[Nedd help] Big Problem with Keyword Cannibalization

So today, I looked at my 1-year-old site. I just realized that for articles on the homepage, 80% Google showed my homepage instead of my articles for the keywords I want to rank on these articles. This is because I put the keyword in the title, but that is what most people do.

I don't know why Google treats my site like that. Any idea to make Google show my article instead of my homepage?

Thank you so much.

It's hard to give a fully definitive answer before understanding the content. There are various things you can try, but here are some suggestions:
1. Check your internal links. It's possible that you are giving too much value to homepage there.
2. Make sure that the said articles provide considerably more value and in-depth content that anything on the HP for the same KW/Intent
3. Check that your backlink strategy aligns with your desired ranking strategy.
4. Create content silos for a topic to separate intents and categories more

Instead of just putting the keyword in the title, make sure your title is descriptive and accurately reflects what the article is about. This will help Google understand what your article is about and show it in search results when relevant also Make sure your meta descriptions accurately reflect the content of your articles and include the keywords you want to rank for. This will give users a better idea of what your article is about and increase the chances of them clicking through to your article.

justalazyseo said:

It's hard to give a fully definitive answer before understanding the content. There are various things you can try, but here are some suggestions:
1. Check your internal links. It's possible that you are giving too much value to homepage there.
2. Make sure that the said articles provide considerably more value and in-depth content that anything on the HP for the same KW/Intent
3. Check that your backlink strategy aligns with your desired ranking strategy.
4. Create content silos for a topic to separate intents and categories more

Click to expand...

Thank you. I checked backlinks, and most of them point to the homepage. Also, recently I deleted a lot of articles not rank and redirected them to the homepage. Maybe this is the reason. I add silo to my page.

Ding Dong said:

Instead of just putting the keyword in the title, make sure your title is descriptive and accurately reflects what the article is about. This will help Google understand what your article is about and show it in search results when relevant also Make sure your meta descriptions accurately reflect the content of your articles and include the keywords you want to rank for. This will give users a better idea of what your article is about and increase the chances of them clicking through to your article.

Click to expand...

Thank you. I will edit my articles with your advice.

I Am Batman said:

Also, recently I deleted a lot of articles not rank and redirected them to the homepage.

Click to expand...

Little bit off topic, but I generally am not a fan of deletion and then bulk redirect.

You want to approach this rather from the same lense as link building. That means asking the question: Is my source relevant to the target?

If you redirect from homepage.com/specific-article to homepage.com which is generic content, it's easy for Google to devalue that as there is no relevance. Especially if there are no valuable backlinks to the said article.

In many cases, you are better off deleting the pages and then returning status code 410 (Gone), which basically tells Google "I have deleted this page on purpose". That way they pick it up much faster as it's clear it's intentional whereas 404 can be a mistake/bug/etc. I've had good results with this technique as your internal link juice will be more focused on the remaining pages and not spread all over, but it always depends on use-case and situation of course.

@justalazyseo thank you. Youre right. I also thought thats not a good choice to redirect all delete pages to homepage. I removed the redirection.

I Am Batman said:

@justalazyseo thank you. Youre right. I also thought thats not a good choice to redirect all delete pages to homepage. I removed the redirection.

Click to expand...

Allrigthie! Keep us updated on the movements (if you so wish) to see what are the effects. Good luck!