SEO is an important part of digital marketing. It helps in making sure that your website is visible to potential customers looking for the services or products you provide. In order to ensure optimal search engine visibility, you need to pay close attention to keyword optimization and adapt to Google’s ever-changing algorithms.
One of the most common mistakes in SEO is keyword cannibalization, which arose as a byproduct of keyword stuffing. Because of this, many websites experience a drop in rankings and traffic, or worse, are entirely de-indexed.
In this article, we will explore in more detail what keyword cannibalization is, why it’s a problem, and how to fix it. By understanding and properly addressing the issue, you can help your website maintain its rankings and visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs).
What Is Keyword Cannibalization?
Keyword cannibalization is the process of using the same keyword phrase on multiple pages of your website. This can prevent search engines from properly understanding which page you want to rank for that particular keyword. As a result, your pages compete against one another, resulting in decreased visibility and weaker rankings for all of the pages. This particular occurrence is called “content dilution” or “keyword duplication.”
For example, if you have two blog posts that both use the keyword “how to rank higher in Google”, then the search engine will struggle to determine which page is most relevant for that query. As a result, neither of your pages may show up in the SERPs.
Why Is Keyword Cannibalization a Problem?
When multiple pages on your website target the same keyword phrase, search engines have a hard time determining which page should rank for that keyword phrase. This can result in your pages competing against each other in the SERPs, and neither one of them will be able to achieve a high ranking.
This is because Google won’t want to show two identical pages of content on the same results page. If two pages have the same keyword phrase and similar content, it will be difficult for Google to decide which page is more relevant to show in its SERPs.
Keyword cannibalization can also result in you wasting valuable SEO resources by unnecessarily optimizing multiple pages. And if your pages are competing against each other, they won’t be able to rank as highly as they could if they weren’t competing.
It’s important to note that keyword cannibalization isn’t always bad. In some cases, it’s actually beneficial to have multiple pages that target the same keyword. For instance, if you have a blog post and a product page that both use the keyword “how to rank higher in Google”, then that can be an effective strategy for increasing visibility.
However, the key is to make sure that the content on each page is unique and targeted towards a different search intent. This will allow your pages to rank for different variations of the same keyword, which can help you gain more visibility in the SERPs.
How to Fix Keyword Cannibalization Issues?
There are a few different ways to fix cannibalization issues:
Changing keywords
The most obvious solution is to change the keyword phrases for each page so that they’re distinct from one another. This will help ensure that none of your pages are competing against each other for rankings.
For example, say the keyword is “seo tips” and you have two pages with very similar content. You could change the keyword of one page to “optimizing your website for seo” or something similar, which is a more specific phrase and will make it easier for that page to rank without competing against the other page.
Consolidating content
Another option is to consolidate any similar or duplicate content into a single page. That way, only one optimized result will show in the SERPs and you won’t have to worry about competing against yourself.
In addition, consolidating content can help make it easier for search engines to understand the main topic of your site. This will help boost its ranking potential as well.
Now, if content cannot be merged then the next step is to start eliminating content. This will help reduce the number of competing pages, give more focus to the content that does remain and make it easier for the stronger pages to rank.
Noindexing pages
Noindexing pages can be an effective way of eliminating unnecessary pages and improving a site’s ranking potential. The noindex tag tells search engines to not index the page and therefore it will not show up in their SERPs. This can help reduce wasted crawl budget, as well as prevent duplicate content problems from occurring with the other pages on your site.
For example, if you have a blog post that’s very similar to another page on your site, you might want to noindex the duplicate. That way, search engines won’t waste time crawling both pages and can instead save their crawl budget for other important pages.
Redirecting pages
Another way of eliminating content is by redirecting it. Redirecting pages is when you take a page that’s no longer relevant and redirect it to another, more relevant page.
For example, if you have an old blog post that’s outdated, you could use a 301 redirect to send users who click on that URL to the updated version of the content or another related article. This is a more efficient way of removing content than simply noindexing it.
Internal linking
One of the best ways to eliminate cannibalization issues is by implementing proper internal linking. Properly linking your content together helps search engine crawlers understand the hierarchy of your website and prevents them from indexing duplicate content.
When creating internal links, it’s important to make sure that you’re only sending users to pages that are relevant, as this will help increase user engagement on your website. Additionally, using descriptive anchor text in your internal links will help users and search engines understand the context of the page they’re being sent to.
Conclusion
Cannibalization can be a major issue for websites and their SEO rankings. To prevent this from happening, you should focus on creating keyword-focused content that is unique and valuable to users. Additionally, ensure that your website has proper internal linking structure in place which will help search engine crawlers understand the hierarchy of your website and avoid indexing duplicate content.
