By Jayne Schultheis — Do you have product pages, blog posts, or landing pages that fail to drive much web traffic despite you jumping through all the right SEO hoops? The cause may be something that many site owners have never considered: keyword cannibalization.

‍

Keyword cannibalization is a common, yet often overlooked issue that can do a lot of damage to your website’s search engine optimization (SEO) performance. In this article, we’ll delve into what it is and why it’s detrimental to a site’s search engine rankings. Most importantly, we’ll cover how to resolve it effectively.

What is keyword cannibalization?

Keyword cannibalization is the negative impact of multiple pages on a website targeting the same keyword or phrase. When this occurs, it’s difficult for search engines to determine which of the multiple URLs to rank for that keyword. As a result, the pages may end up competing against each other in search results.

What are the negative effects of keyword cannibalization?

Keyword cannibalization, and the closely related content cannibalization, can significantly impact how Google crawlers interact with your website and subsequently affect your rankings. When multiple pages target the same keyword, it:

‍

• Dilutes the website's authority on that topic, making it harder for any single page to emerge as a definitive source of information.
• Leads to inefficient use of your crawl budget, as bots spend more time navigating through similar content rather than focusing on more unique, high-value pages.
• Damages the user experience.
• Depresses conversion rates.
• Confuses potential customers who are redirected between competing pages.
• Reduces the likelihood of any single page achieving its intended goal.

‍

As a result, the visibility of your primary or preferred page diminishes, leading to a lower overall search ranking. If you notice that rankings of your URLs is changing rapidly, that's a potential clue that keyword cannibalization is taking place.

‍

Your backlinks will also become diluted when they're spread across multiple pages instead of a single page. In other words, five backlinks to one article is better than two backlinks for one article and three for its keyword cannibalization companion. Considering how difficult link-building is, this is a tragedy.

‍

With all of these factors combined, your overall domain authority may become weakened. This often leads to a lower overall ranking on SERPs.

How do you avoid keyword cannibalization?

To avoid keyword cannibalization, you have to start at the very beginning of the pipeline: conduct thorough keyword research before diving into content production. This will include determining a unique focus keyword or phrase for each web page. Long-tail keywords are often best, as they provide more unique content and a better chance of ranking.

‍

Beyond the diversification of the content itself, it's also crucial to ensure that your meta-tags and URLs are distinct and do not overlap in addressing the same user questions.

How do you fix keyword cannibalization?

To address keyword cannibalization, several strategies can be employed, tailored to the performance of the competing content.

‍

One effective approach is to merge the overlapping content by implementing redirects or canonical tags. In this method, you should evaluate which page has:

‍

• Better web traffic
• Higher SERP rankings
• Lower bounce rates
• Stronger social media signals
• Better keyword density
• Better synchronization with user search intent

‍

Then, consolidate the competing pages into the one with superior metrics.

‍

Alternatively, if certain pages are underperforming or offer minimal value to your business or blog, consider deleting them or applying a noindex tag to prevent them from being indexed by search engines. This helps eliminate unnecessary competition and directs the search engine's focus to your most valuable content, enhancing overall site authority and improving search rankings.

‍

Here's a five-step process for solving this problem.

1. Identify keyword cannibalization

To identify where two or more pages are targeting the same (or closely related) keywords, crawl your website using SEO tools like Ahrefs, Google Search Console, or SemRush. You can also use a Google Search Operator. Simply type “site:(insert your website) (insert keyword)” into a Google search if you suspect you have two pages targeting the same keyword. If you have content that's published on different URLs, this is more accurately described as "duplicate content," which will inevitably lead to cannibalization. If you want a comprehensive content audit, contact an expert at Rellify. We recognize the harm that keyword cannibalization and duplicate content can cause. That's wy the Rellify platform also alerts authors if they try to create an article with a focus keyword that’s already been used.

2. Evaluate the pages and choose a primary

Review all the pages competing for the same keyword. What's the purpose and quality of each page? Identify which one is the most relevant and valuable for that target keyword. It should be the page with the highest relevance, value, user search intent match, and potential to rank well in search engine results. This is your primary page.

3. Decide on the most effective resolution

What do you do with the non-primary page or pages? If it has valuable content that can complement the primary page, consider merging the content and redirecting the old URL(s) to the primary page by implementing redirects or canonical tags. Alternatively, if certain pages are underperforming or offer minimal value to your business or blog, consider deleting them or applying a noindex tag to prevent them from being indexed by search engines. This helps eliminate unnecessary competition and directs the search engine's focus to your most valuable content.

4. Improve the primary page

Optimize the primary page for the target keyword by strengthening the title tag, meta description, headings, and content. Boost the page's authority by adding internal links from other relevant pages on your website. Use descriptive anchor text that includes the targeted keyword. A canonical tag can also help search engines understand that this is the “master page” among any similar content on your website. Since you are revisiting this page, update it with any fresh information or developments. Make sure the page provides valuable and unique information to users and follows SEO best practices.

5. Monitor performance

Use analytics tools to monitor the performance of the primary page in search engine rankings. Choose the right KPIs to track, check for improvements, and adjust your strategy as needed. Regularly review your website for instances of keyword cannibalism and address any issues that arise. Regular audits will help you maintain a healthy site structure and maximize your SEO efforts. Be sure to educate your content marketing team on keyword cannibalization, how to identify it, and how to address it.

Get help fixing keyword cannibalization

Identifying keyword cannibalization can be a tricky task, especially if you have a robust website filled with lots of content. And once you find it, fixing keyword cannibalization problems can take a lot of time and effort. That’s where Rellify comes in.

‍

The experts at Rellify can help by quickly conducting a thorough audit of your website and its content. We’ll flag instances of multiple pages targeting the same keyword. And we’ll help determine a keyword strategy that most effectively gets your content ranking higher on Google search results pages. Contact an expert at Rellify to learn how our state-of-the-art content optimization and creation services can help revamp your entire digital marketing strategy.