SEO glossary: Keyword cannibalization

What is keyword cannibalization?

The term keyword cannibalization can alternatively also be referred to as a relevance problem. It can occur in particular when new subpages are created on a website at regular intervals. This is because different keywords and keyword combinations are used. If keyword cannibalization occurs, it often happens unintentionally on the part of the webmaster.

 

Angekommen zwei URLs einer Domain sind auf ein identisches Keyword optimiert. In diesem Falle kann sich die Suchmaschine nicht dafür entscheiden, welcher URL das Keyword zugeordnet werden soll und welche Seite mehr relevant ist.

 

What impact does keyword cannibalization have on SEO?

If such a relevance problem occurs, search engines like Google are confused and cannot decide for the right subpage. This is because it is very difficult, if not impossible, to assess which of the two "competing" pages is more likely to produce a relevant result in the SERPs.

 

It is also the case that one of the two pages has already been indexed for some time and has a fixed position. As a result, the subpage regularly receives traffic. If a new page with an identical keyword is added and the two pages cannibalize each other, the affected subpages lose traffic and visibility is lost.

 

 

This tells webmasters that they are affected by keyword cannibalization:

 

• A look at SEO analysis tools shows that several subpages rank for an identical keyword

 

• Strong fluctuations in the SERPs occur permanently at regular intervals

 

• It can be seen that a domain with the same topic (keyword) is alternately ranked with different URLs

 

What can you do against keyword cannibalization?

Do you suspect that two subpages are in each other's way and that there is keyword cannibalization? The first step here is to analyze which URLs are involved. If the manual search is too difficult, professional SEO tools can also help.

 

It then moves on to problem solving:

 

• 301 REDIRECTION: Is one of the two URLs not so important and it can be "disposed" anyway? In this case a 301 redirect to the other URL is possible.

 

• Content summary + 301 redirect: An analysis of the two competing URLs may show that both contain valuable content. In this case, it makes sense to summarize the valuable content on the strong page. A 301 redirect is then set up from the weak URL to the strong URL.

 

• Noindex, Follow: For some reason, webmasters do not want to do without one of the two URLs despite keyword cannibalization. In this case, the weaker URL is marked in robots.txt with a "noindex, follow" in the robots.txt.

 

• Change or refine keywords: Usually, the creation of content on both URLs has taken a lot of work. In this case, it may be useful to change or slightly refine the keywords on one of the two pages.