Published on July 3rd, 2020 | by Rio

Keyword Cannibalization – Tips To Identify And Fix It

Keywords are playing an important role in the case of online marketing. It provides a perfect base for marketing campaigns such as – search engine optimization, PPC, social media marketing, and so on. Due to it, everyone needs to be careful with the selection and usage of the keywords. It should be perfect. In this article, you will get details about a big issue related to keywords such as – keyword cannibalization.

Keyword – What Is It?

As per the digital marketing perspective, the keyword is going to be a specific term that is used by internet users for searching services, products, or answers to their queries.

Short tail
Long-tail
Customer defining
Product defining
Short term
Long term
Intent targeting
LSI
Geo-targeting

These are some major types of keywords that can help you in boosting SEO efforts and driving the best results. To choose the final keywords, you have to focus on some stats like – search volume and SEO difficulty. It can be possible with the help of some online sources such as – Google Keyword Planner, ubersuggest, and so on.

Keyword Cannibalization – An Overview

When you are going to target the same keyword on multiple pages, then it is considered as the keyword cannibalization. In these conditions, confusion stars appearing in front of the search engines. It will create a fake competition among all your pages with a similar focus phrase.

It also creates a distraction by which you are not capable of paying attention to the real competitors and their stats. Keyword cannibalization does not consider as a good thing for SEO. It is also associated with some positive factors.

Higher CTR – targeting multiple pages with similar keywords will increase the chances of getting more spots in the SERP.
Better online visibility – containing more spots in search results will help you in becoming more visible on search engines and grab the attention of users quickly.
Boost your traffic – it will help you in increasing traffic on the website by having more pages in search results at higher positions.

Due to these positive effects, some people are considering it as a big part of their search engine optimization strategy. Along with it, you cannot ignore its negative impacts or damage may cause. Upcoming paragraphs will help you in getting aware of such factors easily.

How To Identify Keyword Cannibalization – Negative Impact

Running an SEO campaign with keyword cannibalization can lead to lots of bad effects on the website and SEO results as well. It leads to a big question among people, what the perfect way of identifying the keyword cannibalization is. In case your website is affected by keyword cannibalization, then you can see some unfavorable changes on the website.

#1 Anchor Text & Link Diluting

While facing keyword cannibalization issue, the SEO efforts that you are putting in the creation of backlinks may start benefiting to the unwanted pages. Consequently, these low authority or improper pages start diluting the benefits and misguide the search engine bots. The availability of the internal links on these pages may become a reason for the confusion among visitors as well.

#2 Lower Page Authority

Everyone wants to get their high authority and well-developed pages on the top in search results. Due to the same keywords and dilution effects, your low authority pages may start getting ranked instead of the wanted one. These types of pages are not useful in gaining the trust of users or impress them to visit your website. Here, you need to compete with your unwanted pages to get ranked the desirable ones.

#3 Devalue Relevant Pages

A keyword is one of the most important sources when it comes to describe your web page perfectly, mainly in front of the search engine bots. Targeting similar keywords on all pages may create confusion while the search engine tries to inspect the pages and focusing on ranking metrics. Here, bots will rank the page that appears as the most suitable one. In these situations, your relevant pages may get devalued.

#4 Affect Crawl Budget

Many people don’t understand the meaning of the term crawl budget. Mainly it is a kind of limit that can set by the website owners regarding the visits of a crawler on the website in a specific time period. In case your website gets affected with keyword cannibalization related issues, then all unwanted pages are also crawled and indexed by the bots as well. As a result, crawlers start visiting your website more. It may become a problematic factor for big or eCommerce websites.

#5 Wrong Impressions

It leads to the presentation of various pages on a single keyword. It leads to wrong impressions on both search engine bots and visitors. The visitors may think your content is thin and not suitable for gathering proper & required information. According to the search engine bots, may your pages content irrelevant content that cannot be considered as appropriate to the keywords and queries of users. Both conditions are not good from the business growth and success point of view.

#6 Lower Conversions

Everyone is putting efforts into digital marketing or search engine optimization for boosting the conversion rate. Keyword cannibalization is going to affect all these efforts and restrict you from achieve the desired objective by reducing the conversion rate. All websites are creating a specific landing page by which they can get the leads converted easily. Here, your wrong pages may get ranked that are not specifically created for conversions.

These are some major negative impacts that may appear in the case of keyword cannibalization. If you are not aware of such an issue, then these types of situations will help you in identifying it.

Keyword Cannibalization Negative Impacts – What Should Be Its Solution

No one wants to waste their SEO efforts. For availing of the maximum benefits and getting the best results, everyone tries to figure out the solution by which they can eliminate keyword cannibalization and maintain perfection. Here, you will get some information related to the solutions.

#1 Website Restructuring

Restructuring your website will appear as one of the best solutions for eliminating the keyword cannibalization and making things better than before. For such a task, you have to convert your authority pages into landing pages and creating some other unique versions by targeting different keywords.

To maintain things perfectly related to the keywords and get the best results, you have to prepare a list of targeted keywords first. On the basis of such a list, you should try to create the complete website’s structure and pages.

#2 Creating New Landing Pages

In case you are pissed off due to the previous bad results and interested in changing everything, then you can pick the option of creating new pages. While creating a new landing page, you have to keep previous mistakes in mind and try to prevent it. Along with it, you should try to add completely unique and informative content on the new pages by implementing a good and well-structured interlinking strategy.

#3 Keyword Research

For increasing the website’s authority and boosting online visibility, you can work by focusing on the proper keyword research and analysis. Here, you should conduct proper research again and try to find out some more and useful keywords quickly. A good keyword strategy will help you in strengthening the SEO plans and driving the best results easily.

#4 301 Redirections

If you are interested in keeping the pages and avoiding all chances that may create issues in the future, then you can get help from 301 redirections. It is a permanent redirection code by which you are capable of moving a complete URL to another page. It will help you in preventing the loss of the existing audience and get numerous new users without any kind of issue.

Final Saying

By focusing on all these things, you will get introduced to the keyword cannibalization properly and understand its positive & negative effects and solution to eliminate it. To prevent these types of issues or running a process for elimination, you should hire the experts. The experts know how to deal with such conditions and maintain everything adequately.

Tags: cannibalization, keyword, page, rank, SEO

About the Author

Rio is a digital entrepreneur who has a vision of helping businesses by increasing their online presence in terms of Websites, Applications, and SEO.He is the Founder & CEO of Webomaze Pty Ltd, a One-Stop Digital Agency based in Melbourne.