Many content strategists, marketers, and writers believe that creating more pages targeting a particular target keyword helps their website rank higher. This idea makes sense in theory - you'd think that the more pages you have with a popular keyword, the more likely Google and other engines will sense your keywords and boost your placement in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP), right?
Not quite. It's a misconception that having multiple pages targeting the same keyword will help your website. As usual, the devil is in the details.
Fortunately, once you've diagnosed it, keyword cannibalization is usually straightforward to fix.
What is Keyword Cannibalization?
You can thank the paid search marketing industry for the concept of keyword cannibalization. It's something that occurs when you have multiple ads competing for the same search phrase. If you've had the pleasure of using the Google Ads platform, you'll understand how easily this can happen.
SEOs have taken this real concept and erroneously applied it to their distinctly separate field of marketing.
Here's the typical description of keyword cannibalization as it appears in SEO.
Keyword cannibalization occurs when multiple pieces of content on the same site target the same or very similar search term. Because it appears on different pages on your website, Google will only show one, sometimes two, results from your domain if someone searches for that particular keyword. Each page you have with the repeated word decreases the other page's chances to rank higher on Google.
For instance, if you have two blog posts that were optimized for the keyword "artwork," they'll compete with each other every time someone searches for "artwork" on Google. As such, they will both rank lower. That's because Google will get confused by the pages and won't be able to distinguish which of the two should rank higher for the search query.
There are several issues with that standard definition:
- The root of the problem has to do with a failure to adequately address user intent.
- There are many instances of Google SERPs showing fractured (multiple) intent, offering the opportunity to successfully rank more than one page.
- It's not a question of Google getting confused.
- Creating a lot of content around a main topic will inevitably result in some overlap, since the subtopics are closely related. Overlap on its own isn't a problem.
When Is It Actually Cannibalization?
Multiple pages targeting the same keyword isn't cannibalization on its own. To cover a topic well, you may need several pieces aimed at the same term, each serving a different reader:
- Long content
- Short content
- Visual content
- Video content for beginners
- Video content for experts
All of these focus on the same keyword. None of them cannibalize each other, because each one gives a different reader something the others don't.
Jeff Coyle uses a much tighter test. You have true cannibalization when two pages:
- Deliver the exact same information gain
- Don't differentiate at all
- Split the results, with one converting at a high rate
- And the other not converting
That combination is hard to diagnose, and resolving it is your job. Two pages competing to rank for the same term isn't a bad thing in itself. Often it's a sign you've covered the topic well.
Watch for teams that "own" a keyword
The one-page, one-keyword rule causes a specific problem in large organizations. A team claims a keyword, and no one else in the company is allowed to write about it. That puts you at a real competitive disadvantage, because one page can't serve every audience, stage, and level of expertise behind a search term.
Nevertheless, you still want to avoid true keyword cannibalization. Here's why.
Why You Should Avoid Keyword Cannibalization
Sites that suffer from this issue generally fare poorly in Search. Rankings are hard to achieve and often what they rank for has little value. Here are some of the issues related to the symptoms of keyword cannibalization.
Poor user experience
If you have multiple pages about the same topics, users may have to spend more time looking for the information they wanted in the first place. Usually, when a visitor fails to find what they're looking for, they tend to leave rather quickly.
Imagine a site with individual pages each targeting these keywords:
- Type of guitars
- Different types of guitars
- Different kinds of guitars
- Types of guitar names
- Types of guitars with names
Picture the experience of wading through all that type of low-quality content. You laugh, but not so long ago, "one keyword one page" was an SEO best practice!
Poor website reputation and content value
It's hard to build authority in a space when all you have to offer is thin content of questionable quality. Publishing more content of this low caliber isn't the answer.
Loss of your webpages' weight
At an individual level, these pages are weak. In this case, even linking them internally does little to improve the situation. This isn't a case where the sum is greater than the parts.
No clear source for answer engines
AI answer engines retrieve passages from web pages to build their responses. When several thin pages on your site cover the same intent with near-identical content, none of them stands out as the best source to cite. Consolidating them into one strong page, and pointing the duplicates to it, gives retrieval systems one clear version to pull from. For more on this, see how canonical URLs shape what AI systems retrieve.
Wasted crawl budget on very large sites
For most sites, crawl budget isn't an issue. It only becomes a concern for very large sites. You need to pay attention to it if you:
- Operate a large site, particularly if you're running an eCommerce site with tens of thousands of pages.
- Recently added many pages to your website. If you've done this, you need to make sure Google can crawl all of them in a reasonable time.
- Have a lot of redirects, since having a lot of redirect chains can quickly waste your crawl budget.
Your crawl budget is the number of URLs Google can and wants to crawl on your site within a given period. Sites suffering from keyword cannibalization usually have excessive amounts of thin pages targeting the same terms, so they have more pages than are warranted. On a very large site, those pages compete for crawl attention with the pages that matter. If Google doesn't crawl a page, it can't index or rank it.
How to Spot Keyword Cannibalization
Cannibalization can be found on the metadata and page content levels.
At the metadata level
Cannibalization happens on the metadata level when two or more web pages have title tags and meta descriptions that contain the same or similar keywords. For example, say your eCommerce site sells Acer and Asus gaming laptops and has three laptop-related pages with the following URLs and title tags:
| URL | Title tag |
|---|---|
| /laptops/all | Gaming Laptops - Acer and Asus |
| /laptops/acer | Acer Gaming Laptops |
| /laptops/asus | Asus Gaming Laptops |
The general page targets the same brand terms as the two brand pages, so all three compete for searches like "Acer gaming laptops."
On the page content level
Keyword cannibalization can also happen on the page content level when two or more pages address similar topics with the same intent. Fixing keyword cannibalization of your webpage content requires more work than if it's only at the metadata level.
Check if your site is suffering from keyword cannibalism
If you want to know whether your site is cannibalizing pages, search for your site using keywords that you think may have multiple results.
To do this, type site:yourdomain.com followed by the keyword you want to look for. For example, a search for "site:yourdomain.com content strategy" might return a content strategy guide, a template, a checklist, and a case study.
There are no issues there because the pages all have different intentions. Though they all use the keyword "content strategy," each page contains unique content. However, if they were all variations of "Content Strategy: A Complete Guide," then there would be a problem.
What Solutions Should You Implement to Tackle Cannibalization?
On the metadata level
To fix cannibalization problems on the metadata level, you should separate keywords by intent to make them less repetitive. Let's take the gaming laptop example from above.
To fix keyword cannibalization, change the title tag of /laptops/all from "Gaming Laptops - Acer and Asus" to "Gaming Laptops - All Brands":
| URL | Title tag |
|---|---|
| /laptops/all | Gaming Laptops - All Brands |
| /laptops/acer | Acer Gaming Laptops |
| /laptops/asus | Asus Gaming Laptops |
By only mentioning category-specific keywords like Acer and Asus on the pages that specifically feature Acer and Asus products, you'll be able to make the intention of each of these three pages clearer. /laptops/all is a generic laptop page that targets generic laptop terms, while /laptops/acer and /laptops/asus are for targeting Acer and Asus product terms, respectively.
Sites suffering from keyword cannibalization often suffer from duplicate content issues. With ecommerce sites, it's usually because they use URL parameters for minor page variations, such as sort order or color. Google retired its URL Parameters tool in 2022, so handle these variations with canonical tags that point to the main version of the page (covered below).
On the webpage content level
If you discover that your web page content does have keyword cannibalism, there are six solutions you can implement to tackle the issue:
Combine or merge articles
If the cannibalized blog posts or articles essentially talk about the same things, you should merge them. Read through both of them and note what makes them different. Then, combine them into one article, making sure to target the appropriate intent. If some of the old articles rank highly due to targeted keyword use but are otherwise useless to your company, consider incorporating this keyword into your new article.
The combined article should be an adaptation of one of the articles. There's no need to create a new article at all - just redirect the URL of that article to the one you're keeping.
Improve internal linking
To help Google figure out which of your articles is the most important, revisit your internal linking.
Specifically, you should aim to add internal links or anchor texts from articles that rank lower to blogs that you want to rank higher. This type of linking structure can help build authority for specific high-value pages.
If necessary, consider creating new landing pages. For example, you can create a landing page for "sports shoes." Then, add links to this landing page on less important pages optimized for the keywords "sneakers for women" and "trainers."
Reoptimize pages
Before you take the drastic step of deleting or merging cannibalizing content, read through the content to see if you can reoptimize or refocus it.
After you've read through your content a couple of times, think about what you need to do to improve it. Ask yourself if you can shift the focus of these pages, individualizing the intent of each page. When determining how to shift the focus, ask yourself if the content and topics need updating.
Redirect the repeated pages
If the repeated pages are outdated or no longer fit your site, you can redirect users from them to your landing page using a 301 redirect.
This redirection means that your repeated pages will no longer be accessible to the public and clicking on those URLs redirects visitors to the landing page. Point each old URL straight to its final destination to avoid redirect chains and loops.
Implement noindex tags
In certain scenarios, you can't delete or redirect your cannibalized pages. For instance, the pages may contain great content or act as landing pages themselves.
If that's the case, you can add a noindex rule to all of the pages except the one you've chosen as your landing page. Place a robots meta tag in the <head></head> section of each page: <meta name="robots" content="noindex">. Google drops the page from its index the next time it crawls it, so it won't show up as a search result. Google has to crawl the page to see the tag, so don't also block it in robots.txt.
Use canonicalization
Canonicalization indicates which URL is the primary or "canonical" one. After you've confirmed a URL as the canonical one, that URL will be considered for ranking in the SERP. Practically speaking, Google considers the canonical as a suggestion and not a directive. So it's possible that Google treats the other page as the original.
You can specify canonical URLs through:
- Canonical tags, which allow you to pinpoint the canonical URL for a page. They're found in the
<head></head>section of your web page's HTML code and look like this:<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.website.com/page/" /> - Setting a rel=canonical HTTP header response.
- Using 301 redirects, as covered above.
- Your sitemap
SEO plugins for WordPress automatically apply canonicalization to posts and pages upon publication, with the ability to override this as required. If you're doing this on your own, it's a good idea to avoid using noindex together with canonicalization. Since Google considers them contradictory, the results can be difficult to predict.
How to Avoid Keyword Cannibalization Issues in the Future
Here are some ways you can avoid content cannibalization in the future.
Plan around topics, not keyword lists
Keyword research tools tend to create lists of terms that are more like variations of the same concept, like the guitar list above. Working from lists like this, it's easy to fall into the trap of creating multiple pieces of content that serve the same intent.
Instead, plan your content around topics rather than individual keywords. Group keyword variations that share an intent into one topic, and give each page a distinct job, such as a different audience, stage of the buying journey, or level of expertise.
Use Google Search Console
Google Search Console is an excellent way of spotting keyword cannibalization.
Go to the Performance section. Scroll down and you will see a pool of queries that your site has gotten clicks and impressions from.
Click on a query that interests you and then select the Pages tab. You'll then be able to see all the URLs on your site that rank for the query. If more than one URL is there, and the intent for all of these pages is the same - or at least very similar - your site may be suffering from keyword cannibalism.
Before you merge or redirect anything, apply the test from earlier. If the pages serve different readers or different stages, leave them alone or sharpen their focus. If they deliver the same information gain and one clearly outperforms the other, consolidate into the stronger page.
Use a rank tracker
You can also use a rank tracker to avoid keyword cannibalism. Also known as a keyword tracker, a rank tracker is a tool that lets you monitor your site's ranking for specific keywords in SERPs.
Rank trackers work similarly to Google Search Console. They let you see how your keywords and web pages rank on SERPs. Pay particular attention to which URL ranks for each keyword over time. If the ranking URL keeps switching between two of your pages, that's a common symptom of cannibalization.
In general, a good rank tracker should:
- Provide accurate ranking results
- Show which URL ranks for each keyword
- Offer easy-to-read and detailed analytics reports
- Let you choose the number of keywords and domains you want to track
- Work on desktop and mobile
- Offer geo-targeted results
If your rank tracker shows a page already ranking for a topic you plan to cover, decide whether to update that page or create a new one that serves a different reader.
The Takeaway
People with multiple entries high in the SERP don't complain about keyword cannibalization. That's because they have a strategy and an understanding of how each piece of content fits into the overall plan.
They're not taking the same approach. When they create multiple pieces of content around the same topic they're building a foundation of content that provides additional value - perhaps targeting a different audience, stage of the buy cycle, industry, or level of expertise.
That is really the best way to avoid keyword cannibalization.
