We all want to increase traffic and rank of our website, just like a gardener who tries to grow the most beautiful flowers in his garden.
But sometimes, we unintentionally cause our efforts to go to waste and instead of growing and flourishing, we witness the withering and destruction of our flowers. One of these common mistakes is cannibalization .
I myself experienced this problem many times. Many times I wrote new content for my website with great enthusiasm and expected that my traffic and ranking would increase significantly. But the result was not always what I wanted.
After various investigations, I realized that my website is somehow competing with itself, and so to speak, my new content is eating the traffic and ranking of the older content!
What is cannibalization in SEO?
Let me start with a simple example. Suppose you have a store website that sells shoes.
You have two pages on your website: one titled “Buy Sneakers” and one titled “Best Running Shoes.”
Both pages deal with the topic of sports shoes and are somewhat similar in terms of content.
In this situation, search engines are confused as to which page to display for keywords related to “shoes”.
Finally, this internal competition will cause none of your pages to get a good rank and as a result, traffic and visits to your website will decrease.
We already have a comprehensive article on what is the reason for the site’s rank drop in Google? We have written that you can read if you wish.
Content cannibalization: the hidden enemy of SEO
In short, cannibalization is the competition between different pages of a website for similar keywords . This happens for various reasons and can have a negative impact on your website’s SEO .
Why does cannibalization happen?
There are several reasons why cannibalization occurs, including:
- Content promotion: When we promote content, we may unknowingly overlap it with other content on our website.
- Keyword increase: Using the same keywords on multiple pages can cause competition between these pages.
- Similar content: Creating similar content with repetitive topics can also lead to cannibalization.
- Internal processes: Internal website processes, such as rebuilding the site or creating new pages, may unknowingly cause the creation of duplicate pages.
- Improper website structure: using an inappropriate structure that does not allow Google to clearly distinguish different pages
- Using long keywords: Using long-tail keywords on multiple pages
- Over Optimization: Trying to over-optimize pages for a specific keyword
- Use of inappropriate URL structure: If different pages of your website use the same URL structure, this can also cause cannibalization.
- Not optimizing your page title and description: If your page title and description are not optimized for the right keywords, search engines may not know which page to rank higher for a particular keyword.
To learn more about this, see the article What is Internal SEO? It can be your guide.
Signs of cannibalization
Knowing the signs of cannibalization will help you to take timely action and prevent its damage.
Some of the symptoms of cannibalization are:
- Page Rank Decline: View page rank declines in SERPs for target keywords
- Low page traffic: Decrease in page traffic due to internal competition
- Increased bounce rate: Increased bounce rate due to not providing content that fits the user’s needs
- Decreased CTR: Decreased click rate due to unordered search results
- Reducing the time spent on the page: reducing the time spent by users on the pages due to not providing relevant content
- Multiple pages in search results: Seeing multiple pages of your website in search results for a keyword
- Change in page rank: See sudden changes in website page rank
Cannibalization solution
If you find that your website has been cannibalized, don’t worry! By using the right solutions, you can solve this problem.
1. Identifying problematic pages: The first step is to identify website pages that have been cannibalized. Use SEO tools like Google Search Console and keyword analysis tools to identify pages related to your target keywords.
2. Merge or delete duplicate pages: After identifying problematic pages, you need to decide which ones to keep and merge or delete the rest.
- Merging pages: If two or more pages have similar but not exactly the same content, you can optimize them by merging higher quality content into a more comprehensive page.
- Delete pages: If a page has weak or duplicate content, it is better to delete it.
For example, if you have two pages titled ” Website Design ” and “Website Design” that both rank for the keyword “Website Design”, you can merge their content into one page and then the “Website Design” page. ” redirect to the “site design” page.
3. Optimizing Remaining Pages: After merging or removing duplicate pages, you need to fully optimize the remaining pages.
- Choose main keywords: For each page, choose one or two main keywords and build the content of that page around those keywords.
- Improve the structure and content of the pages: improve the structure and content of the pages in a way that is attractive and understandable for users and search engines.
- Optimizing the title and meta description: Optimize the title and meta description of the pages in such a way that it accurately reflects the main keywords and the topic of the page.
- Create internal links: Help search engines and users navigate your website easily by creating internal links between related pages. To learn more, see the article Important tips on internal linking. For example, if you have a page about “site design”, you can use internal links to direct users from the “site design services” page to the “site design” page. do
- Using redirects: If you have a duplicate page that you no longer need, you can use 301 redirects to redirect users and search engines to the right page.
- Using the canonical tag: If we don’t want to merge the content of two pages, we can use the canonical tag. This tag tells search engines which page is the original version of the desired content and should be ranked for that keyword.
How to prevent cannibalization?
Preventing cannibalization is far better than solving it after the fact. To prevent cannibalization, we can use these things:
- Create a detailed content strategy: Before you start writing content, design a detailed content strategy and determine what topics you want to cover and on what page you want to put each topic.
- Use keyword research tools: Before writing any article, use keyword research tools to find keywords related to the topic.
- Use internal SEO tools: Use internal SEO tools to review your website pages to ensure that your pages are fully optimized.
- Regular Content Update: Constantly update your website content and rewrite old articles with new information.
- Use a sitemap: Create an XML or HTML sitemap for your website so that Google can easily index all the pages of your website.
conclusion
Cannibalization can have a negative impact on your website’s rankings and organic traffic.
But by correctly understanding this problem and using appropriate solutions, you can prevent it from happening or, if it happens, you can fix it.
Remember that your main goal is to provide high-quality and useful content to users and optimize your website for search engines. By following these tips, you can achieve better results in SEO.
If you think that your website has a cannibalization problem, you can contact our experts in online services to help you solve this problem.