keyword cannibalization issue

I have a page that makes (well, used to) me money. A year ago, I published a blog post that targeted a keyword similar to my money page's target keyword. I didn't bother much about it, thought it's okay.

The blog post got indexed but didn't rank well at first. Then, after 6 months it suddenly started receiving good traffic but the money page went down. It is there if you search the page by "site:link", but won't show up if you search it by any keyword.

I couldn't find the reason for almost 6 months. I did tons of changes, optimization, backlink building, bad link disavowing, etc., didn't help. Only a week ago, I accidentally saw the pattern and finally figured out it was because of keyword cannibalization. The money page tanked almost exactly the same day the blog post started thriving.

The blog post targets a similar keyword, not the exact money keyword. So even though it's currently driving good traffic, it's nothing compared to how the money page performed.

I'm talking about getting back a 5 figure income potential, so I have to be extra cautious. Do guys think I should simply take the blog post down and give Google some time to cancel out the kw cannibalization penalty, or you think it'd be wiser to redirect the blog post to the money page? If you'd redirect, would you 301 or use other redirection method?

notNewB said:

Do guys think I should simply take the blog post down and give Google some time to cancel out the kw cannibalization penalty, or you think it'd be wiser to redirect the blog post to the money page? If you'd redirect, would you 301 or use other redirection method?

Click to expand...

I'd 301

EDIT: but also, if you've made so many changes to the previous money page you're running the risk of not bringing it back if you 301. So you probably need to bring all of the changes back to before 301-ing...

We experience a lot of cannibalization issues on our sites, especially since the beginning of december. In many cases there is no logical reason whatsoever why these cannibalisations happen for us as the topics often are not even connected to each other whatsoever.

It seems like these huge updates in recent months have messed up some things in the way the algo is evaluating the topic of each page. Usually you'd fix cannibalizations by de-optimizing the false page in terms of keyword density, title tag, headings, etc. - which now doesnt do much or just isnt an option if the page isn't targeting the keyword at all already. If it is an option for you to 301 the wrong page, just do it.

But I've already seen Google then just cannibalize the exact same content with just another unrelated page. As of now there doesn't seem to be a proper fix that works everytime. Let's just hope the algo settles down at some point this year and we see less of these issues.

My advice is to find someone on the BHW forum to look at your site, agree on the price, what he should do, and what would satisfy you as well as him.

You can try the HAF section and simply wait for the right person to contact you, check out their background at BHW, activity, etc, and give yourself space to choose (because many will contact you) for at least a week. (choose wisely)

As for other advice, each of us can now write "do this or that", but it is all a gamble because none of us sees what we should see to give you good enough advice when it comes to sites with a possible 5-figure in earnings.

Just my 2 cents, I'd rather pay and have "2 brains" working and thinking on what would be the best solution.