Did you know that you could be wasting money and losing traffic by competing with yourself on Google? This is what happens when you have keyword cannibalization between your SEO and PPC campaigns.
What is Keyword cannibalization?
Keyword cannibalization is when there’s a conflict or overlap in your content, strategy, ads, or in how a search engine interprets them. That conflict can cause unintended negative consequences ranging from creating competition with your own brand for search engine results page (SERP) space to having content ranking that isn’t the strongest option for the user intent desired. It can happen within organic search, paid search ads, or between SEO and PPC. This article focuses on the latter, with SEO vs. PPC.
In this article, you will learn how to find out if you are cannibalizing your keywords across channels, how to identify the signs that you are cannibalizing your keywords, and how to fix keyword cannibalization. By following these steps, you will be able to optimize your keywords across channels and get the most out of your marketing budget.
How to Find Out If You’re Cannibalizing Keywords
The first step to avoid keyword cannibalization is to find out if you have any existing issues. To do this, you need to compare the keywords that you are targeting in your SEO and PPC campaigns and see if there is any overlap or conflict.
There are a few ways to do this, depending on the tools and resources you have available. Here are some of the most common methods:
- Use Google Ads Keyword Planner: This is a free tool that allows you to research keywords for your PPC campaigns. You can also use it to see which keywords you are ranking for organically on your website, along with the average position and what pages appear for different search results.
- Use Google Search Console: This is another free tool that helps you monitor and improve your website’s performance on Google Search. You can use it to see which keywords are driving traffic to your site, how many clicks and impressions they get, and what pages they lead to.
- Use a third-party keyword research tool: There are many paid and free tools that can help you find and analyze keywords for both SEO and PPC. Some of the most popular ones are Keyword Tool
, Ahrefs
, Moz
, and Semrush
. These tools can provide you with more data and insights than Google’s own tools, such as keyword difficulty, search volume, CPC, SERP features, and more.
- Use a spreadsheet: If you don’t have access to any of the tools mentioned above, you can still do a manual analysis using a spreadsheet. You can export your keywords from Google Ads and Google Search Console, or use a tool like Screaming Frog
to crawl your website and extract the keywords from your pages. Then, you can compare the keywords in your spreadsheet and look for any duplicates or similarities.
Once you have identified the keywords that you are targeting in both SEO and PPC campaigns, you need to look for signs that indicate that they are causing cannibalization issues.
Signs That You Are Cannibalizing Your Keywords
How do you know if the keywords that you are targeting in both SEO and PPC campaigns are hurting your performance? There are a few metrics and indicators that can help you spot keyword cannibalization issues. Here are some of them:
- Organic CTR Is Decreasing: One of the signs of keyword cannibalization is a decline in organic click-through rate (CTR). This means that fewer people are clicking on your organic results when they see them on SERPs. This can happen because your PPC ads are taking away clicks from your organic results, or because your organic results are not relevant or appealing enough for the user intent.
- Clicks Are Increasing Across Multiple Pages: Another sign of keyword cannibalization is an increase in clicks for both your paid and organic search campaigns across multiple pages that target the same keyword. This means that you are paying for clicks that you could get for free organically, or that you are diluting your authority and relevance by having multiple pages ranking for the same keyword. The performance of each page will be negatively impacted and can lead to less traffic on your site.
- Ad Conversions Are Increasing While Overall Conversions Remain The Same: A third sign of keyword cannibalization is an increase in PPC conversions while overall conversions remain the same. This means that you are paying for conversions that you used to get for free organically, or that your organic results are not converting as well as they used to. This can indicate that your PPC ads are more effective than your organic results in terms of matching user intent and persuading them to take action.
If you notice any of these signs, it means that you have keyword cannibalization issues that need to be fixed. But how do you fix them? Let’s find out.
How to Fix Keyword Cannibalization
The best way to fix keyword cannibalization is to use different strategies and techniques to optimize your keywords across channels and avoid any overlap or conflict. Here are some of the most effective ways to do that:
- Conduct Keyword Research: The first step to fix keyword cannibalization is to conduct proper keyword research for both SEO and PPC campaigns. You need to find out what your target audience is searching for, what their intent is, and what keywords are relevant and profitable for your business. You also need to analyze the competition and the SERP landscape for each keyword and see what kind of content and ads are ranking well.
- Segment Your Audience and Intent: The next step is to segment your audience and intent based on the keywords that you have researched. You need to understand who your ideal customers are, what they want, and how they behave online. You also need to identify the different stages of their buyer journey and the types of queries they use at each stage. This will help you create a keyword map that aligns your keywords with your audience segments and their intent.
- Create Unique and Relevant Content for Each Keyword: The third step is to create unique and relevant content for each keyword that you target in your SEO and PPC campaigns. You need to make sure that your content matches the user intent and provides value to your audience. You also need to optimize your content for SEO best practices, such as using title tags, meta descriptions, headings, images, internal links, and more.
- Optimize Your Landing Pages and Ads for Each Keyword: The fourth step is to optimize your landing pages and ads for each keyword that you target in your PPC campaigns. You need to make sure that your landing pages and ads are relevant and consistent with your keywords and content. You also need to use clear and compelling headlines, copy, images, calls to action, and more.
- Use Negative Keywords and Match Types in Your PPC Campaigns: The fifth step is to use negative keywords and match types in your PPC campaigns. Negative keywords are terms that you want to exclude from your campaigns and help you focus on only the keywords that matter to your customers. Match types are used to define how closely your keywords need to be to a search query in order for your ad to appear. By using negative keywords and match types, you can prevent your ads from showing up for irrelevant or low-quality queries that could cause cannibalization issues.
- Monitor and Test Your Results: The final step is to monitor and test your results regularly. You need to measure the performance of your SEO and PPC campaigns using metrics such as impressions, clicks, CTR, conversions, cost per conversion, ROI, and more. You also need to test different variations of your keywords, content, landing pages, ads, and more using tools such as Google Analytics, Google Ads, Google Optimize, etc. By monitoring and testing your results, you can identify what works well and what needs improvement.
Keyword cannibalization is a common issue that can affect both your SEO and PPC campaigns. By finding out if you are cannibalizing your keywords across channels, identifying the signs that you are cannibalizing your keywords, and fixing keyword cannibalization using different strategies and techniques, you can optimize your keywords across channels and get the most out of your marketing budget.
If you need help with avoiding keyword cannibalization between your SEO and PPC campaigns, feel free to reach me or ask your questions in the comments.
Thank you for reading this article. I hope you found it useful and informative. If you have any feedback or questions about this topic or our services, please feel free to leave a comment below. I would love to hear from you.
If you want to learn more about Digital Marketing and the best practices, Subscribe to 'Digital Presence Today' newsletter on LinkedIn.
You can also check out my other articles on my digital marketing blog
for more tips and insights.
