I’d add 2 more ways to determine keyword cannibalization might be going on:

1) Using Sistrix which has a special feature for finding keywords that rank for multiple urls: https://www.sistrix.com/tutorials/find-keywords-that-rank-for-multiple-urls/

2) We track rankings across different markets, and on cannibalization cases we find different URLs ranking in different markets.

lol

😀

I’d give it a couple weeks.

Nice article, thanks for it!

Currently, I’m experiencing keyword cannibalization between a new service page and an old blog article page that is not exactly about the keyword phrase that I want to rank the service page for.

I’ve taken measurements like changing the onsite content of the blog page, restructuring the anchors in the internal link building, changing metadata and working on external links to the new service page.

So my question is: When can I expect those changes to take in action and be visible?

Thank you in advance!

Thanks, I fixed everything else.

It might help. Focus on your title and H1 though. Internal links as well. Don’t just focus on one thing, like a URL.

-main page: site.com/toaster-reviews/
-cannibalizer: site.com/lowes-toaster-reviews/

to:

-main page: site.com/toaster-reviews/
-cannibalizer: site.com/toaster-reviews/lowes/

The cannibalizer ranks for “toaster reviews”, “toaster review”. Obviously I only want it to rank for “lowes toaster reviews”.

Thanks brother

Ideally, but since the last update, cannonical has been acting pretty weird.

This is pretty much all there is to it.

My website mainly deals with social media marketing services so most the pages contain same keywords like Instagram followers and its relevant pages. Do you got some more tips to tell so that i can regain my site rankings?
Thank You so much for such an informational article that resolved all my issues.

Hi Doug… my suggestion is to contact Agency Analytics support.

Here’s one thing I’ve discovered… the toggle of the URLs ranking for a keyword as you described… except, instead of them both being my pages… one page is mine, but the other is a Google Maps URL. That keyword is apparently ranking in Google Maps sometimes, and then one of my pages sometimes.

What do I do in this situation? Which to give preference to? How to fix? If anything at all?

Ultimately, Google decides if pages cannibalize or not. I’ve seen pages that have nothing to do with each other but have one word slightly in common start to cannibalize. You kind of just need to play and see.

As for internal linking, just don’t send anchor text to pages that include terms that you don’t want them to rank for.

What to do in case of this website – canigivemydog dot com

The site focusses on things you either can or cant feed your dog.

The site has hunderds of posts al having a title containing – can i give my dog , followed by a certain type of food. apple, banana, chocolate etc

Would there be confusion / cannibalization in google view? And how would you go about internal linking?

I suppose as many as you can create. I’ve seen sites with 20 competing pages for one term.

You’re asking for trouble.

I’d take action. #8 and #9 get no traffic. There’s nothing to lose.

<<But if you have two pages ranked #1 and #2… obviously this is a good thing.

got it this is the extreme case. But what about e.g. #8 and #9?

That is my current situation with one of my biggest and most loved money keywords.

Also do you define cannibalization as two pages ranking at the same time or alternating (just one ranking at a time)?

Yes, if two pages are on page 2, then its likely they’re holding eachother back.

But if you have two pages ranked #1 and #2… obviously this is a good thing.

But when two pages are competing for the same term on the 2nd page of the SERPs it is a problem?

I dont quite get it. If two pages are stealing power from each other isnt it always a problem no matter if on page 1 or 2?

Yeah… thats the blanket approach to keyword density. I’m looking at TF*IDF now.

I am just starting out and your guides have been great, quick question you say 500 words I should keep the individual words of my target keyword each under 15, so should I just apply double the concept for 1000 words and keep the individual words under 30? And so on for 4000 word articles? Etc, thank you In advance

You’re stuck with the URL, but just making sure you’re not also overoptimizing in SEO title, H1, content, etc.

First of all thank you so much for such an insightful document! Just had one question, maybe if I am lucky you’ll see it. What if my PMD does not have synonyms? So then how would i make sure that certain keywords are not used twice, for example:

mypizzastone.com If i try to rank for lets say, pizza recipe,

the word pizza would come back twice in the URL, and pizza does not really have synonyms, so what would I do in such a case?

Ahrefs. It’s quick and easy.

That’s usually the case. You have to figure out how to deoptimize the offending page while not hurting its own rankings. Takes finesse.

Otherwise, do what you said and combine articles and 301.

Would a solution be to move the content from the cannibalizing page to the main ranking page under a heading tag…….and then 301 the cannibalizing page to the main page?

Agreed. It’s a thorn in our sides. It’s almost like the best skill to have in SEO for 2018 is keyword cannibalization debugging.

For whatever reason even when I’ve done on-page optimization and added some internal links with said acronym, Google will still serve up our homepage rather than the page that has the acronym RIGHT THERE in the dang title tag. It’s driving me insane.

Another issue compounding this is that our site runs on a asp.net-based CMS, so it’s ridiculously time consuming to add or update internal links, which (i’ve found) are a huge factor in combating cannibalization.

It’s pretty much driving me insane and Google needs to fix it on their end, IMO. It shoudn’t take hours of additional optimization just to get your “NASA” page to show up for “NASA” rather than your homepage. Makes zero sense imo.

Yoast is fine.

That’s a new one for me.

Rowan:

Thank you for your reply, and also thank Matt for the insights. I am 100% sure that my website is suffering from keyword cannibalization issues. My website is an ecommerce site, and has only 5 main categories and for each main categories it contains more than 40 subcategories such as “red shoes”, “blue shoes”,”flat shoes”,”high heel shoes”. Before, they all ranked well, but since the beginning of 2017, they started to drop slowly and consistently, no matter how much fresh contents, pictures, links we have thrown on the pages.

I know Canonical tags are different than “noindex, nofollow” (maybe more close to “noindex,follow” though), but we have seen many times that the canonical pages are still being indexed by google, unless we make the 2 pages very similar (same title, description and text in body). In such cases, I am wondering if the page is still cannibalizing the money page. However, I think Matt provides a very good solution by de-optimizing the page in addition to putting the canonical tag. So we applied that technique in the weekend. I will report if it works.

I am seeing some promising results by putting canonical tags alone though. One keyword that has been stucking on 6th+ page for a month has just bounced back to where it was just 2 days after I put canonical tags on the sub-category pages.

Canonical Tags are not the same as NoIndex Tags, and so I wouldn’t compare them. If you’re having consistent drops then it might be worth reaching out to a specialist or agency that can help you.

To be honest, I don’t know for sure as I haven’t tested it. With canonical, you’re still getting some effects such as topical relevance links to other pages. I think its a bit more complicated than your assumptions, but as for the effect of curing cannibalization issues, you might be onto something with noindex giving the same effect.

I wish I could give you advice on this but cannibalization is so sensitive lately. You could easily end up causing an issue. Unfortunately the only thing you can do is try and see.

You’re supposed to be only analyzing your domain as you can only cannibalize with yourself.

Say I have a website about security cameras and the homepage consists of a long article containing a “top 10” list and a general buyers guide.

The homepage is ranking for lots of KW’s including things like “night vision security camera reviews” or “best bullet camera reviews” even though that’s not what the article is targeting.

Would you make a new post specifically targeting these keywords and link to them form the homepage?

I’ve been frightened to do this encase the homepage loses its ranking due to canabilization.

I’d love your input.

Thanks Adam

Thanks for fast response, Matt. I’ll wait next posts 🙂 Good luck.

Solid tactic.

Thank you in advance!

Write new content.

I’d try #2 first then opt for #1.

Location differences are absolutely enough to establish a new topic. You will not have any cannibalization issues if you’re pages are targeting different locations.

Hey Aaron… many people are reporting indexing difficulties right now. I suppose this is eventually going to roll back on its own. For your particular issue, the Diggity Links should index it soon anyways.

During the whole process, I send a couple of Diggity Links to start the “backlink blueprint”, however I don’t think it took effect because of the dropping of the index.

What do you suggest to get my money page to index naturally? The article has 3500 words. On-Page is good. So many other factors though.

Cheers,

Aaron

So, here’s an unusual one that normally isn’t covered by anything you read on cannibalization…

Say you have location pages focused on an offering (e.g. ‘Service’ in London). You then have specific location pages/offices within that city which all have their own GMB listings. However, very often, those office pages are cannibalizing the city pages (e.g. ‘Leeds’ city page and ‘Leeds Train Station’ office).

Options I see are:

1) Try canonicals from offices to cities and hope local pack rankings don’t drop for offices (obviously test first)
2) Deoptimise office pages and hope their local pack rankings hold

Be interesting to get your opinion. Thanks.

SEO is holistic these days. It takes link building, CRO, design, content, tech… etc.

They all have their part.

Matt,

After reading this blog. Your top 10 client issues post. The on-page guide. And a few other things. Plus with my own testing these things works…

It seems like getting really good at technical seo and in depth analysis is where it’s at.

If you can master that craft instead of being the guy who just fires links at everything you will come out on top.

Is that somewhat right?

But not to say that links don’t play a role. I’m saying master the other elements and you will win. Right?

1) Yes, indeed it does.
2) Canonical when possible.

That’s correct.

Doing the “keyword” then site: the page I want to rank for that term is at the top. obviously, I still get other pages show up as the menu on the other pages has that term.

If we’re tracking the keyword and no other URL pop-ups, then can we say that cano isn’t an issue?

Hoping you can help with:
1) Finally, have you tested by linking from the one page to the other and building more links to the one you want to actually rank as a solution? (E.g. adding a link to /reviews/acoustic-guitars/ that links to /guides/best-acoustic-guitars/) Does this work?

2) Do you prefer canonicalisation or simply removing and redirecting as a solution?

You’re absolutely right. Anchor text can help “sculpt” a page. It’s just minor in the grand scheme compared to onsite changes, hence why I didn’t list it.

Hey brother. Like I said in some above comments, I can’t make a call without looking at the site. I could make some suggestions for you right now that sound awesome, but could potentially deoptimize for keywords that I don’t know about.

Thanks.

Okye, thank you !

Thanks mate! Will give it a shot and see how it goes.

My solution for 1. would be de-optimizing the home page and 2. remove the silo structure and have all URLs hang off the domain i.e. domain/sub-category-pages

My question to you, is my solution for 2. the way to go in your opinion? The site in question has 4 pages competing for the same keyword (according to ahrefs.com)

Again, thanks for an awesome post.

Thats the (only) good thing about it.

Internal link anchors help. Directory structure, not so much.

Look at what keywords you can take out of each page that will not cause too much suffering for them. Also, you can help scupt with external links.

I hate to give advice like this without looking at the website, but it sounds like cannonical is the best. You want the other pages to still be accessible.

LOL.

You might think you’re writing a new page but Google doesn’t think so.

Example:

Keyword “Product ABC Review”
Page 1: “Product ABC Review”
Page 2: “Product ABC vs XYZ Review”

Google might think the above compete. It’s really up to them to decide it and then you to fix it if they do.

Yes, that is absolutely possible. Especially more common since Penguin 4.

i have another question, is it possible for a page to be penalized by google, not a website , just one particular page, this page used to be authoritative in the past.

The rest of his site is has lots of replicated pages for all the services. Eg it’s all one kind of service with different headings.

I’m inclined to think this is ok as got him to page one. But now I’m thinking that these extra pages need to be fixed up as you dropped that example of the guy in The Lab hitting #3.

Would you deoptimise the other pages so the main page that ranks is the only page fully focused on the main keyword?

I don’t want to 301 the other pages as they are all services related to what he does. Or would it be better to make a combo page with all his services instead of each once being it’s own?

I’m having a keyword cannibalization problem that I have trouble solving.

Example: article “best computers on the market” (1st article) cannibalized with “best computer for games” (2nd article) ….

I already link the first article to the second with anchor text “computer for games” and the 2nd article to the 1st with anchor text “best computers on the market” …

I can not delete the second page because it touches another topic that is only computers for games and is positioned in the first place …

How do I fix it ???

When I write the keyword “best computers” are the 2 items one below the other between the last positions of the first page and second (it has been bouncing in that way for a long time and I do not know how to solve it without redirecting 301 …

I’m from Argentina, thank you very much for your help!

Having silo structure & pointing internal links to the right term, do they help to avoid keyword cannibalization.

Example:

/iphonex – want to rank for iphonex term
/iphonex/specification – want to rank for iphonex specification term & interlinking to /iphonex page
/iphonex/battery – want to rank for iphonex battery term & interlinking to /iphonex page

Absolutely. Thanks for your contribution.

Hey bro… you got to read the guide and make the best decision for your unique situation.

That’s always a solid move. Did that one last week.

A page can’t cannibalize with itself.

Fair point 🙂 thanks! I’ll try the 301 and let you know how it goes. Cheers!

Thanks for sharing this wonderful insight!

One of my sites is also having Keyword Cannibalization issue. My One of my page (A) is ranking on 8th position, although I haven’t optimized the content for that particular keyword. For targeted keywords, it is ranking in Top position.

Due to the canalization, The main page (B) which I want to rank, is now nowhere in the search result.I have linked that page (A) to page (B) with targeted keywords but I haven’t received any benefit. What will be the best solution to overcome this?

Regards
Vipin Joshi

In the case of having two pages fighting with one another for the same term I often prefer the approach of merging the two pages (if they are both quality articles but don’t justify having their own pages) rather than deleting one but, of course, it depends on the situation.

Keep up the great work.

Hey man… without looking at your page, it would be an injustice for me to pretend to make the right decision for you.

I gave you the tools, now its up to you to figure out how to apply them. That’s what learning is all about. 🙂

Glad to help.

Try replacing “Product x” in the comparison article with some synonym of it. It’s worked for me before.