: Should I have to use canonical if I rewrite my URL? For example if I have only one HTML page in my directory and if the link is http://www.mydomain.com/my-landing-page.html and, using .htaccess

@Ann8826881

If you 301-redirect from /my-landing-page.html to /my-landing-page, no one will ever get a 200 when visiting /my-landing-page.html. So you don’t need to do anything with this URL (besides redirecting). You shouldn’t block crawling of /my-landing-page.html, as otherwise bots may not notice that there is a redirect now.

You may use canonical for /my-landing-page. This could help in cases where URL variations show up (e.g., created by someone linking to your page) that still give 200 for your content.

Example (it depends on server configuration if this applies in your case): Someone might link to /my-landing-page?we-sell-only-crap. Thanks to the canonical, it’s now clear that this URL could be ignored.

<!-- on /my-landing-page and variations -->
<link rel="canonical" href="http://example.com/my-landing-page" />

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