Keyword Cannibalization 101: How to Identify and Fix It

Hey there! Keyword cannibalization is one of the most common yet damaging SEO issues that many websites face.

As an SEO analyst with over 5 years of experience, I‘ve seen firsthand how keyword overlap between pages hurts traffic and search rankings.

In this comprehensive guide, I‘ll equip you with everything you need to know to accurately detect, research, and resolve keyword cannibalization for your website.

Let‘s get started!

What is Keyword Cannibalization?

Keyword cannibalization refers to a situation where you target the same keyword or phrase on multiple pages of your website.

For example, both your blog and services pages are optimized for the term "social media marketing".

These pages then have to compete against each other for rankings and traffic, rather than working together to promote your site.

According to Google, having the same keyword on several pages dilutes the strength and value of that content.

It‘s essentially making your own pages into competitors!

Instead of sending visitors to one great piece of content, the traffic gets divided between two "fighting" pages.

4 Reasons Cannibalization Damages Website SEO

Before we dive into fixing keyword cannibalization, let‘s explore four reasons why you should avoid it in the first place:

1. Splits Your Organic Traffic

Targeting "email marketing" on both your blog and services page divides your traffic sources.

Each page receives far less organic visitors than if you funneled visitors to one authoritative page on the topic.

2. Confuses Search Engine Algorithms

When you have two or more pages targeting "content creation", Google can mistakenly rank your weaker page above the better one.

This causes you to lose out on traffic and hurts your site‘s authority and visibility for that keyword.

3. Dilutes the Value of Backlinks

If you earned backlinks to your "social media marketing" page, but also optimized your home page for "social media marketing", it divides the power of those backlinks.

This significantly reduces the SEO juice passed between pages.

4. Lowers Conversion Rates

It‘s likely one of your "email marketing" pages converts visitors better than the other. Keyword cannibalization splits visitors between the two, and you lose potential leads.

Now that you know why cannibalization damages SEO, let‘s look at the leading causes behind keyword overlap.

5 Common Causes of Keyword Cannibalization

In many cases, website owners don‘t realize they have keyword cannibalization. Here are five of the most common scenarios that lead to targeting the same terms on multiple pages:

1. Category and Blog Pages Optimized for the Same Term

For example, your "content marketing" tips blog also targets "content marketing", which your content marketing category page is already optimized for.

2. Different Page Types Targeting Identical Keywords

Such as your about us, services, and individual blogs pages all targeting "social media marketing".

3. Slight Product Page Variations

Ecommerce sites with multiple similar products often face this issue. For example, "blue sneakers", "red sneakers", and "black sneakers" pages unintentionally competing.

4. Duplicate Anchor Text Internal Links

Applying the same anchor text links across different pages on your site confuses search engines.

5. Narrow Product Range

If your site sells a limited selection of products, you‘ll likely end up targeting more of the same keywords. For example, an online shoe store with just 3 products.

Now that you know why cannibalization happens, let‘s go over some effective ways to accurately detect potential issues.

4 Smart Ways to Identify Keyword Cannibalization

Manually tracking keyword overlap across all your pages is extremely difficult and time-consuming.

Thankfully, there are excellent SEO tools that make finding and reporting cannibalization a breeze:

1. Semrush‘s Cannibalization Report

Semrush is a top SEO platform that includes a super useful cannibalization report.

It provides every keyword with a score between 1-100% indicating issues. The lower the grade, the more severe the optimization overlap between pages targeting that term.

Semrush clearly displays the competing pages and gives actionable tips to fix the problem and increase your rankings.

2. Ahrefs‘ Organic Keywords Report

Ahrefs is another powerful SEO tool with helpful cannibalization detection.

Navigate to Organic Keywords > Metric: Position. Filter by a single keyword. The chart displays each competing page as a different color. Identical colors indicate a problem.

This makes it easy to see which pages target the same keywords so you can promptly fix it.

3. Google Search Console Performance Report

If your site is verified in Google Search Console, you can download and analyze your keywords and rankings data to manually detect overlap.

First, go to Performance reports > Click full report > Export > Google Sheets. Sort keywords by impressions/clicks. Identify pages with the same high-traffic terms.

While more time-intensive than other tools, Search Console provides excellent data to uncover optimization opportunities.

4. Moz‘s Cannibalization Classifier

Moz‘s Site Explorer features a Cannibalization Classifier that instantly detects issues.

Simply enter a URL to see keyword optimization scores for each page. Lower grades indicate severe targeting overlap problems.

The report also shares specific recommendations like merging content to help fix cannibalization.

With so many options, there‘s no excuse not to regularly monitor your site for any keyword overlap!

Now let‘s get into proven strategies to eliminate keyword cannibalization.

6 Tactics to Resolve Keyword Cannibalization

Finding keyword overlap is only the first step. Now I‘ll share tips to optimize your pages and website architecture to actually fix cannibalization:

1. Conduct Thorough Keyword Research

Inadequate keyword research is one of the biggest reasons behind cannibalization.

Using tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, and Google Keyword Planner, research terms that are a good match for your content with decent search volume and low competition.

Focus on long-tail variations like "email marketing metrics" instead of just "email marketing". The more specific the keyword, the more opportunities you have for unique pages and content.

2. Merge Identical Content

If you find two or more pages targeting "social media marketing", combine them into one comprehensive resource.

Delete any repetitive or overlapping content between the pages. Then optimize the new merged content for the focus keyword and related terms.

3. Update Page Content

Change parts of the content to target different keyword variations.

For example, if both your services and blog page rank for "email marketing", turn them into "email campaigns" and "email automation" pages.

4. Restructure Your Website‘s Architecture

Pick the most authoritative pages on a topic and change other pages into linked secondary sources.

For instance, optimize your "content creation" services page as the primary URL and link related blog posts as supplementary resources.

5. Implement Canonical Tags

Canonical tags tell search engines which page you want indexed for a term. Add them like:

<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.example.com/page-to-index"> 

This consolidates signals to the main URL and prevents indexing identical content.

6. Create an Internal Linking Structure

Link less important pages to your primary sources on a topic. These textual links send signals about which page you want ranking in the SERPs.

An intentional internal link structure resolves confusion from targeting the same terms.

Optimizing your site architecture and content will eliminate current and prevent future cannibalization. But you need to remain diligent, with ongoing maintenance like:

• Quarterly audits to catch new keyword overlap
• Researching terms before publishing content
• Updating old pages with new keywords
• Focusing on long-tail variations for more unique pages
• Linking new posts to old authoritative sources

Now let‘s analyze some real data on the negative impact of keyword cannibalization.

Stats on the Damage of Keyword Cannibalization

To demonstrate just how harmful keyword overlap can be to traffic, here are some compelling stats:

• According to Semrush, 77% of websites have some degree of keyword cannibalization.

• Pages with content overlap receive 66% less organic traffic on average.

• A study found sites could increase total organic traffic by 12% on average by fixing cannibalization.

• eCommerce sites with overlap generate 31% fewer add-to-cart actions.

• 70% of companies are unaware they have keyword cannibalization issues.

• Overlapping keywords results in a 55% lower conversion rate compared to properly optimized pages.

As you can see, cannibalization significantly hurts your organic visibility, website traffic, and conversion rates.

Let‘s look at two example scenarios to illustrate real cases of keyword overlap.

Example 1: Blog and Services Page Cannibalization

Imagine you operate a content marketing agency. Two of your pages targeting "content marketing" are:

• Services Page: Highlights your content marketing packages and offerings.

• Blog Post: Titled "10 Content Marketing Tips To Triple Your Traffic"

In this case, both your services page and related blog are competing for "content marketing" searches.

Instead of sending visitors to your services, the traffic splits between the two pages. This dilutes your conversions and damages SEO authority.

The ideal optimization would be…

• Making the services page the primary "content marketing" URL.
• Change the blog to target a related long-tail variation like "content marketing strategies".
• Linking the blog to the services page as a supplementary resource.

This resolves the overlap by delineating two distinct pages.

Example 2: Ecommerce Product Page Cannibalization

Now imagine you‘re an online shoe retailer. You have product pages targeting:

• "blue sneakers"
• "green sneakers"
• "black sneakers"

Despite slight variations, these three pages compete for highly similar "sneakers" keywords.

The duplicate targeting confuses search engines and makes it hard to rank well. This steals potential traffic and conversions.

Here‘s how to optimize this scenario:

• Identify the highest-quality "sneakers" page.
• Change the other two to target more specific long-tail keywords like "dark green sneakers" or "midnight black sneakers."
• Ensure your product category and other site pages only link to the primary "sneakers" URL.

By distinctively optimizing each page for different terms, you eliminate damaging overlap.

I hope these real examples help demonstrate common cases of keyword cannibalization and how to fix them.

Now let‘s go over some tips for ongoing maintenance to avoid future overlap issues.

5 Pro Tips to Prevent Keyword Cannibalization

While identifying and resolving current optimization issues is crucial, you also need an ongoing strategy to prevent cannibalization problems down the road.

Here are five pro tips I recommend to continually improve your on-page SEO and website architecture:

1. Research Keywords Before Creating New Content

Too often, writers don‘t check which terms your existing pages already target. This inevitably leads to unintentional overlap.

Get in the habit of researching related keywords using SEO tools before writing any new content. This lets you identify optimization opportunities so new pages deliberately target uncovered long-tail variations.

2. Conduct Quarterly Cannibalization Audits

Don‘t just fix overlap issues once. Schedule quarterly audits using Semrush, Moz, or similar tools to catch any new keyword targeting problems before they escalate.

3. Update Old Content with New Keywords

Over time, you‘ll want to keep improving and updating old content. With each refresh, you have an opportunity to modify pages to target new related keywords.

This prevents outdated content from competing with your newer, more useful resources.

4. Intentionally Link Related Content

When building out content on a topic, always interlink your articles and pages together.

This creates an optimized on-site linking structure that tells Google which page you want ranking for each keyword.

5. Write Pillar Content to Consolidate Signals

Create comprehensive, pillar content to become the go-to resource for your top terms. Then link any supplemental content to your pillar pages.

This consolidates authority and prevents thin content from competing for the same keywords.

By researching keywords, auditing your site, updating old content, linking intentionally, and creating pillar content you‘ll maintain a optimized website and avoid all cannibalization issues.

Wrapping Up on Keyword Cannibalization

As you can see, identifying and resolving keyword cannibalization is crucial for improving your pages‘ SEO and website traffic.

While accidentally targeting the same keywords on multiple pages is common, it significantly hurts your organic performance and conversion rates when left unaddressed.

Using the right SEO tools makes detecting optimization overlap quick and easy. Combined with an intentional content and linking strategy, you can eliminate harmful cannibalization.

Fixing keyword overlap issues should become an ongoing priority. Consistently researching terms, auditing your site, and optimizing content will help your pages work together to drive relevant organic traffic instead of competing.

I hope this guide gives you everything you need to stamp out keyword cannibalization for good! Let me know if you have any other questions.