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SEO: How to Fix Keyword Cannibalization?

Find out what keyword cannibalization is, how it can affect rankings, and what you need to do to fix it.

As you should know, doing SEO involves many things. The factors that affect positioning are multiple and that is why this work must be done with some regularity to make timely decisions.

Cannibalization is a problem for some specialists and it is a non-existent difficulty for others, but the truth is that it is not a serious thing as long as it did not affect the main objective of your website: conversions.

So let's see what this term actually is and why it can negatively impact your website strategy.

What is Keyword Cannibalization?

It is about obtaining positioning of several pages of your website for the same keyword. That is, your website qualifies multiple times for the same search intention.

But, you may be wondering ... What is the real problem in all this?

Well, the problem lies in the strategy. Although, the fact that several pages of your website appear in the first positions looks like a real advantage, and it can be, if the intention of each of them is the same, your site competes with itself.

Suppose you sell glasses or sunglasses and you have several pages that serve the search intention "Buy Sunglasses for Women." Perhaps on the page with the highest rating, models that are no longer in your store appear, while the new page appears a few positions lower in the SERPs.

When the user enters the best positioned page, they can see that the content is out of date and leave immediately, which you do not want to happen. The goal is to sustain the user for a long time, consuming information or buying.

This rebound will affect the way the algorithm perceives your site, because it will not know which of the two contents to give more force. So it is very possible that it harms the one that you really want to show to your target audience or both.

It will also affect the impression that the user has, since some will decide to jump to another link after deducing that in the following contents of your site they will not find what they are looking for.

The bottom line is that much of the effort and money spent attracting and converting prospects will go to waste. But, let's see more!

How Does Keyword Cannibalization Affect Ranking?

There are other effects that you can observe on your site as a consequence of keyword cannibalization.

Your content fluctuates a lot in the SERPs

It is possible that you have relevant information in both content and that you achieve a good level of authority for both. And what about this? The algorithm does not know what to do and will be trying to guess which one may be more relevant to the user in each search.

Your content does not scale in positioning

This is another effect of cannibalization, because after concentrating on improving your content and having referential quality that points to your site due to an excellent backlink strategy, you are still in the same place.

You get to rank for the wrong keyword

This positioning can earn you some visits, but they will not be of quality because finally the content does not respond to the real search intention. Again the strategy will be affected.

Ideally, allow the algorithm to focus all your attention on a single, well-strengthened page that scales faster to bring in more quality and traffic.

How to Detect Cannibalization?

You can identify where cannibalization occurs with tools like Ahrefs and Semrush. But, it is also possible to see it through Google Search Console itself.

For this you just have to go to the Performance option in the left sidebar and in the search text box insert the address of the page of your website that you want to evaluate.

If more than one option appears in the answer and they all have impressions, they are cannibalizing your content. You must make decisions.

How to Solve Cannibalization?

The solutions are simple, although they can take time for search engine recognition.

301 redirect

If you have cannibalization and it happens that one of the two pages no longer has the information you want to present to the user, the simplest thing to do is a redirect from the outdated page to the one presenting the new content.

Before doing so, check if you have information on the outdated page that is usable for the user and that is not found on the new one. If so, incorporate it into the new one and proceed with the redirection.

In this way, all traffic and force is concentrated on the new one. This will make it easier for you to climb positions in the SERPs and offer quality information for the user.

Configure Canonical URLs

These URLs tell the algorithm which pages have the main content. In this way, you do not cancel the information for the user, but if you give signals to the algorithm of which of them it should give greater strength.

For this, you only have to incorporate the following tag in the header or HEAD of the page that has the secondary content:

Remove the indexing of the url you don't want to show

This is another step you can take to completely exclude a page from the SERPs. Now, what you do need to evaluate is whether this page is having a level of traffic, because if so, it is best to go to the redirect so as not to lose it.

When the page is outdated or less relevant, it stops having the positioning, then it proceeds to eliminate its indexing. To do this, you just have to include the following tag in the metadata section of the page you want to de-index:

In this way you will get the robot to analyze the page, but not include it in the results, therefore, there will be no competition.

Conclution

Cannibalization is a problem that can affect your site and your strategy to win visitors and conversions. It is about having two or more pages of your site competing for the acquisition of traffic under the same keyword.

The algorithm can show the content you do not want, constantly vary the positioning of your pages, stall them, even if you try to improve all aspects or index them for wrong keywords.

To detect on which pages the cannibalization occurs, you just have to go to Google Search Console and analyze in the Performance option the link that has the content you want to verify.

To solve the cannibalization you can apply a 301 redirect from your hosting, canonize URLs or eliminate the indexing of those outdated content, in such a way that the algorithm does not take into account the pages that are affecting your strategy.

Well, so far this article, we hope it is of total use for you in such a way that you obtain a better positioning in search engines.

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