As of my knowledge canonical tags can be used to instruct Search engine if we have 2 different URLs with same content…I have two websites having same content…Obviously without redirection it is nothing but duplicate,spam content…So can I use canonical tags to instruct search engine that both are same ??
Yes, if you have a page that can be reached via several different URLs (or variations on a page) then it’s a good idea to use the canonical tag to tell Google (a) to treat them all essentially as a single page, and (b) which of the URLs you want it to use.
There can be perfectly legitimate reasons why you have multiple URLs pointing to the same content that are nothing to do with spam, eg
example.co.uk/a/34567
uk.example.com/a/34567
example.co.uk/article/article-about-stuff
example.co.uk/article/article-about-stuff?comments=off
Yes, off course you can use canonical tag but using 301 redirects is more advisable.
Here is a complete guide that let know about how to handle cross domain content duplication
Canonical link elements apply just to the site/page they are used on. They can’t be used to prefer one site over another. In that situation, Google won’t mete out a penalty as such, but might just ignore or give lesser value to one of the sites. Duplicate content isn’t spam.
If i am not wrong, you said two website, mean you must be having two different domain. Now in this case generally you can use 301 redirect on any one website and take your visitors to new site. Now suppose your client wants to keep both site live then in this case for seo purpose ask your client to choose any one, then put rel canonical tag on other site. So it will keep you away from duplication content issue. But if your server host does not allow you to use canonical then you can use no follow no index tag on other site and send removal request to webmaster if that site have been indexed.
Thanks for your reply…