Some people believe that if you have multiple pages about the same things ranked at the top, you’re doing your brand or website a favor. But, this is precisely one of the worst SEO Mistakes you can make for your website. If you don’t fix Keyword Cannibalization, it can eat away at your site’s progress.
Keyword Cannibalization and Why It’s Harmful to Your SEO
The horrors of SEO Keyword Cannibalization come from the term itself, ‘keyword’ and ‘cannibalization.’ In Keyword Cannibalization, numerous website pages compete for similar or related keywords.
As a result, your site’s organic performance suffers. In addition, it forces your content to go against each other for ranking in Google. But, of course, Google is responsible for 92.01% of search traffic as of February 2022. So, Google is one of the best avenues to get your content to an interested audience.
So Google will have a hard time distinguishing which articles to rank higher for a particular query. This may result in both or all the pages sharing these keywords ranking lower. Or, it can cause one that you don’t mean to highlight or prioritize to go higher.
As a result, your audience may be led to the wrong page. This leads to Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) fluctuating.
In the end, Keyword Cannibalization can cause you to lose out on a loyal audience and customer sales.
How to Avoid Keyword Cannibalization
So if Keyword Cannibalization goes unchecked, “each page has a lower CTR, diminished authority, and lower conversion rates.” But before you fix Keyword Cannibalization, there are two things that you can do to avoid it:
Manage Your Content Well
By tracking and auditing the content you put out, you can monitor the topics and keywords you’ve used for each post. (Consider using some SEO Audit Tools!) As a result, you’ll have an easier time avoiding content duplication.
This practice lets you internalize links that lead to similar or related posts. So, instead of releasing content about it, you can easily link posts to others you have released before.
So, you can set up a decent and organized linking structure on your website. Thus, it helps Google identify which ones you want the most to pop out in search engines.
Thus, consider which articles are the most significant to you. Then, connect the less critical articles to your most important piece. This method should help you avoid and alleviate some of your Keyword Cannibalization issues.
Identify Keyword Cannibalization Early On in Your Website
Detecting possible Keyword Cannibalization on your website is relatively easy. You can use the search engines by typing in “Domain name + keyword” to provide you with the information you are looking for. (Also, you may want to consider keyword bidding with the help of a Website Quality Score.)
You can also create a keyword matrix using spreadsheets. So in it, you list all your sites’ essential URLs and the keywords they are associated with. Once you’re done, you can then look at the data and see if you have any duplicate entries. Of course, SEO Tools can assist you in doing this.
If you see that you may have SEO Cannibalization on your hands, you may consider fixing it by following three simple steps.
How to Fix Cannibalization
Keyword Cannibalization is a drag on your website’s performance on search results pages. So there are three steps to getting your site back on track. The first two steps that you are going to take will let you identify your next possible moves:
Analyze Your Content and Its Performance, Then Decide Which Ones to Keep
If you have two or three articles vying for the top rank of the same SERP, you must first analyze their content and performance. By doing this, you can identify which articles or posts do best in search.
In addition, you can find which parts of the posts say the same things and which don’t. Then, you can determine which of the two you should keep. HubSpot discovered that updating old posts boosted their traffic by 106%.
Afterward, you can then:
Merge, Erase, and Redirect
One excellent way to weed out Keyword Cannibalization is by combining or merging two articles that tell the same story. This can significantly help your rankings and solve your Keyword Cannibalization problem! This method is also the same in terms of pages. For example, you have one article that recommends good travel places. Also, you have another that talks about the places you’ve gone to before. Then, you may want to consider taking all that content and merging it into a single page.
Doing this will also let you erase or delete the other. This is necessary to remove content that is no longer relevant to your page from your site. Of course, by the end, you can have more balanced and harmonized content.
Removing duplicate posts, articles, or pages will also assist you in maintaining good page quality in terms of post or article quality. However, putting quantity over quality will inevitably do more harm than good.
You can also opt to remove keywords if you want to keep specific content. Backlinko found that about 92% of all searches involve Long-Tail Keywords.
Lastly, you can redirect them by altering your linking. Having a decent, organized linking structure will help you manage your content and page. So, this helps Google rank your content better in search results, etc.
More Measures You Can Take:
If all of this doesn’t work out, there’s one drastic measure to fix Keyword Cannibalization: restructure your website. This may take up a considerable amount of your time. But in exchange, it will make your website more organized. Also, it’ll help your page maintain good quality and diverse content.
If your website now has a wide variety of content-rich pages, and the only problem is a poorly designed keyword strategy, all you have to do is search for new keywords.
Preserve Your Website’s SERP Rankings!
SEO Companies will tell you that Keyword Cannibalization is the worst thing that can happen to your website. But, unfortunately, any site can fall victim to it.
Keyword Cannibalization has become more prevalent, especially in this day and age. But you can fix Keyword Cannibalization with time, proper management and organization. Not like magic, perhaps – not instantly, but with patience, hard work and time.
