What Is Keyword Cannibalization and How Do You Avoid It?

Keyword cannibalization can be defined as a process in which there are multiple pages on your website and each of those pages is optimized with the same SEO keyword or search query on a search engine. It is also called a ‘cluster keyword’ and it can actually harm your ranking on search engines. With keyword cannibalization, you would be having similar keyboards on a few pages of your website. For example, you published an article about ‘weight loss ingredients beginner’s guide to weight loss’ and your target keyboard is “weight loss”. If you keep updating the article, let’s say you started in 2020, 2021, and 2022. This is going to confuse search engines and they won’t know which page to rank higher than the other as they all have the same keyword. You can also hire a Houston SEO specialist to help you with keyword strategy. If you want to know how to avoid keyword cannibalization in your next articles then you are on the right page.

 

What isn’t Keyword Cannibalization

We have given an example of what keyword cannibalization is, so we would like to give another example of what isn’t keyword cannibalization. When you publish articles that are similar, even if they have a target keyword but can still go for subtopics to the main article, that isn’t keyword cannibalization. For example, if you write about ‘weight loss’ and you go ahead to write another article about ‘weight loss ingredients’ then another article about ‘Tips to help you achieve weight loss’ or ‘Do’s and don’ts in weight loss’. All these are articles with the target keyword ‘weight loss’ but they are not keyword cannibalization. It also means that all of these articles can still link back to your main weight loss article

How To Avoid Keyword Cannibalization

  1. Canonical URL: So if it happens that you have two or more pages that have the same keyword you can use a canonical URL. This is basically you telling a search engine that you want a particular page out of the other two pages to rank higher. Before doing that, you need to know which of those pages is doing better. By hiring expert Pearland SEO specialists who can create reports to track down your page progress. This will inform your decision on which page you want to boost on search engines.

 

  1. Updating your articles: Instead of having three articles that talk about the same thing, have the same keyword and probably be separated by the date. You can update the articles, for example, if you have created a ‘weight loss guide’ in 2019 you can decide to update it in 2020 and 2021. All you have to do is keep updating it and not write fresh articles that will lead to keyword cannibalization.

 

  1. Merging or similar articles: If you have two or more articles that are similar and one is probably ranking more than the other. To avoid keyword cannibalization, you can merge all the articles into one that has the highest traffic and direct every other page to that singular article. You can check articles with the highest ranking through the Google search console.

 

  1. Deleting Irrelevant Content

This may seem quite irrational but it would benefit your website in the long run. If you notice that the content on your website is old enough or has far less traffic and low quality. These are attributes you may want to look at before deleting content. If you don’t have the time to go through your pages one by one, Pearland SEO experts can comb through them and give a proper analytical report.

 

  1. Find New Keyword Strategy

If you feel like you are at a loss in your keyword strategy, you might want to start scanning for new keywords to include on your page. You need to look for keywords that are a perfect fit. You do this by looking at your current keyword, URL, title, and meta description, you can now do keyword research to find related keywords.

 

How To Know If Keyword Is Occurring In your Website

Sometimes you may not be too sure if your page is free from keyword cannibalization. Here are a few tips that will help you know if there is keyboard cannibalization or not:

  1. Using A Keyword Map: with a keyboard map you can be able to separate the keywords that you have used on different websites. If you have matched each keyword with a particular website, you won’t have to use it again. If you want to learn more about keyword mapping check out Search Engine Journal
  2. Do A Metadata Audit: A Metadata will help you review your page: that is the title, meta description, or keywords that you have used. This will help you take some records of keyboards not in use in the future.
  3. You can also create a spreadsheet and map out the list of your content

 

Conclusion

Keyword cannibalization exists now more than ever as business owners want to rank for SEO by all means. They fail to notice how they are filling up their pages with one type of keyword. To get a better keyword strategy you can talk to staff at our Houston SEO company.

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