hosting account. 
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My Canonical Issues are … ‘Duplicate without user-selected canonical’
Ok, so the links posted in my prior comment goes over how to resolve that for PDF files.
Thank you !
- you guys really are excellent !!