Keyword Cannibalisation: Understanding It and Fixing It

Some people may think that putting all the keywords on all of the pages might be a good idea. But that is not so. When more than one page is relevant for a keyword, these pages start competing with each other, leading to what’s referred to as keyword cannibalisation.

What is Keyword Cannibalisation?

Keyword cannibalisation is when multiple pages are targeting the same keyword with the same intent, and Google doesn’t know which page to rank for that keyword. This leads to the pages competing against each other in the search results.

Instead of the pages on your website working together to maximise acquired traffic, they can end up stealing traffic from each other.

Why is Keyword Cannibalisation Bad?

Sometimes, cannibalisation can become a serious issue. One page might have a much better conversion rate than another page. When this page suddenly drops due to another page cannibalising it, it can then lead to a negative impact on your business.

Cannibalisation also dilutes the ability to rank effectively for targeted keywords and can lead to a poor user experience when it’s not clear what the purpose of each page is. For instance, a blog about a service may outrank an actual service page, leading to users landing on a blog when they wanted to convert.

Additionally, cannibalisation can also waste crawl budget and lead to reduced visibility and click-through-rate over time.

However, two pages ranking for one keyword isn’t always a problem. Pages tend to rank for hundreds of keywords, especially when it comes to branded terms.

Some keywords have both informational and commercial search intent, making it fine to have a service page and a blog focused on that keyword. There will be people looking for informational content as well as people looking to convert.

If the pages are distinctively different and clearly communicate their intent, they will rank for different longtail keyword variations, making it clear to search engine when to display each page in the search results.

That said, keyword cannibalisation rarely resolves by itself, making it crucial to investigate if you suspect this may be happening.

What Are the Common Causes of Keyword Cannibalisation

One of the most common causes of cannibalisation is writing new content instead of updating existing content. For example, each year you might write an article about marketing trends for that particular year, i.e “marketing trends in 2023”, “marketing trends in 2024”, etc.

But what happens is that all pages talk about marketing trends, and all have the same intent of being informational. This now leads to multiple pages targeting the keyword “marketing trends”. Moreso, the older articles might have collected more backlinks and strengthened their ranking signals in their time, making it harder for the more recent articles to rank.

The best solution here would be to just create one page about marketing trends, and then update it annually, rather than writing a new blog each year.

Likewise, if you write a blog about something and then later want to write more on that topic, it’s better to re-visit the old content instead of dedicating a whole new post to it.

Other common causes of cannibalisation include not having a clear content strategy in place. Instead of writing content strategically to move users down the funnel for keywords, some might write lots of content about the same topic. But again, this can cause cannibalisation issues, as Google may not know which page to rank for that topic.

How to Detect Keyword Cannibalisation

Pages that are most likely going to cannibalise on each other are those that have the same keywords and fulfil the same intent. If the intents are the same, then the pages are more likely to rank for more similar keyword variations compared to if the intent were different. Here are some ways to detect potential cannibalisation issues:

Content audit

If your website is relatively small, it’s easy finding cannibalisation issues with a simple content audit.

Simply export all URLs and identify their target keywords and intent. If you notice that several pages have the same primary keywords and intent, it’s then worthwhile to further investigate and consider potential solutions. Especially, if a page with a low conversion rate is acquiring more traffic.

Google Search Console

Another way of detecting potential cannibalisation is via looking Google Search Console.

In the performance report, create a query filter for a keyword where you suspect cannibalisation. Then, go to the “pages” tab at the bottom and check which pages are ranking for that keyword.

If you see two pages that might be competing, compare the performance of the pages and check if one page has seen decreased performance while the other page saw increases.

Additionally, you can also evaluate the pages that show up, and identify their purpose and intent on your website, to then decide the next action.

Google site: search

A third option is to run a site: search on Google. Head to Google and type in site:yourwebsite.com “keyword” (obviously inputting your actual website into that command and putting in the keyword you want to check).

This then shows you all the pages ranking for that keyword, which indicates potential cannibalisation issues.

How to Fix Keyword Cannibalisation

When it comes to fixing keyword cannibalisation, there isn’t a solution that solves all cases. It all depends on circumstances and why Google has chosen to rank multiple pages. But there are a few methods that can help solving it:

Merging content

An easy way to fix cannibalisation is by consolidating impacted pages, so if you have 3 pages talking about a topic, you can then turn those 3 pages into a complete guide instead whilst keeping one of the URLs.

To do this, check the performance of each page: how many clicks and impressions they get, and also how many backlinks they have. Find the URL that has the strongest performance and best ranking signals, which will be the URL to keep.

Then, gather content from the other pages and re-write the page you want to keep to include any missing content, making sure the new content feels natural.

Lastly, delete the old pages and set up 301 redirects to the new page. The redirects transfer all SEO value to the new page, which should boost its ranking potential.

Canonical tags

If you have an ecommerce website or a very large website, fixing cannibalisation can be a bit tricky.

You may have several pages with very similar content, such as product pages and product category pages, which would all rank for very similar keywords. But as these pages exist for a reason, you don’t want to delete or merge any of them.

In a case like this, it’s worth making use of canonical tags. Adding canonical tags between product pages and product category pages can help search engines understand which one the main page is for the keyword.

Simply go to your product page and create a canonical tag pointing to the main product category page, to highlight that the category page is the most important one out of the two.

That said, canonical tags are only signals to Google. Google may still continue ranking the product page above the product category page.

Internal linking

Reviewing internal links and their anchors is another way to signal to Google which page should be shown for which keyword. By optimising the links on your website, you can highlight how you want users to move throughout your website, and which URLs are more important than others.

For instance, whenever products are mentioned throughout the site, it’s worthwhile creating internal links to the product categories pages (rather than the product pages), to showcase that the category pages are more important and relevant for that keyword.

It’s also worthwhile reviewing anchor texts of internal links, checking if they include the keywords you want to target. And if not, optimise the anchors to include them.

How to Prevent Keyword Cannibalisation

Preventing keyword cannibalisation is always better than trying to fix it down the line. The best way to do that is to effectively plan your content ahead of time.

Create a comprehensive keyword strategy and map out which pages should target which keywords when you create your content strategy. That way, you’ll be less likely to publish similar content that can lead to cannibalisation.

It also helps to map out topics ahead of time and create keyword clusters for each topic. Doing that can help you plan out your content and gives you an overview of which keywords you plan on targeting for each topic.

Lastly, Google always changes its algorithms and the way it prioritises pages. Therefore, to stay ahead of the curve, it’s worthwhile conducting regular SEO audits and check the performance of your pages.

Are you in need of effective SEO solutions for your business? Check out our SEO services .