Table Of Content
What is Keyword Cannibalization?
When you unintentionally or intentionally target the same keyword for two or more than two pages or post and you end up competing with yourself in search engine results. So, Keyword Cannibalization is targeting your one keyword for multiple posts.
If you’re lucky Google sometimes shows two results from the same domain but not more than two. But it will be for Google which page to put first and it will affect your authority of the domain as well as click-through rate.
For Example, let say you have two different pages that focuses on the same keyword “football studs”.
One is Nike Football studs and another one is Adidas football studs and both are ranking for football studs keyword. Instead of making two different pages you can make one page with the title “Different Types of Football Studs”. It will cover both the topics and it will help users to get all the information on one page only. From ranking in both pages it will be quite easy to rank for one as the content will also be thick.
Disadvantages of Keyword Cannibalization
There are mainly two major disadvantages of keyword cannibalization but there more to it:
- If both pages are ranking on the same keyword but the page you want to rank above is not actually ranking above the other page you want to rank above. Then this is the problem for you it might create a big difference, people might not get the correct information on that page. So they end up clicking on other results from other domains.
- The bigger problem is if SEO is not done correctly and effectively than the ranking of both pages can go down drastically. As the total number of inbound links is divided into two and some other domains will take advantage of this and you end up in lower ranking.
- A low conversion rate is also a problem in keyword cannibalization. The conversion rate might suffer for both pages as some people might click on one and some on another. Basically you’ll be competing with yourself.
- Page Authority will be divided as the total number of links will be the same in both the pages but Google will split the authority and it will directly affect the ranks of both the pages.
- Content Quality will get affected most as your content for one page might be thin and Google will consider low-quality content. So, instead of making two pages with low-quality content create a single page with high-quality content.
Advantage of Keyword Cannibalization
The only advantage you’ll get from Keyword Cannibalization is that when you’ll be ranking on the top two results for the same keyword for a long period of time. If you’re ranking for a long period then you might need not worry about the keyword cannibalization. This raises the question:
Do we have to use keyword cannibalization or not in our articles?
The answer is No because there is a little chance that you’ll rank above on both keywords for a long period of time. If somehow you managed to do it then still it will be a challenge to stay on top. And if you don’t you lose the chance to rank on either of the pages.
How To Avoid It?
Here is how you can avoid keyword cannibalization
1) Keyword Tools
You can use professional tools like Ahrefs to determine whether you’re using keyword cannibalization or not simply go to the site explorer tool and go to the organic keywords report option and download the file and check if you are ranking for some keywords which can be made into one topic.
2) Manual Method
The manual method is to maintain an excel sheet for all your URLs and their focus keywords. Once you do that then check for the duplicates entries in your keywords and then sort them out to a new file. At last merge the page content and rank for one keyword only.