Keyword cannibalization occurs when two or mare pages rank for the similar keywords. It is usually examined as a bad practice.
Many businesses and individual marketers think that creating multiple webpages with same keywords can puzzle search engines and potentially causing them to rank for an incorrect webpage.
Almost all businesses digital marketing strategies depend on keyword optimization to rank their content higher in SERPs. More keyword = Better optimization.
Anybody here who doesn’t like to optimize their keywords for multiple webpages to improve the chance of website ranking.
This optimization approach to rank multiple webpages for similar keywords can backfire because search engines will not be able to decide which webpage to show in SERPs for similar keywords.
This is puzzling for visitors as well as bad for Search Engine Optimization.
Though, in the process of generating content, a website can have multiple pieces of content that talks about related topics or niche. Creating content about similar topics is an amazing approach for getting topical authority, creating specialization, building trust and brand reputation.
In this blog, you are going to learn more about Keyword Cannibalization – Why it is harmful for websites, how to check for cannibalized keyword, and how to resolve cannibalization issue.
What is Keyword Cannibalization?
Keyword Cannibalization is an SEO problem that occurs when different webpages of a site rank for same keyword, search queries, or phrases. Similar keywords can create a scenario where website pages vie against one another for search engine rankings. This can potentially decrease the website’s effectiveness in search rankings for targeted keywords.
When crawlers visit your website, they will find number of other pages being optimized for the same keywords. But crawlers will need to determine the worthiest webpages for that one keywords among those webpages. If you want to gain some SEO strength with keyword cannibalization, you have no chance. Furthermore, you can loose on other great SEO opportunity.
What Are the Reasons Behind Keyword Cannibalization?
Keywords Cannibalization can occur when you –
- Share similar type of content gradually over time.
- Posting a new iteration of a webpage without redirecting the old page to new page.
- Creating multiple paths to access the same product / service category.
- Optimizing similar pages for same keyword.
- Not optimizing subcategory webpages.
Keyword cannibalization in Search Engine Optimization occurs not only due to using the same keyword across multiple pages.
To avoid keyword cannibalization, you can target a keyword on multiple pages but the search keyword / phrase should be different from another web page.
Is keyword cannibalization bad?
Keyword cannibalization is not a good practice for SEO. However, it is important to keep in mind that a real cannibalization problem arises only when multiple webpages target the same keyword and diminish website’s organic performance.
Considering that pages often rank for numerous keywords, that isn’t always the scenario.
For instance, suppose you have two pages aiming for the same keyword. While one ranks #1, the other page (which you want to rank) is not visible at all. It could be argued that this scenario exemplifies textbook keyword cannibalization since one page appears to be drawing traffic away from the other.
However, even if that holds for traffic related to this keyword, what if these pages each rank for hundreds of other keywords?
In that scenario, don’t worry about traffic coming from just one keyword.
The truth is, you don’t face an actual cannibalization problem in this scenario because having these two webpages probably isn’t negatively impacting our site’s overall organic performance. If you merge or delete one of them; it can lead to lose some of your keyword rankings for other keywords and experience a decrease in overall traffic.
How to Find Cannibalized Keywords?
The key to identifying genuine cannibalization problems is to search for pages that target the same keywords and serve the same or very similar intent.
In case, the intent of both web pages is identical, each page is less likely to rank in SERPs for multiple long-tail keyword variations. Therefore, consolidating the pages typically results in more to gain than to lose.
If you suspect that your website might be experiencing keyword cannibalization, there’s no need to panic. You can identify and address these cannibalization issues with ease by following a few easy steps.
Option 1 – Perform A Content Audit
Having a small website, you can easily determine the cannibalized keywords during a content audit. But if you own a large website, it is difficult to perform a content audit for all web pages manually.
Unless your website is extensive, identifying cannibalization issues should be relatively straightforward during a content audit.
Option 2 – Perform A site: Search
Go to Google and write in search bar – site:yourwebsite.com “topic”. This will display all the webpages on your website related to that topic.
Option 3. Perform a Google Search and Get Rid of Host Clustering
Performing a site: search can assist in identifying potential cannibalization concerns. However, the drawback lies in the results lacking context, which make it hard to know how to address the cannibalization issue.
Usually, you can determine answers to these questions by conducting a standard Google search and eliminating host clustering – where Google omit similar webpages for the same host in search engines.
For instance, when searching for “keyword cannibalization” on Google, only one result from Moz appears in the top 10.
However, if you add “&filter=0” to the Google search URL, it eliminates host clustering, uncovering three results from Moz within the top 10.
This is beneficial as it provides context for each URL.
In this instance, Moz’s 2024 post ranks at position #1, with the other two posts ranking at positions #2 and #3, respectively.
Now that you know, Moz could potentially achieve a higher ranking than position #6 by consolidating some of these pages and implementing redirects. It’s also clear that Google currently deems the page at position #6 as the most relevant result for this keyword. Therefore, it likely makes sense to focus primarily on that page and redirect the others to it.
Option 4. Ahrefs’ Site Explorer to Look at historic rankings
This method is most effective when you aim to assess cannibalization issues for a particular keyword. Here’s how to do it using Ahrefs’ Site Explorer:
- Enter your domain.
- Navigate to the Organic keywords report.
- Apply a filter for the keyword you wish to examine.
- Select the ranking history dropdown.
For instance, examining Moz’s historical rankings for “keyword cannibalization,” you observe three pages ranking within the last six months, none of which achieved a position higher than #8.
Now, let’s delve deeper into two of those URLs:
/blog/identify-and-tackle-keyword-cannibalisation-in-2019
/blog/how-to-solve-keyword-cannibalization
Here’s what they reveal about the pages:
- Both are blog posts.
- Both cover the same topic, addressing keyword cannibalization.
- The first one is outdated, as indicated by “2019” in the URL.
So, this is almost certainly a case of cannibalization. The pages serve the same purpose and are in competition with each other. Moz’s overall organic performance could likely benefit from consolidating them.
Option 5. Use Ahrefs’ Site Explorer to Identify and Fix Multiple Ranking URLs
When multiple URLs are ranking in Google SERPs for a keyword, it can be an indication of keyword cannibalization issue.
Here’s how to locate these keywords in Site Explorer:
- Enter your domain.
- Navigate to the Organic keywords report.
- Switch on “Multiple URLs only” toggle.
Option 6: Semrush’s Cannibalization Report
Semrush’s Position Tracking tool monitors your Google rankings to detect potential instances of keyword cannibalization. It offers crucial insights through the Cannibalization Report.
To begin, enter your domain and click on “Set up tracking.”
Specify the location where you want to track rankings, then click “Continue to Keywords.”
Next, input your target keywords. Utilize the “Import from…” button to incorporate keywords from Google Analytics. Additionally, you can import from other sources or obtain keyword suggestions from Semrush.
Select “Add keywords to campaign” and proceed by clicking “Start Tracking.”
Your project is now prepared.
Navigate to the “Cannibalization” tab to view the count of:
- Affected keywords: Keywords with multiple pages ranking in the top 100.
- Cannibal pages: URLs sharing a keyword ranking with another URL (or more).
Scroll down to the “Cannibalization” section.
We advise examining the “Keywords” breakdown.
Expand any result by using the arrow.
Option 7: Google Search Console
You can use Google Search Console (GSC) for free to analyze the keywords. In addition, it can assist you in identifying keyword cannibalization SEO issues. However, it does necessitate some manual effort.
Log in to your account, then navigate to “Search results” in the “Performance” menu.
Scroll down to view a list of search queries (or keywords) from which your site has garnered impressions and clicks.
Click on a keyword you wish to examine. This will apply a “Query:” filter.
Proceed to the “PAGES” tab to identify which URL ranks for this query.
If multiple URLs receive clicks and impressions, it could indicate keyword cannibalization.
Conduct a manual analysis of the pages to determine if they share similar search intent. Then, implement the necessary solution.
How to Fix Keyword Cannibalization? – Keyword Cannibalization Solutions
If you are sure that you have a keyword cannibalization problem on your website, you can improve the organic performance in search engines by consolidating the webpages. What you can do is redirecting you old, outdated webpage to a more relevant webpages that already exist or merging multiple webpages into a new page.
Select one preferred page (also known as the “primary” or “principal” page) for each affected keyword. Clearly indicate this preference to Google so it understands which page to prioritize for higher ranking.
The most suitable method for indicating this preference varies depending on the circumstances. Here are some commonly used solutions:
- Redirect
- Canonical Tags
- Optimize Links and Content
- Content Creation
- Noindex Tag
Redirect To Fix Cannibalized Keyword Issue
You might have multiple pages that target the same keyword phrase and fulfill the same search intent. However, you only require one of them.
For instance:
- Several blog posts addressing the same niche
- Outdated versions of landing pages
- Nearly identical FAQ pages
In this scenario, redirect can resolve the keyword cannibalization problem.
To begin with the process, determine overlapping URLs and select the preferred webpage. The page should be the URL with the strongest SEO potential to rank in search engines. Look for the following metrics to find out the webpage with more backlinks, ranking and traffic.
| Metric | What To Measure | How To Find It |
| Backlinks | The number of backlinks pointing to the page | Backlink Analysis Tool From Ahrefs or Semrush |
| Rankings | The page currently ranking highest for cannibalized keywords | Google Search Console / Semrush’s Position Tracking / Ahrefs Rank Tracker |
| Traffic | The total number of visits to the page over the past 30 days | Google Analytics / Semrush’s Organic Traffic Insights / Ahrefs Site Explorer Organic Search |
Note – You can redirect all your overlapping webpages to a completely new URL. But optimizing the old webpage is a better way to enhance the performance of an existing webpage.
Create a revised version of your selected webpage, add the required information from the cannibalized pages and strengthen your page content for targeted keyword phrases. Once you done with the content part, you can do the following things to avoid cannibalization –
- Go live with the latest version on your desired webpage on the selected URL.
- Implement 301 redirects from cannibalized URLs to the preferred URL and let the Google know that they have been moved.
- Look for internal links pointing to the redirected webpages and remove them to avoid internal redirection.
- Delete the redirected URLs from your sitemap, as suggested by Google.
Generally, Google takes a few weeks to delete the redirected URLs from its index. It can be an efficient way to fix the keyword cannibalization of the preferred webpage and improve its ranking.
Canonical Tags As Keyword Cannibalization Solution
Sometimes, you want to keep the similar pages or nearly duplicate pages. You want you users to access them via your website or some other channels. However, these similar web pages doesn’t add SEO value.
Here are some examples –
- Allocated pay-per-click (PPC) landing webpages
- Various pathways to the same product category (e.g., “/accessories/socks/” and “/footwear/socks/”)
- Pages with intricate URL parameters (e.g., “/accessories/socks?size=12&color=red”)
In such scenarios, canonicalization could be the solution for addressing keyword cannibalization problems.
Canonicalization involves utilizing a canonical tag to direct Google to the primary version of a duplicated page. This tag is appended to the HTTP header of the cannibalized page and appears as follows:
<link rel=”canonical” href=”https://www.website.com/preferred-page/” />
Canonical tag indicates Google that the page with canonical tag is the chosen webpage to rank in SERPs. This focuses your ranking impact on a single page, rather than spreading it across multiple URLs.
Optimize Links and Content To Avoid Keyword Cannibalization
Keyword cannibalization may happen when a more authoritative page (i.e., a page with stronger SEO signals) outshines a similar page.
Let’s suppose you have a “/mobile/” category page containing links and content pertaining to Vivo mobiles, as opposed to a “/mobile/vivo/” subcategory page with minimal content and no relevant links specific to vivo mobiles.
Here, Google prioritize ranking the “/mobile/” page higher for the keyword “vivo mobiles” because it struggles to identify the more pertinent result.
To fix this and send the search engine crawlers to the right page, create a link from the cannibalized page (“/mobile/”) to the preferred page (“/mobile/vivo/”), utilizing the cannibalized keyword (“vivo mobiles”) as anchor text.
Ensure to link to “/mobile/vivo/” from other pertinent pages, using descriptive anchor text. Additionally, internal linking provides a straightforward and efficient method to assist Google in understanding your site’s structure.
Further, strengthen your on-page SEO by optimizing the selected page for its targeted keyword. You can place Keyword in title tag, URL slug, H1 tag, and product listings.
Create Content to Address Keyword Cannibalization
Targeting the same keyword on multiple related webpages can be a reason of cannibalized keywords. Because there isn’t a single page that satisfactorily addresses the searcher’s intent effectively.
Suppose, you have category pages for “apple mobile phones” and “Samsung mobile phones,” and you optimize both for the keyword “mobile phones.”
To resolve this potential keyword cannibalization problem, develop a highly pertinent “mobile phones” category page, which incorporates products from both your Apple and Samsung collections. Then, optimize it using our on-page SEO checklist.
You should also “de-optimize” your Apple and Samsung pages for the “mobile phones” keyword. There are two strategies to accomplish this:
- Substitute instances of this keyword with more pertinent keywords (e.g., “Apple Mobile Phones”).
- Include a link to the new “mobile phones” page using the anchor text “mobile phones” (or a similar phrase).
Over time, this new page should address the keyword cannibalization issue and provide a superior user experience to relevant shoppers. Ultimately, both outcomes should result in website visits.
Fix Keyword Cannibalization with Noindex Tags
The noindex tag is an HTML code snippet that directs search engines to refrain from indexing a page, meaning it should not be included in search results. It appears as follows:
<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex” />
Removing cannibalized webpages from the search results can prevent them from competing with your preferred page. However, there is no transmission of ranking signals with noindex tags.
Therefore, you should resort to using the noindex tag only as a final option. This includes scenarios such as on blog tag pages characterized by thin content, lacking backlinks, and devoid of organic traffic.
Final Thoughts
To avoid keyword cannibalization, refrain from releasing pages that target the same keyword and fulfil the same search intent. Always review your site prior to generating (or optimizing) content.
If you find a page ranking for the same keyword and serving the same search intent, focus on optimizing that page instead of creating a new one. Alternatively, set up the required redirects, canonicals, or noindex tags, and release everything concurrently. This approach ensures Google never encounters confusion. The earlier you identify and address keyword cannibalization issues, the more effectively your site is likely to perform.
