SEO
What is Keyword Cannibalization?
Keyword cannibalization is a marketing term for an SEO problem where two or more webpages content within a single website are optimized for similar keywords or keyphrases and competing with each other on the ranking for the same search queries at the search engine results pages (SERP).
For example, when a website sells t-shirts, and “t-shirts” is the only keyword targeted, it is essentially telling the search engines that every page is about “t-shirts” regardless of whether they are branded t-shirts, short sleeves t-shirts, v shape t-shirts etc.
Why is it Called Keyword Cannibalization?
Keyword cannibalization is so called because the “cannibalization” process where different webpages within the same website compete on the same keywords making them ‘cannibalize’ each other,
How to Fix Keyword Cannibalization?
You can fix Content Cannibalization issues using the following 5 techniques:
- Optimize each one of the competing webpages to different keywords or keyphrases.
- Merge the competing webpages in a single webpage.
- Remove or delete competing webpages, selecting a single webpage.
- Select a single webpage to be indexed for these keywords and mark a Noindex to the rest of the competing webpages.
- Use Canonical Tag to specify to the search engines, which webpage version is the main one to be indexed.
How to Find Keyword Cannibalization Issues?