[SEO Question] Regarding Keyword Canibalization

kiks · Jul 5, 2022

According to SEMrush, keyword cannibalization is when 2 or more pages on your website are targeting the same keywords with the same intent. I assume same keywords in the URL as well?
My dilemma is the following as I do not want to ruin it for my website so any suggestions are appreciated

I have a blog post of 1800 words that is ranked #1 for "keyword A" and "Keyword B" while #8 for "Keyword C"
my blog post title/headline contains "keyword A" and "keyword C" only.
I mentioned in the article and headline the "keyword C' similar times to my competitors so not sure why it's #8.

I thought that if I make a small article of 600-700 words optimized for "keyword C" it will help with rankings but then it may cannibalize the main post (it will have the same intent), what do you think I should do on this case? Just build backlinks for the main blog post and hopefully, it will rank? I focused on quality instead of quantity so far.

I sent the majority to the main page of the website as it's a new website relatively. Sorry if it is considered silly question

tazarbm · Jul 7, 2022

keyword-rich URLs don't impact rankings too much (if at all), so no worries there. You can have, or don't have any keywords in the URL and still rank.

Now, regarding your main question: I would first build 2-3 internal links to the page with the 3 keywords, from other pages that are relevant to the intent of keyword C, with keyword C as the anchor text, and wait 1-2 weeks to see if the rankings for keyword C improve (although, if that page is crawled frequently it should only take a few days, but give it up to 2 weeks for good measure)

If after 2 weeks the exact match internal links don't push keyword C up the rankings then put it on its own page, like you said. With a bit of on page SEO keyword C should rank within 1 week of the page being indexed. If it doesn't... well, I guess it is a cannibalization issue and if that's the case you should remove keyword C from the initial page (the one ranking #1 for keywords A and B) but this might screw your rankings, at least temporarily... I don't want to be held responsible for this, so I'll leave it up to you to decide whether you edit keyword C out of that content or not

kiks · Jul 11, 2022

tazarbm said:
keyword-rich URLs don't impact rankings too much (if at all), so no worries there. You can have, or don't have any keywords in the URL and still rank.

Now, regarding your main question: I would first build 2-3 internal links to the page with the 3 keywords, from other pages that are relevant to the intent of keyword C, with keyword C as the anchor text, and wait 1-2 weeks to see if the rankings for keyword C improve (although, if that page is crawled frequently it should only take a few days, but give it up to 2 weeks for good measure)

If after 2 weeks the exact match internal links don't push keyword C up the rankings then put it on its own page, like you said. With a bit of on page SEO keyword C should rank within 1 week of the page being indexed. If it doesn't... well, I guess it is a cannibalization issue and if that's the case you should remove keyword C from the initial page (the one ranking #1 for keywords A and B) but this might screw your rankings, at least temporarily... I don't want to be held responsible for this, so I'll leave it up to you to decide whether you edit keyword C out of that content or not

Thank you for this insightful suggestion, I was planning to implement it, however I rechecked the position tracking on semrush tracking tool and its ranked for keyword "C" tool at #1 right now, it was #8 before. I didn't touched anything at all even though it says #2 in July 5, it was showing #8 before making the post. Anyway your strategy sounded very solid. ty

[SEO Question] Regarding Keyword Canibalization

kiks

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