Content is King, But Cannibalisation is Killer
Cariad Marketing Limited
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You might be wondering what keyword cannibalisation is and why it's important in the digital marketing world. We’ve put together a short guide on keyword cannibalisation, the danger it can cause and strategies on how to avoid it.
What is cannibalisation?
Content or keyword cannibalisation is all about having content or keywords on your website’s pages that look the same to search engines like Google. Google doesn’t simply index keywords anymore, it also checks how your pages match the searcher’s intent. Content that has been replicated from other pages on your site or other sites isn’t problematic unless it uses the same keyword and aligns with the intent of the other pages.
Keyword cannibalisation can happen when you:
Dangers of content cannibalisation
As a website owner, you need to be aware of the damage that content and keyword cannibalisation can do to your website. Content cannibalisation can have disastrous effects on SEO, from misdirected traffic and fluctuating SERP rankings to lost sales, and can:?
How to know if your website has content cannibalisation issues
Luckily, it is fairly simple to determine whether your website has keyword cannibalisation issues. All you or your SEO expert has to do is create a spreadsheet that lists your page URLs and their corresponding keywords. If you find a pattern with the same keyword being used in different page URLs, this could be an indication of cannibalised content.?
A website audit will also help you to identify the pages that are targeting the same or similar keywords and compare their performance and metrics. Our SEO team agrees that content cannibalisation becomes a major problem when it hurts your site’s organic performance. And the best way to find out if it’s hurting your performance is to do an audit of your site’s pages and content.
Strategies to avoid content cannibalisation?
Canonical tags tell search engines which URLs you want them to index. It’s a tag in the source code of a page that indicates that a master copy of the page exists. Essentially, they point to one URL and by directing all traffic to that one URL, you will save on link power and improve your rankings significantly.
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Take your competing pages and combine them into one pillar page then decide which URL remains and which gets removed. It’s important to get an expert to look at how each page is performing in terms of traffic, time spent on the page and bounce rate to determine which page stays.
It could be that you just need to find more keywords. Look at the results of your content audit including the page URLs, keywords and rank. You will be able to identify which pages are ranking for the same keywords and determine natural opportunities to update pages with new keywords. If you do use this strategy, make sure your new keywords are still relevant.?
Keyword stuffing involves overuse of a specific keyword in one piece of content. It is considered best practice to include your primary keyword in your page title and meta tag but beyond that it can come across as trying too hard and actually end up hurting your rankings.?
Contact us for a content audit
It can be tough to know whether your website is at risk of content or keyword cannibalisation. By having an audit of your website and content done, you can know the health of your website, how it’s performing and what improvements can be made.
We offer a free SEO audit of your website and our team will also provide you with quick fixes and longer term opportunities that you can use to improve your site’s performance and rankings. Get in touch to find out more!
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