Have you ever experienced a situation where you make efforts but still don’t get the desired ranking in search engine result pages for your website? The reasons can be several. You may also notice that your website traffic is not increasing, and sometimes it goes down. Your target keywords may not be making any progress in search results, and your pages are not ranking well. What could be the reason? There could be several things happening. One of the most common issues could be keyword cannibalization. In this blog, we’ll discuss what keyword cannibalization is and how to fix it.
If you find a keyword cannibalization issue on your website, you can contact Nimble Technocrats. We provide SEO Services Brooklyn and ensure to use effective SEO strategies to avoid SEO issues like keyword cannibalization.
What is Keyword Cannibalization?
When content on different web pages of your website ranks for one keyword cluster and has the same search intent, then this is called keyword cannibalization. This overlap results in pages competing with each other in search results. Many people confuse this with duplicate content or content overlap, but they are not the same thing. It is a matter of intent. If your web pages are targeting the same user intent unintentionally, they could reduce each other’s chances of ranking.
What are the Reasons for Keyword Cannibalization?
Now, you know what keyword cannibalization is, it is understood that it can be unintentional. Or, it could be caused due to outdated SEO tactics like keyword stuffing and one keyword pages, duplicate content, etc., which is the result of oversight. Here are some main causes of keyword cannibalization:
- Poor content strategy
If you are publishing content without any effective SEO plan, you might be covering the same topic or targeting the same keywords.
- Lack of keyword mapping
Content strategy involves effective keyword mapping. Without keyword mapping, your web pages can unintentionally compete with each other for the same targeted keyword, confusing both your target users and search engines.
- Repetitive content
If your multiple web pages cover similar topics, especially product pages or blog posts, they may start competing for the same keyword and can lead to a keyword cannibalization issue because of overlapping intent.
- Re-optimizing web pages without redirecting to the existing version
If you are rewriting or updating content and publishing it as a fresh page without redirecting from existing pages, it can lead to two conflicting URLs.
- Incorrect internal linking
When you link several pages using identical anchor text, search engines might interpret that they all target the same keyword and lead to search engine confusion. To make accurate internal linking of pages, you must hire an expert SEO specialist. Nimble Technocrats has an expert SEO team, specializing in optimizing websites to meet user intent and search engine guidelines. Whether you’re looking for local SEO in New York City, Brooklyn, or global SEO services anywhere in the world, feel free to get in touch with us.
How to Fix Keyword Cannibalization?
After identifying keyword cannibalization on your website, you need to fix this issue.
- You can conduct a content audit on your website from keyword to the user intent. Properly check URLs, existing ranking, and targeted keywords.
- If more than one page aims for the same keyword and presents the same content, consolidate competing pages.
- Make sure to choose a specific page you want to rank for the target keyword. This will be your canonical or primary page for that subject.
- Ensure that every web page of your website has different intent and target a different search intent, whether it be navigational, transactional, informational, or commercial, depending on thorough keyword research.
- Accurate internal linking is crucial as it signals search engines about which web page holds significance. Make sure to link using specific anchor text.
- In case of nearly identical content, you need to implement a canonical tag to indicate the right version to search engines.
Conclusion
Keyword cannibalization is a common issue that many websites face. However, it can affect SEO and prevent your website from reaching the top position in search results. At Nimble Technocrats, we suggest that you should check your website for cannibalization issues. You can also reach out to us for an effective SEO strategy to avoid problems like keyword cannibalization.