flexpaydude
Elite Member
- May 30, 2009
- 2,402
- 766
Hey beginners!
I have just shared a simple and basic overview for keyword cannibalization.
What is keyword cannibalization?
You’d be having many blogs and articles on your site. When you optimize your articles for too similar terms, keyword cannibalization occurs. Your articles will rank for the same search query. It means your articles will compete with each other and it reduces their chances of ranking. Two pages of the same site can rank on the top. However, it is not a concern if the intent of the two pages is different.
For example, if you are having three articles that are optimized for keywords too similar to each other and their intent is way too similar, it will be a bit hard for Google to figure out which article should be considered first.
The click-through rate and authority can get split among those three articles, leading to a rank dropping.
You may also notice fluctuations in ranking and the page which you didn’t want to rank on the top, ranks on the top.
To find:
Google site search is an easy way to find keyword cannibalism. Just Google --> site:yourdomain.com “keyword”. You can manually check the intent of the pages shown in the SERP. You can also find it through the Google search Console Performance report.
Keyword mapping is also a good way to find keyword overlap.
To Solve:
Combine the content and 301 redirect:
If two articles both attract the same audience and have the same intent, you can combine them. Rewrite the two posts into one well-written post and use redirects.
Otherwise, you can analyze which page is more relevant to the keyword and which page gets fewer impressions and clicks.
A 301 re-direct can be used to redirect the user to the better-performing page. This will help your rankings and solve your keyword cannibalization problem.
(Use redirects only when it is absolutely necessary)I have just shared a simple and basic overview for keyword cannibalization.
What is keyword cannibalization?
You’d be having many blogs and articles on your site. When you optimize your articles for too similar terms, keyword cannibalization occurs. Your articles will rank for the same search query. It means your articles will compete with each other and it reduces their chances of ranking. Two pages of the same site can rank on the top. However, it is not a concern if the intent of the two pages is different.
For example, if you are having three articles that are optimized for keywords too similar to each other and their intent is way too similar, it will be a bit hard for Google to figure out which article should be considered first.
The click-through rate and authority can get split among those three articles, leading to a rank dropping.
You may also notice fluctuations in ranking and the page which you didn’t want to rank on the top, ranks on the top.
To find:
Google site search is an easy way to find keyword cannibalism. Just Google --> site:yourdomain.com “keyword”. You can manually check the intent of the pages shown in the SERP. You can also find it through the Google search Console Performance report.
Keyword mapping is also a good way to find keyword overlap.
To Solve:
Combine the content and 301 redirect:
If two articles both attract the same audience and have the same intent, you can combine them. Rewrite the two posts into one well-written post and use redirects.
Otherwise, you can analyze which page is more relevant to the keyword and which page gets fewer impressions and clicks.
A 301 re-direct can be used to redirect the user to the better-performing page. This will help your rankings and solve your keyword cannibalization problem.
Canonical tags:
If you want to keep both the pages that have similar content looking like duplicates, but let Google know which one to rank, use rel=”canonical”.
If there are two similar pages PAGE1 and PAGE2 and you want Google to consider PAGE1, then a canonical tag can be used in the page source code to tell search engines that PAGE1 is the preferred page.
If your site gets bigger, the chances of facing keyword cannibalism also increase. Once in a while, it is better to check the keywords you want to rank for the most. Also focus on internal linking.
Hope you find this helpful.
Thanks for your time. Have a good day ahead!
