What Is Keyword Cannibalization and How to Avoid It

If you optimize multiple pages on your website for similar terms, your rankings could suffer from keyword cannibalization. As your site expands, different pages may start competing for the same keywords, diluting their effectiveness.

But don’t worry, there are strategies to prevent this. In this article, we’ll walk you through how to spot keyword cannibalization, why it can hurt your SEO efforts, and the steps you can take to avoid it.

What Is Keyword Cannibalization

Keyword cannibalization essentially means you’re competing against yourself in SERP. It occurs when multiple pages on your website compete for the same keyword, undermining your own visibility. Google struggles to determine which page is most relevant and has the best conversion potential, resulting in a lack of visibility for one or all of your overlying pages.

 

If you’re an email marketing platform, you want people searching for “email marketing tool” to land on your service page. Creating a blog post focused on the same keyword might not be a good idea. If your blog becomes popular, it could cannibalize the keyword, directing potential customers to the post instead of your service page when they’re ready to buy.

 

Keyword cannibalization can negatively impact several key Google ranking factors, including:

• Internal anchor text: Cannibalizing content weakens the impact of internal anchor text because it becomes difficult to focus value on a single page when multiple pages are linked with the same keyword.
• Backlinks: Cannibalizing content can dilute the strength of backlinks, as different pages receive links that could have been consolidated, lowering the authority of each page.
• Click-through rate (CTR): When multiple pages rank for the same keyword, user clicks are split, lowering the CTR for each page and signalling to Google that none are highly relevant.

How to Identify Keyword Cannibalization

 

You want to have a few focused keywords or long-tail keywords for each page that are not repeated several times on any other page.

 

To audit your website for keyword cannibalization create a spreadsheet and list all the pages on your website. Next to each page (horizontally), add the page’s URL and keyword target to examine the targeted terms. This offers a visual reference for which pages are targeting which terms so that you can take action on similar ones. Each page will need to be manually reviewed.

 

With a proper keyword strategy in place, you can use tools like Ahrefs or Google Seach Console to see what keywords are ranking on each page. Cross-reference these with your desired keywords (or keyword targets) as you will most likely want to leave keywords with the right intent that are already performing on that page.

How to Avoid Keyword Cannibalization

Using the above keyword audit will create a map that will guide you in organizing and optimizing the important content on each page on your website. Use this as a guide when writing meta-tags, URLs, and content and when using features such as internal links for each page on your website.

 

There are a few effective ways to prevent keyword cannibalization from affecting your site:

Implement a Canonical Strategy

If you find that many pages on your site have similar keywords, you can implement a canonical strategy. Canonicals assign target keywords to a single canonical page, sending a clear signal to Google about which page is the optimal one for users searching for specific content.

A well-executed canonical strategy is one of the best defences against keyword cannibalization, as it gives you control over which pages should rank for specific searches and helps prevent issues with duplicate content.

Place Importance on Meta Titles

Placing importance on your meta title is an effective way to avoid keyword cannibalization because it clearly defines the topic of each page on your website. By crafting unique meta titles with specific keywords, you signal to search engines which page is most relevant for particular queries, reducing competition among pages.

Use Anchor Text Properly

Anchor texts tell search engines what that linked page is about and are a very beneficial way to use keywords across your website. By using keyword-rich anchor text in your internal links, you’re telling search engines what those pages are about, and potentially, what terms those pages should rank for.

Google will not understand which page to place importance on for which keyword if you have a bunch of internal pages linking to each other using the same keyword.

Improve Your Site’s Visibility with Method and Metric

Keyword cannibalization can be easily avoided with a well-structured keyword plan. Remember, the more specific a search query, the further along the user typically is in the buying process. For example, if a user searches for the price of an email marketing tool, we want to direct them to the pricing page rather than a blog post about email marketing tools that require additional navigation. By implementing a clear keyword structure, you can create an easy, one-stop shopping experience for users, which is likely to lead to higher conversion rates.

If you’re experiencing keyword cannibalization that’s affecting your SERP performance, we can help. Get in touch with Method and Metric today!