It’s important to include the most relevant keywords across several pages on your website. But when it comes to SEO, there’s a concept called keyword cannibalization that many people don’t know about. This can actually reduce your opportunity to rank on Google or Bing.
When your site is growing, you don’t want your content to compete against itself. So in this article, let’s explore the answer to “what is keyword cannibalization?”
We’ll also cover how it can negatively affect your keyword research, and how to avoid it. That way you can continue to grow your company online without wasted efforts.
What is Keyword Cannibalization in SEO?
If you have several blog posts or articles on your site that would each compete for the same search query on Google, then you have keyword cannibalization happening. This happens because the topic or keywords you use are too similar.
In other words, if you have two pages that are almost identical, they’re going to cannibalize each other’s search rankings on Google. Understand that Google only wants to show one and maybe two results from the exact same domain name for the same query.
Example Of Keyword Cannibalization
A great way to answer “what is keyword cannibalisation” is to show examples. An example of creating two posts for a similar key phrase is pretty straightforward.
For instance, imagine creating a post called “The best hair salon in Atlanta” and one called “Atlanta: the best hair salons.” If these are your primary keywords, Google will have a difficulty telling which one is more relevant.
This is especially true if the content is very similar in nature. You might think that having several posts with the same keyword would improve your chances of ranking, keep in mind that Google will only show maybe one or two. Therefore ultimately you’d be shooting yourself in the foot.
The Effect Of Keyword Cannibalization On SEO
There’s already plenty of competition for the keywords you want to rank for in Google. The last thing you want to do is compete with yourself and that’s exactly what happens when you dilute each post with keyword cannibalization.
If you have more questions on how this works and why it’s important to avoid it, you can reach out to SEO Guru Atlanta today.
Resolving Keyword Cannibalization
In order to resolve keyword cannibalization, there are several things you should do.
Audit your content
Take a look at your content and see if you see any similar keywords across multiple blog posts.
Analyze content performance
At the end of the day, the numbers don’t lie. If you notice two blog posts aren’t performing as well as they should, it could have to do with keyword cannibalization.
Determine which one to keep
Ultimately, the piece of content that performs better should take priority. So if you have two pieces of content that are competing, choose the best one and remove the other.
Merge, delete, redirect, or combine
If two articles are attracting the same searchers, then you could merge them into one. That way, they’re not cannibalizing each other. Another option is to redirect one of the posts to the primary post.
That way, if somebody lands on the initial article, it still won’t cannibalize the better performing piece of content.
Work on internal linking
By linking to several other posts on your site from your other posts, you’ll help provide higher rankings for each one.
However, you should link from the less important articles to the more important articles. After all, you’re trying to drive the most traffic possible to the piece of content that’s going to bring you the best search engine optimization.
What Is Cannibalization In SEO? Final Words
As your site grows, keyword cannibalization is something to watch out for. While you should be creating excellent content around a variety of key terms, you want to make sure that each page is unique in its own right.
That will ultimately help you bring in more customers, more traffic, and more sales. Reach out to SEO Guru Atlanta today. If you need an SEO company in Atlanta that knows how to avoid keyword cannibalization while enhancing your SEO.
