Keyword Cannibalization: What It Is and How to Avoid It

If you are a digital marketer, keyword cannibalization could be super painful for you. While you are trying to grow your website, it could affect your ranking and prevent your website from growing. However, if you follow some easy tips and tricks, you can easily avoid keyword or SEO cannibalization. To learn more, dive into the article below.

💡 Understanding Keyword Cannibalization

Keyword cannibalization means optimizing multiple pages for the same keywords on a website. Whenever you publish multiple content with the same keywords, then ultimately you are competing with your own content for that particular keyword. So, search engine crawlers find it difficult to determine which content should be ranked higher. When this happens, your SEO score may decrease for the page or post that is most relevant to your target audience.  

For example, if you have a website for selling bags and optimize all of your pages for the ‘bag’ keyword rather than using keywords like a ‘backpack’, ‘gents bag’, ‘lady’s bag’, and so on for the separate pages, you will face keyword cannibalization. When it happens, it will hurt SEO rankings. 

🔍 How To Find Cannibalized Keywords?

Before fixing cannibalization from your website, you need to figure out which keywords have been used multiple times on your website. You can find all the cannibalized keywords by using a keyword cannibalization checker tool, or you can create a keyword tracking sheet. Now, let’s have a look at how you can apply both of the methods below.

1. List Down All Of Your Pages & Posts

To find the cannibalized keywords, you can create a spreadsheet and list down all of your pages & posts with the keywords they are optimized for. Now, check out if there is any duplicate content there or any keywords used multiple times. You can easily find out if there is a similar keyword optimized for different content this way easily.

2. Use Keyword Cannibalization Checker Tool

If you have a website with a huge amount of content that is difficult to list down for you, you can use a keyword cannibalization checker tool as well. Using a keyword cannibalization checker tool like Ubersuggest, Ahref, and SEMRush can help you to find out all the cannibalized keywords at ease. 

Just enter your domain on any of these tools and explore the organic keyword. If you see any keyword that has raking fluctuation on a regular basis, then this is your cannibalized keyword. In this way, you can find all the keywords that are cannibalized within a short period of time.

⚙️ Simplest Ways To Fix Keyword Cannibalization 

Once you have found out all the cannibalized keywords, now it’s time to fix this problem and get back to the top rankings. Below we have discussed the simplest methods that you can apply to fix keyword cannibalization from your website. 

1. Search For New Keywords

Optimizing your content with new keywords could be a great idea to fix keyword cannibalization. In this way, you don’t have to eliminate your content, instead, you could use new keywords and bring more relevant traffic to your website. For example, if you have a gadget website, instead of optimizing all the pages for ‘gadget’ keywords, you can use ‘kitchen gadget’ or ‘mobile gadget’ keywords based on the content of the pages.

2. Restructure Your Website

Restructuring your website could be a simple solution to avoid cannibalization in SEO. If your website has several pages with the same keywords, you can turn the most authoritative page into landing pages and link the other pages and optimize them with related keywords. It will help you to avoid cannibalization and improve your search engine ranking.

3. Merge Your Cannibalized Contents 

If your cannibalized contents are similar to one another you can consider merging them into a single page. As a result, you can easily create an authoritative page and eliminate cannibalization from your website at the same time. Instead of deleting the whole piece, merging contents could be another good option.

4. Set Up 301 Redirects 

If your site has multiple pages that contain similar content, instead of deleting the lower-ranked page, you can set up 301 redirects. It will help you to transfer all the visitors coming through the duplicated content to the higher-ranked content. So, you don’t have to lose any traffic while fixing SEO cannibalization on your website. 

🏆 5 Proven Tips To Avoid Keyword Cannibalization

Now that you know how to find and fix keyword cannibalization from your website, isn’t it better to avoid keyword cannibalization in the first place? Here we have shared some tried-and-true methods you can follow to avoid SEO cannibalization at ease. While publishing content, keep in mind these tips and you don’t have to face ranking fluctuation issues at all.

1. Audit Your Content Regularly

Content audits can help you to avoid keyword cannibalization from your website. Once you keep track of your content, you can eliminate duplicate content before even publishing them on your website. Therefore, conducting a content audit on a regular basis could be a great idea to get rid of cannibalization. 

2. Track Your Keywords Performance

While the content audit is important, you also need to keep track of your keyword performance. In this way, you can learn which of your content is ranking highly and which of them are fluctuating. So, you can easily figure out the cannibalized keywords from your website. 

3. Create a Specific Keyword Strategy

Every website should have a specific keyword strategy to follow. Before publishing your content, you need to organize your content and use the right keywords for the right pages. Instead of creating different pages for the same keywords, you should target long-tail and relevant keywords to avoid SEO cannibalization. 

4. Think About Content First

While publishing content, you need to think about the content first and then think about the keywords. If you follow this method, you could easily produce quality content for different keywords and avoid cannibalization from your website. So, try to find keywords that will suit your content and then optimize your content.

5. Cover Everything Relevant On The Same Page

Creating pillar content for each keyword can help you to avoid keyword cannibalization. Once you are creating content, try to include all the relevant topics on the same page instead of creating a separate page. So, you don’t have to use the same keyword again and keep your website safe from keyword cannibalization.

⚡ Boost Your SEO Ranking By Avoiding Keyword Cannibalization 

Keyword cannibalization can hurt your search engine rankings, resulting in fewer visitors to your website. Thus, you should follow the tips we have provided and keep your website free from any potential penalties that Google can give you. 

Have you found this blog useful? If you do, then subscribe to our blog, for more SEO tips and tricks, tutorials, and helpful guides.