As I glanced at my email reader, I couldn't help but laugh. One of my newsletter subscribers had just asked me about "this new cannibal url stuff" and if I could help her out. Of course I was confused at first, as I never heard of such a thing.

I replied back to this woman that she had nothing to fear, her url was not a cannibal, but was in fact a canonical url. Many people are confused about this term, but it is extremely important that you understand how it can affect the ranking of your Website in the major search engines.

Canonicalization is basically the process the search engines use to pick the best url for your Website. As an example you can have the following urls leading back to your site:

www.yoursite.com yoursite.com yoursite.com/index.html

The search engines perceive each of these links as a separate url.

So why exactly should you be worried about this? It is well known that building backlinks to your Website helps to boost your rankings in the search engines. However, if you are using various forms of your urls, it can have a negative effect on your rankings.

If you are guilty of improper url linking, you aren't alone. A majority of marketers are making this crucial mistake every day simply because they aren't aware of it. However, this is easily correctible.

The search engine robots have no idea which link you prefer, so it is up to you to tell them. Big hint: don't leave it up to them to determine the authority link to your site.

To dictate to the search engines what url you prefer, you must be consistent anytime you are creating a link to your Website. Choose one format such as yoursite.com and use that link format exclusively for both internal and external links. All this means is that when you link to another page on your Website or you are promoting your site, use the same url structure each time.

As you can clearly see, domain canonicalization is really nothing to fear and is easily within your control. Remember, over time, little changes like this can have a big affect on your overall search engine rankings, so stay consistent and you will reap the rewards.

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