Keyword Cannibalization: What It Is and How to Fix It

If you want your website to rank well for a particular keyword or phrase, using it on as many pages probably makes sense. Unfortunately, doing this would likely have the opposite result from what you intend due to something called “keyword cannibalization.” Learn what this is, why it’s a bad marketing strategy, and how you can fix it. 

What Is Keyword Cannibalization?

Keyword cannibalization happens when a website has multiple pages that target the same keywords or phrases and search intent. When this happens, Google will decide which content it will rank higher, which could result in better rankings for a page you didn’t intend to have priority. 

For example, imagine searching for “SEO best practices” on Google and finding several pages from the same website targeting that keyword. You’d probably be confused about which one to click on and may even pick a competitor instead.  

Why Keyword Cannibalization is Bad for SEO

If your business produces certain products or services, it’s understandable that you would want to target certain keywords in your content. However, keyword cannibalization can negatively impact your site in several ways:

1. Reduced Organic Rankings and Traffic

When your website has two or more pages targeting the same keyword with the same search intent, the search engines will have trouble identifying which page is the most relevant one to rank the highest. This can lead to constant ranking fluctuations and a reduction in traffic to your top pages. 

2. Loss of Important Internal Link Equity

Your website’s internal links give the search engines valuable information about the relationship between your pages. They are also used as a ranking factor. However, when keyword cannibalization exists, internal link equity (the value passed between internal links) gets diminished. Also, if a reader follows an internal link to a less relevant page, they might have a poor experience. 

3. Waste of Your Site’s Crawl Budget

Google learns what’s on each of your website pages by regularly “crawling” them with its search engine bot. However, the company reports that it allocates a crawl budget for each website, which limits the number of pages the bots will crawl. Keyword cannibalization can waste these limited resources and delay Google in discovering other great content on your website. 

4. Trouble Identifying Underperforming Pages

Because keyword cannibalization can spread the traffic you receive across several pages, it makes it more challenging to identify which are the better or worse-performing ones. This overlap can prevent you from uncovering opportunities for improving pages that could deliver the best results for your business. 

How You Can Identify Keyword Cannibalization

Keyword cannibalization happens when the search intent of two or more pages is the same. If you already have a website full of content, what do you look for? First, let’s consider some examples: 

• You have two pages on your website that target two different phases of the buyer’s journey. One page is a product or service page, and another is a blog post that addresses a common concern. Because the search intent of the two pages is different, you won’t have to worry about keyword cannibalization. 
• If your business focuses on several geographic areas, it could target variations of the same keyword or phrase with different locations and not have problems with keyword cannibalization. For example, you can have one page that focuses on “East Memphis truck repair” and another focusing on “West Memphis truck repair.”
• In another instance, you might have several blog posts that cover the same or similar topics. If those pages target the same keywords and focus on visitors with similar intent, you might have an issue. Google would probably see those pages as competing with one another, so it would choose the page it likes the best for higher rankings. 

Now that you have a better understanding of what keyword cannibalization is, you’re more likely to identify it. One of the easiest ways to do this is by using Google Search Console, which is a free SEO tool you can use to monitor and optimize your website. 

When you log in to your Google Search Console account, go to your Performance menu. Find your Queries and review the keywords that generated impressions and clicks for your website. You can click on any keywords you want to analyze further. 

Ways You Can Fix Keyword Cannibalization

The best way to fix keyword cannibalization is to avoid it with a sound SEO strategy. You can do this by choosing the most relevant keywords for your content and wisely distributing them across your pages. If you have an existing site that you suspect might have some issues, you can fix them using the following steps:

1. Consolidate Your Content

One of the most efficient ways to resolve keyword cannibalization issues is by merging multiple pages into one authoritative page that focuses on your target keyword. You’ll want to choose the one with the highest search engine rankings and add content if necessary. 

2. Adjust Your Search Intents

If you’d prefer not to consolidate your pages, you can make some changes to the pages with lower rankings. Your changes should revamp the content so it targets a different search intent while using the same or similar keywords. For example, you can have one blog post that is informational and another that is more transactional. 

3. Optimize Your Internal Links

Your website’s internal links map out your site’s structure for the search engines. You can make some strategic changes to signal to the search engines which pages you believe are more or less important. To do this, you’ll want to add links going to the more important page from the less important ones. 

4. Prioritize Pages Using Canonical Tags

You can use canonical tags to tell the search engines which pages you prefer to have indexed and ranked. While the search engines can still do whatever they please, it’s possible they will give weight to these SEO strategies. 

Connect With Too Darn Loud Marketing to Discuss Your SEO Strategies

Now that you understand what keyword cannibalization is, you probably want to avoid it. There are many other SEO strategies your business can use to improve its search engine rankings and get more targeted website traffic. Find out how we can help. 

Too Darn Loud Marketing offers customized digital marketing solutions to businesses of every shape and size, including specialized SEO strategies. Our experienced online marketing experts will learn about your needs, goals, and business before designing a customized plan designed to produce results. Call us today at (800) 649-1764 or contact us online to schedule a free consultation and website evaluation.