These days, when people want to find something, whether it’s a product or a service, the first thing they look for is a device connected to the Internet so they can conduct a search.<\/p>\n
Gone are the days when people would refer to paper product catalogs or consult the Yellow Pages to find a business or service they were interested in. In fact, 70% of users today never open the phone book to conduct any kind of search.<\/p>\n
However, the extraordinary accessibility of content we’ve become accustomed to comes with a new danger: your content gets lost in a sea of \u200b\u200binformation.<\/p>\n\n
Search engines can be fast and accurate for users who know exactly what they are looking for, but when it comes to a general search, narrowing down candidates to a smaller, more appropriate pool becomes more difficult.<\/p>\n
As a business owner or manager, you probably offer your goods or services to a local market, but you could potentially serve the entire world, reaching a global market. In turn, of course, the entire world also becomes your competition. Therefore, it is more important than ever, for ease of use and high search rankings, to use keywords correctly.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
First, let’s look at the basics. The keyword is one of the most important elements of an online search. When people turn to a search engine to find something, the first thing they do is type a series of words that are relevant and compatible with their interest or, with voice recognition software and virtual assistants, ask a question. The search engine uses those same words to scan the Internet and provide you with appropriate answers.<\/p>\n
When it discovers content that matches the keyword criteria, it presents the search results and ranks them based on different criteria, such as usefulness and popularity, as well as the presence of appropriate keywords.<\/p>\n
\nBut it all starts with keywords.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
For example, if you sell dog care products and food, you should use keywords such as dog, dog food, dog care, or pet care on your website. If your website does not contain any mention of dogs, a search engine would not recognize your website as being about dogs or dog care products. Obviously, you wouldn’t reach your target market.<\/p>\n
On the contrary, if you overdo it and stuff too many identical keywords on all the pages of your site, you could suffer from what is called keyword cannibalization<\/strong>.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Why Keyword Cannibalization Exists<\/h2>\n
In the past, search engines like Google were much simpler. They would crawl and create SERP rankings based on very simple criteria. This eventually led to widespread search engine abuse and misuse as techniques like “keyword stuffing” became more widespread.<\/p>\n
Google thought that a web page’s content could be relevant if it contained a keyword repeatedly, so unscrupulous content producers simply included the same word hundreds or even thousands of times to boost their search rankings.<\/p>\n
Today, keyword stuffing is one of the worst things you can do, and it will hurt your search rankings. Modern algorithms react harshly to overt keyword stuffing; keyword cannibalization<\/strong> is an occasional side effect of this effort to punish keyword stuffing with lower search rankings.<\/p>\n
\nKeyword cannibalization<\/strong> occurs when you have too many identical or similar keywords scattered throughout your website’s content.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
As a result, a search engine like Google can\u2019t discern what content to rank higher. This means that it will sometimes give a higher rank to a web page that you don\u2019t intend to prioritize. It may also lower the rank of all pages that share those keywords.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Fixing Keyword Cannibalization<\/h2>\n
It\u2019s actually quite easy to identify potential keyword cannibalization issues on your website. Typically, running a search along the lines of \u201cDomain + Keywords\u201d will provide you with the information you\u2019re looking for.<\/p>\n
You\u2019ll get a list of results, but are they the ones you want? Is that dog food blog post you wrote two years ago somehow higher than your most recent and important one? If so, that would be a perfect example of keyword cannibalization. Fortunately, there are a few things you can do to remedy this state of affairs.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
5 Ways to Prevent Keyword Cannibalization<\/h2>\n
1. Merge Content<\/h3>\n
If you have two web pages that cover similar topics, such as a web page that recommends good dog food and a page that lists bad dog food, you may want to take all of this content and put it on one page.<\/p>\n
\nThis won’t necessarily work for every situation, but, more often than not, merging content will make your website easier and more search engine optimized.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
2. Delete Content<\/h3>\n
This is extreme, but you may want to consider deleting the problematic web content entirely, especially if it’s no longer relevant to your website. If the content doesn’t exist, the problem doesn’t exist.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
3. Remove Keywords<\/h3>\n
If you want to keep some specific content for other reasons and the presence of a keyword is not essential, removing it is always an option. This can be a slower and more tedious way of doing things – manual solutions usually are – but they have the advantage of being very simple and easy to implement.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
4. Change your internal linking<\/h3>\n
If you have web content that links to other content on your website, the links themselves may be something you can improve. For search engines like Google, links establish importance, so if you include a link to another piece of content or web page, a search engine may rank the linked content higher.<\/p>\n
Try adding or changing your website’s internal linking so that less important content links to the content you want to highlight and prioritize. This sends a signal to the search engine results page (SERP) that the linked content is the one that should be prioritized. Doing well on the SERP is still very important.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
5. Change Inbound Link Requests<\/h3>\n
This will be one of the most difficult forms of cannibalization to address, but it can be very important. Another factor that SEO considers when ranking search results is how many other people have linked to your content. After doing a search on your website, you may find that one of the reasons why less important content is still ranking higher than your newer, more relevant content is that other websites are building those links.<\/p>\n
If you have the means and the time, and especially if those links are to highly influential websites, you can use software to track backlinks and then contact the webmasters to request that they change or remove the links. Ideally, they will swap out the old links you don\u2019t want for the new ones you\u2019re trying to prioritize, and you can actually boost your SEO rankings as a result.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n
Today\u2019s search algorithms are much more sophisticated and insightful when it comes to assigning search ranks.<\/p>\n
Good content will always be the most important factor in getting a good ranking, and making sure you\u2019re not cannibalizing keywords will help your intended content shine a brighter light and get the attention it deserves.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” column_margin=”default” column_direction=”default” column_direction_tablet=”default” column_direction_phone=”default” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” row_border_radius=”none” row_border_radius_applies=”bg” overflow=”visible” overlay_strength=”0.3″ gradient_direction=”left_to_right” shape_divider_position=”bottom” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_tablet=”inherit” column_padding_phone=”inherit” column_padding_position=”all” column_element_spacing=”default” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none”…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15828,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"obx_sintesi":"Keyword cannibalization happens when too many identical or similar keywords are scattered across a website, so Google cannot tell which page to rank and may promote the wrong one or lower all of them. You can spot it by searching your domain plus the keyword, and fix it by merging or deleting content, removing keywords, changing internal links or asking other sites to update inbound links.","obx_punti":"[\"Cannibalization is a side effect of how modern algorithms punish keyword stuffing, the old trick of repeating a word hundreds of times\", \"Pointing internal links from less important pages to the page you want to prioritize signals to search engines which content matters\", \"Two pages on similar topics, like good dog food and bad dog food, often work better merged into a single page\"]","obx_faq":"[{\"q\": \"What is keyword cannibalization in SEO?\", \"a\": \"Keyword cannibalization occurs when too many identical or similar keywords are spread across the content of a website. A search engine like Google then cannot discern which page should rank higher, so it sometimes ranks a page you did not intend to prioritize, or lowers the rank of all the pages sharing those keywords. It is an occasional side effect of algorithms built to penalize keyword stuffing.\"}, {\"q\": \"How do I check if my website has keyword cannibalization?\", \"a\": \"Run a search of the form domain plus keyword and look at the list of results. If an older, less important page appears above the recent page you care about, for example a dog food post written two years ago outranking your newest one, that is a clear case of cannibalization. The check is quick and needs no special tools.\"}, {\"q\": \"How do you fix keyword cannibalization?\", \"a\": \"There are five remedies. Merge pages that cover similar topics into one page. Delete content that is no longer relevant. Remove the keyword from pages where it is not essential, a manual but simple fix. Change internal links so less important content points to the page you want to prioritize. Finally, use backlink tracking software and ask other webmasters to swap old inbound links for the new page.\"}, {\"q\": \"Why does keyword cannibalization happen?\", \"a\": \"Because search engines used to rank pages on very simple criteria, and content producers abused this with keyword stuffing, repeating the same word hundreds or even thousands of times to climb the rankings. Modern algorithms react harshly to that practice. When a site repeats identical keywords across many pages, the algorithm treats it in a similar way and can no longer tell which page deserves the ranking.\"}, {\"q\": \"Can inbound links cause keyword cannibalization?\", \"a\": \"Yes. Search engines also weigh how many other sites link to a piece of content, so an older, less relevant page may keep outranking your newer page simply because other websites link to it. The fix is demanding: track those backlinks with software, contact the webmasters, especially on influential sites, and ask them to change or remove the links in favor of the page you want to prioritize.\"}]","obx_fonti":"[]","obx_revisione":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3706],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-19393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-seo-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ottobix.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ottobix.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ottobix.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottobix.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottobix.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19393"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottobix.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19393\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19395,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottobix.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19393\/revisions\/19395"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottobix.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ottobix.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottobix.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottobix.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19393"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottobix.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=19393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}