In fact, keyword cannibalization is a fairly common problem on websites, however, it is still very difficult to find references on the subject.
That’s why we’ve decided to present you with the problem – and of course – its solution, so you know exactly what it is and how to fix it. Take a look below!
What is keyword cannibalization?
This situation occurs when two or more pages lithuania mobile database on the same website focus on the same keywords , that is, when there are several different pages within the same site talking about the same topic and “fighting” among themselves for the same position .
For example, if you have a blog about gastronomy, obviously all your pages will talk about this topic in general.
The problem of keyword cannibalization will occur on your blog when you have, for example, three pages talking about a more specific topic, such as “French cooking techniques” and you use this same keyword to rank all three articles.
You might be wondering why the heck this is a negative thing, right?
In the end, if you produce a lot of content on the same topic, Google can rank all your pages, displaying them one after the other in its results, and everything will turn out perfect for you and your website.
We are sorry, but NO !
That’s right. Cannibalization forces Google to choose one of the pages, as it does not allow you to rank yourself “multiple times.”
In this case, Google’s algorithm may decide to rank the least favorable page on your website, assign you worse positions, or, in more extreme cases, not rank any of your pages.
Confusing Google is not the best way to go , so make sure its algorithm understands the content you want to rank in its search engine .
Moreover, if you look at it from the visitor’s point of view, it also produces losses for your site, because eventually, they may find one of your pages talking about the topic they are looking for cannibalization is harmful.
But the content that really generates value is on another page within your website that they can’t find.
How to detect keyword cannibalization?
Ideally, a website should work with a good content hierarchy. In addition, studying the keywords for each of the pages and classifying them into categories and subcategories prevents cannibalization from the start.
But if the site has not been concerned with this issue from the beginning, identifying it will be a bit costly and will require some dedication and time.
Trust us, even the most experienced SEOs struggle at these times.
Do you want to check if this is happening on your website?
Well, you’ll need to investigate whether there is internal competition between pages and their keywords on your site .
Check whether the website offers many answers to the same topic , without defining which one designates the best answer for users.
You can do this inspection using your blog or site’s search engine: look for the terms, observe and carefully review the entries that exist and address the concept cannibalization is harmful.
There are some specific tools that can help you identify and review keyword cannibalization, they are:
- Search Console
- Operator site:yourdomain
- PRO
- Screaming Frog
How to avoid (or solve) keyword cannibalization?
You have discovered that cannibalization did how can images make your indeed occur on your website, now what?
Don’t despair, you can solve it in a few ways:
– Make a redirect (301) on the pages that rank less to those that rank more (analyze carefully which page ranks more or less before applying the redirect).
– Unify pages competing for the same keyword to concentrate SEO power and traffic.
– Improve anchor texts, making the page you want to rank more evident.
– Deindex or even delete those pages that have practically no value for Google (here again: safely investigate which page is less effective and you can delete it without any major problems).
– Optimize one of the pages by focusing on another keyword cannibalization is harmful.
On the other hand, if you haven’t had this problem yet, either because your website is still very small and doesn’t have much content or because of pure luck, here are some tips to prevent it from happening to you .
Planning keyword lists :
Before building your pages, plan your keywords and determine what topic you will address in each new post.
As we mentioned before, content hierarchy is very important to avoid cannibalization problems.
Errors here can lead to complete disorganization ar numbers of the website. This usually happens mainly in online stores and pages that have too much related content.
Products and articles compete for keywords, so it is necessary for each of them to have a category link.
As you may have noticed, it all depends on how your site is planned, the study of keywords , text structure, data hierarchy, categories, subcategories, etc.
All of this serves as a clue for Google to know which result is correct and what it should rank.
In short, what you need to tell Google is: for this keyword this URL/page exists .
The idea is not to complicate things, on the contrary, it is to simplify them so that Google understands and can thus offer the most convenient results to users cannibalization is harmful.
You have seen that even if the content on your site deals with similar concepts, if you manage to distinguish them well, that is, in a concrete way, cannibalization will not occur.
Google will understand the intent of your content and know how to present it to users when they perform their search.
Keyword cannibalization is not scary at all, you just need to know how to use SEO techniques efficiently, do you agree? I’m sure you do.
If you want to know more about SEO techniques and mechanisms, download our definitive guide to conquer the first page of Google.