Keyword cannibalisation is an important point to make sure we avoid in our SEO campaigns. In this blog, we’ll be exploring this term, what it means and why it can cause issues for your site’s SEO.
What is keyword cannibalisation?
Keyword cannibalisation occurs when two or more pages on a website rank for the same or similar terms. This can result in the pages competing against each other for the same query on the search engine results page (SERPs).
In doing so, this can affect the organic performance of your website, as the potential traffic is split between each of your competing pages. By combining the pages targeting the same or similar terms into one, your page has a better chance of ranking effectively.
Why is keyword cannibalisation an issue?
Diluting the SERPs with multiple pages from your website that rank for the same keyword can be bad for SEO. This is because the search engine struggles to determine which page is the most relevant to the searchers query.
Keyword cannibalisation can be detrimental to the click through rate (CTR) to your page, as the traffic is being split between multiple pages. Similarly, keyword cannibalisation can affect the number of backlinks pointing to your page, as sources may split links between each of your pages.
How can we avoid keyword cannibalisation?
The best way to avoid keyword cannibalisation is to ensure that we limit keyword crossover. If your page is ranking for a particular term, it’s best practice to avoid creating another page targeting this term. Your efforts would be better concentrated on optimizing the existing page.
There are occasions, however, that you can create more than one page targeting the same keyword without running the risk of keyword cannibalisation. If a term has a mixed searcher intent, for example, multiple pages could rank for the same term in the hopes that one would satisfy a particular searcher need.
When we search the term “accommodation in England”, for example, Google returns a mixed bag of results. The SERPs feature e-commerce sites with hotels to book along with informational blogs about the best places to stay. This means that Google knows visitors are looking for both results.
In creating two pages, each targeting the same keyword, we’d increase organic traffic to our site, as we’re successfully satisfying the searcher intent. The pages have a different angle, and therefore shouldn’t compete with one another.
Curious to know how keyword cannibalisation could be affecting your website? Get in touch with our dedicated team of specialists at Engage Web today and see what we can do to help.
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