Situation-Based Question
Imagine you run an online clothing store, and you sell a variety of jeans. You’ve created multiple blog posts, product pages, and category pages about jeans, but over time, you start noticing that certain keywords, like “best jeans for men” or “top quality jeans,” are ranking for multiple pages. At first, this seems great, but after a while, your rankings for those keywords begin to drop, and your traffic stagnates. What could be causing this drop? Could it be that your pages are competing against each other for the same keywords?
Exact Answer
Keyword cannibalization occurs when multiple pages on your website target the same keyword or closely related keywords, causing them to compete with each other in search rankings. This can negatively impact SEO by diluting the relevance and authority of each page, making it harder for any one page to rank well.
Explanation
Keyword cannibalization happens when more than one page on your website targets the same or similar keywords. Instead of boosting your rankings, these pages end up competing for the same search traffic, confusing search engines about which page to prioritize. As a result, none of the pages may rank as well as they could if the keyword focus were consolidated into a single page. Here’s how it can affect your SEO:
- Lower Rankings:
When multiple pages compete for the same keyword, none of them may achieve the high ranking you were hoping for. Instead, they might all rank lower because Google is unsure which page should take the lead. - Diluted Link Equity:
Internal and external links are important for SEO. When multiple pages target the same keyword, the link equity (value passed from backlinks) gets spread thin across all of them, reducing the strength of each page’s ability to rank. - Confusion for Search Engines:
Google’s algorithm may have difficulty determining which page is the most relevant for the search query. As a result, search engines may ignore some pages entirely or rank them lower than they would if only one page were targeting the keyword. - Wasted Crawl Budget:
Googlebot crawls your site and allocates a certain amount of resources to index your pages. If several pages are trying to rank for the same keyword, Googlebot might waste time crawling duplicate or similar content instead of discovering and indexing other valuable pages. - Poor User Experience:
When users search for a specific keyword and find multiple pages on your site covering similar content, it can lead to confusion. This redundancy can hurt user experience, and search engines may rank your pages lower as a result.
How to Avoid Keyword Cannibalization:
- Conduct a Keyword Audit:
Regularly audit your site to identify any pages competing for the same or similar keywords. Use tools like Google Search Console or an SEO platform like Ahrefs to spot overlapping keywords. - Consolidate Content:
If you discover multiple pages targeting the same keyword, combine them into a single, more comprehensive page. Ensure it answers all relevant queries and provides valuable content. - Use Canonical Tags:
If you need to keep multiple pages on the same topic, use a canonical tag on less important pages to tell search engines which page is the “master” version that should rank. - Create Unique Content for Each Page:
Ensure each page on your site has a distinct focus and targets a unique set of keywords. If pages have similar content, they will naturally compete with one another.
Example
Let’s go back to your clothing store. You have a product page for “Men’s Blue Jeans,” a blog post titled “Best Men’s Blue Jeans,” and another category page titled “Shop Men’s Blue Jeans.” All three are targeting the same keyword, “Men’s Blue Jeans.” What happens is that each of these pages competes for the same spot in search results. Google may not know which one is the most authoritative or relevant, so they all rank poorly.
Now, to fix this, you could choose to consolidate all that content into a single page. For example, combine the product details, buying guide, and related blog content into one comprehensive page on “Men’s Blue Jeans.” This page could then be optimized with all the relevant keywords, internal links, and high-quality content. By focusing all the keyword power on one page, it becomes much more likely to rank higher.