In this post I want to talk about cannibalization in SEO, this factor of organic positioning, it is essential to know it perfectly and know how to solve it and of course, know how it affects in relation to SEO.
SEO cannibalization may be an unknown term, for most, but those of us who are dedicated to SEO or SEO in general, we have to deal with this factor constantly.
As I say, some of you reading this post may be the first time you hear about keyword stuffing in SEO, others may think it is harmful, but you do not understand perfectly everything it entails or you do not know how to solve it.
In either case in this article, you will find the answers you are looking for.
In the development of this post we will see what this term we SEOs use, how it can affect your SEO, actions to identify it, different techniques you can apply to solve it and of course depending on your particular case. Let’s start!
Table of contents
What is SEO cannibalization
The cannibalization of keywords, is a very common concept in the SEO world, it corresponds to cases in which we intend to position in the SERP, that is, in the search results, several URLs of our website for the same keywords and with the same search intent.
A simpler way to explain it is to say that you are competing against yourself for certain target keywords.
Consequently, this will cause an internal competition between different pages, URLs of the same website. So you will be dividing your strength and positioning authority by these keywords, which detracts from your effectiveness and also confuses Google.
As you may have noticed, we have not only talked about equal keywords, but also “with the same search intent”, so this factor goes further than just wanting to rank for the same keyword.
By this, I mean that there is the possibility that the keywords that we are trying to position are not the same but very similar, however, the search intention when typing them in the search engine is completely the same.
This inconvenience can be a consequence of a bad organic positioning strategy , in relation to a bad planning of the content in each landing page, or simply an oversight at a certain moment.
For example, if you have an online store with a large number of products, some of them very similar, but not the same, you can fall into writing content with the same keywords, so that SEO cannibalization can affect you.
Therefore, if you want to avoid losing authority for the keywords to be positioned in each URL, it is of vital importance to delimit the keywords and the search intentions of the users for each keyword in each landings in a differentiated way.
If you think about it objectively, you will see that it does not make much sense to create two contents with the intention of positioning the same keywords, or in other words, the same search intention. When it could be about the same URL.
How SEO cannibalization of keywords affects Organic Positioning.
Once explained in detail what is keyword cannibalization, let’s understand how it would affect SEO, that is, the organic positioning of your website.
First of all, note that as with duplicate content, this is not an aspect for which Google penalizes you directly.
In this case the consequence is a reduction in the quality and authority of your pages, which will result in a decrease in the visibility of the website.
That is, the competition that is generated between your own URLs that are cannibalizing, affects the authority or strength of the website to be divided, negatively affecting the visibility in the SERP.
Lack of relevance in URLs
Having two or more URLs ranking for the same terms, and none of them standing out from the others, may be a consequence of the fact that they are covering a user’s search intent.
But none of them is satisfying all the needs, or all the search intentions associated with a particular page, so users will quickly abandon the page when they do not find what they are looking for.
Confusing the search engines, Google
As I have already mentioned, seo cannibalization means that we are positioning the same keywords in different URLs of the website, which means that search engines do not have the necessary information or do not distinguish correctly which one has the most valuable content for the user or which one is more important in the website.
Google’s algorithm, in our case, is evolving to adjust the response of content with the greatest possible veracity and relevance in relation to the user’s search, that is, it wants to show the landing that best fits what they are looking for.
In this way, if we have several contents that correspond to the same search intent, we are creating a kind of uncertainty in relation to which one to choose on the part of Google.
An alternative for which the search engine, Google, is not prepared to give an answer by itself, so that you run the risk of choosing your competitor’s pages, by attributing them greater relevance and strength, for a particular search.
Confusing the user
By positioning several pages for the same keywords and the same search intent, it may happen that several pages of your website are displayed in the search results for the same query.
Users who enter one of these pages may not satisfy their search intent in a complete way, as it is not treated from all possible points of view or the content is not aligned with the user’s search intent, i.e. it confuses the user.
SEO cannibalization affects the Link Building strategy
Let me explain, if we have several pages that talk about the same or similar, but in any case are cannibalizing content.
how do we know which one to link to through an external link respecting the affinity?
which page will be the most relevant for a given piece of information?
As a consequence a random decision can be made, so we will not be transmitting the authority with our linking strategy exactly to the corresponding URL.
Identifying SEO cannibalization on your website
The detection of cannibalization on your website, can be detected in a simple way, through an SEO audit of your website. Here I will explain the most used techniques to detect SEO cannibalization on your website
But first I want to make a small parenthesis, to show you that there are some cases in which SEO cannibalization is not negative, we see it in the following example:
- Keywords that include your brand name: In this type of cases there is nothing to worry about, that positions several URLs of your website by your brand name is positive and perfectly normal.
- You occupy the first position in the SERPs: If you are already positioning in the first position and in another page in the first positions, such as 4-7. It is very likely that you are satisfying a complementary search intent and you run the risk of losing the first position if you modify the content.
Having clarified this aspect, let’s now see how to detect SEO cannibalization on a web site
Using the internal search engine of your website
This method is very simple and is available to anyone, is to write the main target keyword or keywords related to the subject of the specific content that you suspect is being cannibalized.
For example, in the case that when entering the keyword in the search engine of your website, several articles of your blog that deal with the same topic appear, you will know that there is an error in the composition of the content in relation to the keywords that we have used.
As I said, this method is very basic and will not help you to make decisions, only to see signs of a problem of this type.
Using Google’s “Site” command
The “Site” command is one of the features of Google, we have at our disposal different commands to use on your website and this is one of them.
For example, with “Site”, you can detect your indexed pages, and if you add a search term in quotes, you can detect the content within that domain.
Eg: Site= idxengine.com “keyword”
In this way, you will see the URLs of your website that, on the one hand, have been indexed and also share the keyword that we have placed in the command, in other words, those URLs of your website that compete with each other for the same search term.
At this point, it is where your criteria comes into play to analyze in detail if these URLs have content that could be satisfying the same search intent and generating SEO cannibalization in the content.
With the Google Search Console tool
If you have your website linked to Google Search Console, among other factors, you can detect if there is cannibalization by keywords.
To achieve this you have to enter this tool and follow the following path:
- In the “Performance” section we enter our domain
- From the list of keywords shown, click on the one you want to analyze to detect cannibalization.
- At this point we activate the “pages” option, in this way we will visualize for which URL this keyword is classified.
- If we see that the same keyword is being positioned for two different URLs, we will be facing a case of SEO cannibalization.
Following this method you can check if for the same keyword, several URLs are appearing in the search results, and consequently SEO cannibalization.
Here are some actions you can take to end SEO cannibalization of content on your website.
Techniques to solve SEO Cannibalization
Of course, depending on the problem, the size of your website and the amount of content, you will have to use one method or another of those that I propose below.
301 Redirect
Once we have identified that two different URLs are dealing with very similar or similar topics, and therefore generating SEO cannibalization.
We have the option to combine this content in the URLs that has better SEO characteristics, i.e., more keywords positioned, higher visibility and relevance or better average position and direct the other URL to this one through a 301 redirect of a permanent nature.
With this action, we redirect both the user and Google, so that we concentrate all the authority of the two URLs in one, the one that most interests us for SEO, getting to take advantage of the backlinks of the URL discarded. And of course, avoiding the generation of duplicate content.
Canonical tag
With the canonical tag, we are telling Google which page is the most important and relevant and the one it has to show in the search results.
Thus, the solution is to include the canonical tag in the URLs that we have discarded and make it point to the URLs that we have set as a priority, so that Google will take into account this URL.
This solution is not recommended in all cases, since its main disadvantage is that we do not transfer the authority from one URL to another, so we are losing the authority that is accumulated in the URL that we discarded.
In addition, Google interprets the canonical tag as an indication or suggestion, which does not ensure that it deindexes the results of the old URL.
In other cases, it is advisable, such as in the case of scarce content, or duplicate content of product sheets or because of pagination.
301 redirect plus Noindex tag
This action is highly recommended in cases where, on the one hand, we want to avoid canonicalization and also that the URL we want to discard if it meets an objective in relation to the user experience.
It consists of implementing a 301 redirect from the discarded URL to the URL that best fits the exact keywords we want to position and then we will take all the content and structure of the discarded page and create a new page with the tag “noindex”.
With this we get to position the page that is more convenient for organic positioning, but also for the user we do not interrupt their navigation, offering the page with the “noindex” tag, so that Google will not index it.
Modification of the content and internal linking work
This option is very interesting when we have two pages with similar content that can provide value to the user separately, but Google is unable to distinguish them correctly, since the content is very similar.
First of all it will be necessary to analyze for which keywords are positioning or should be positioning each of these pages.
Once we have a list of specific keywords for each of these landings, we must make the necessary modifications to the content so that each one ranks for the specific and exact keywords that satisfy the correct search intent.
Once we have modified the content, we will start working on the internal linking, we will work on including internal links with the anchor text of the exact keyword that was cannibalizing. In this way you will indicate to Google the differentiated theme of each of the landings.
Conclusion
SEO cannibalization is a fundamental aspect for the correct organic positioning. One of the pillars of SEO is the content, because after all we are positioning keywords. And cannibalization affects very negatively in this regard.
Therefore, correcting this factor will considerably improve the organic positioning of a website.
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