Do you have many pages ranking for the same keyword on your website? That may appear to be a good thing. After all, the more pages you have in search results, the more search users will see them, right?
Regrettably, this isn't always the case. Using the same term over numerous pages might have the opposite effect. You might end up doing more harm than good to your SEO for that term.
The explanation is simple: when multiple pages of your site rank for the same keyword, your pages are forced to compete with one another. As a result, each page has a lower CTR, less authority, and poorer conversion rates than a single unified page. This is referred to as keyword cannibalization in SEO.
What is Keyword Cannibalization?
Keyword cannibalization is named after the fact that you are "cannibalizing" your own results by dividing CTR, links, content, and (often) conversions across two sites that should be one.
When you do this, you are not demonstrating the breadth or depth of your expertise to Google. You're also not increasing your site's authority for that inquiry.
Keyword Cannibalization Can Have Negative Effects on Your SEO
Keywords cannibalization may be catastrophic for your SEO. Many people who are affected by keyword cannibalization aren't even aware of the problem. They may even be pleased when one page ranks fifth and sixth for their chosen term, not recognizing that one authoritative page would most likely rank higher and convert better.
The practical implications are obvious. However, lost site traffic, inquiries that lead to the incorrect page, shifting SERP ranks, and eventually missed sales may occur and are more difficult to discover. Why?
You're Undermining Your Page's Authority
Instead of having a single highly authoritative page, you're spreading your CTR across several modestly relevant pages. You've effectively converted your pages into rivals, and you're now competing for page views and SERP ranks.
Consider the situation from the perspective of a reader browsing for a new book on Amazon. Would you like a single, in-depth book on a subject that showcased your expertise? Or would you rather have two or fewer full books about a topic, each of which leaves you wanting more information?
Google may reduce the importance of the more relevant page
Keywords are one of the primary ways we assist Google in understanding what our pages are about. If all of your keywords are the same, Google attempts to determine which page is the greatest fit – and if your content is too similar, it may be incorrect.
Take, for example, two pages that rank for the same keyword. You may be missing out on high-value, converting visitors if the higher converting page ranks lower.
You're losing your crawl budget
The number of times a search engine spider crawls your website in a specific time period is your crawl budget. When many pages are dedicated to the same keyword, crawling and indexing of pages that aren't needed occurs.
Smaller sites are unlikely to notice a change or have to worry about crawl budgets, but major e-commerce sites or suppliers with a huge number of items may.
It’s an Indicator of Poor Quality
Your consumers will notice that you have many pages targeting the same keyword. This indicates that your material is probably stretched thin. It also tells Google that your content on each page could not match your keywords.
You'll see a drop in your conversion rate
One of your pages will invariably convert better than the others. You're losing perspective leads instead of guiding new visitors to that page and making it the most authoritative page possible.
How to Identify Keyword Cannibalization?
Fortunately, resolving term cannibalization is simple once you've recognized the issue. It's as simple as making a keyword matrix to spot keyword cannibalism. Simply construct a spreadsheet that has a list of all of your site's significant URLs as well as the keywords that go with them. If your website sells shoes, for example, your spreadsheet would look like this:
You're undoubtedly suffering from keyword cannibalization if you see any – especially across essential sites. It's now up to you to improve those pages! It's also worth noting that keyword cannibalism can occur if the meta information in your title tags appears to target the same term, so double-check those as well.
If you're utilizing a rank tracking tool, now is a good time to look for thin content and keywords that were accidentally put to the incorrect page. Now is a terrific time to give your website some TLC.
How Do You Get Rid of Keyword Cannibalization?
The solution to keyword cannibalization is determined by the cause of the problem. Most of the time, the problem is one of organization. However, in other circumstances, you may need to use 301 redirects or create new landing sites.
Here are five options to consider.
1. Redesign Your Website
Taking your most authoritative website and turning it into a landing page that connects to additional unique versions that fit within the scope of your chosen keywords is frequently the easiest approach.
Returning to our shoe-product example, it could make sense to make "shoes" the canonical source page and link to it from all other versions.
2. Create New Landing Pages
Alternatively, you may be missing a landing page that brings all of your product pages together in one location. Create a singular landing page to act as your authoritative source page in this situation, and link to all of your variants from there. For example, we might make a page for "hiking shoes" and another for "men's sneakers."
These should allow you to target both broad keyword phrases and long-tail keywords on your consolidated pages and variants.
3. Organize Your Information
Consider consolidating your pages into one if they aren't distinctive enough to merit having many pages targeting the same keyword. This is an opportunity to transform two underperforming pages into a more authoritative source. It might also help with concerns like thin content.
Begin by looking at your statistics to see which page has the best traffic, bounce rate, time on page, conversions, and so on. You may discover that one page obtains the majority of traffic, yet the information on the other converts more visitors.
In this situation, the objective may be to centralize the converting copy content on the most visited page. In an ideal world, you'd be able to keep your ranking and convert more of the visitors. You won't have to worry about your website being punished for content that Google finds shallow or cookie-cutter-like if you use this method.
4. Try to Find New Keywords
Finally, if your website currently has a wide variety of content-rich pages and the only problem is a poorly designed keyword strategy, perhaps all you need to do is research new keywords.
Simply ensure that your keywords adequately represent the content of your website. Will the content on each page that ranks for the desired keyword satisfy a website visitor who searched for it?
If the response is no, keyword research may be necessary. Using a spreadsheet with the following information to analyze your pages will help you find better keyword chances for related pages:
- Keyword & rank
- The Page URL
- SEO title & meta description
- Word count
- Organic traffic
- Bounce rates
- Conversions
This should assist you in identifying pages that are targeting the same keywords. You can then figure out which pages are the most important, which may be combined, and which require fresh keywords.
In most circumstances, you can locate the most relevant terms for all of the sites you wish to preserve using your keyword research tool. If you have two sites that rank highly for a long-tail keyword, investigate if you can focus on a related broad term for one of them to get additional traffic.
Reoptimize for that term and edit the information in your spreadsheet for future reference and performance tracking after you've found it.
Disclaimer: This blog post is contributed by the Mediawire SEO team
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