Keyword cannibalization occurs when numerous pages on a website compete for the same or related keywords, causing the site’s organic performance to suffer. Let’s take for example, that you have two pages dedicated to White Hat SEO. It’s a cannibalization issue if we could receive more organic traffic overall by getting the two separate pages combined. The existence of these two pages will be harming your organic performance in many ways.
Is keyword cannibalization bad?
Keyword cannibalization is a bad thing. But it’s important to understand that this only occurs when numerous pages are targeting the same keyword, causing a site’s organic SEO performance to suffer. That isn’t always the case, given that pages tend to rank for a variety of keywords. Let us imagine we have two pages that are both targeting similar keywords. One of them is number one, but the other, which we would love to occupy that top spot, is nowhere close. Because one page appears to be cannibalizing or eating traffic that leads to the other page, this is what the whole issue of keyword cannibalization is all about.
How to locate keyword cannibalization issues
Looking for pages that target similar keywords and satisfy the same intent is the key to detecting real cannibalization. The rationale for this is that if each page’s objective is the same, it’s improbable that it will rank for a variety of longtail keyword versions. As a result, condensing the pages usually yields more benefits than disadvantages It’s advisable for you to hire SEO experts to help you with this . The following process should help you locate keyword cannibalization in your web pages.
Method 1. Look at historic rankings
You can use Ahrefs’ Site Explorer tool to search if there is a cannibalization issue for a specific website. To do that, here is the procedure that you should follow:
- Enter your site’s domain
- Click the organic keyword report.
- Filter the specific keywords that you would like to audit
- Click the dropdown on ranking history.
- After you are done with the above procedure, you will know the exact type of the post, whether they are about similar things and whether one of them is outdated or not.
Method 2. Do a content audit
It’s easier to audit your website content and spot issues that pertain to cannibalization unless you have a very big website.
Method 3. Run a site: search
Go straight to Google and start doing a website search, and every page that is related to a certain title will become visible. Enter the site’s URL, followed by the title of concern and you will get the results that you desire.
Method 4. Run a Google search then remove host clustering
Run a site search and you will discover potential cannibalization issues. But the only concern you will have to deal with is that the results will appear as it lacks a sense of place. This makes it hard to know how to remedy the issue.
Conclusion
Keyword cannibalization may hurt your SEO, and the best way to deal with this is to ensure that you merge the pages. One page will perhaps get more traffic at the expense of the other page which also contains the same keyword. However, you can locate, and then resolve keyword cannibalization issues by following the above simple procedure.
