Are you worried about the traffic loss on your website? Keyword or content cannibalization might be the reason for this traffic loss. It is one of the most common issues associated with content creation that goes unnoticed. Keyword cannibalization doesn’t go along with higher search engine rankings. You need to be more optimistic and organized while creating the content for your website.
As we all know that keyword research can add a lot of value to the content if done in the right direction. However, if it goes wrong, it can be the reason for traffic loss on your website. It is necessary to identify and fix content cannibalization before it harms your website negatively. Read on to dive deeper into the topic and explore various ways of identifying and fixing content cannibalization issues.
What is Content Cannibalization?
Content cannibalization or keyword cannibalization happens when two or more pages of the same website try to rank on Google for the same keywords. In this case, multiple pages of the same website compete with each other while satisfying a common search intent. It affects the traffic generation of the website as it confuses the search engines and reduces the SERPs.
Content cannibalization can result in lowering the search ranking of the entire website and reduce its organic traffic. It can prove to be harmful to your website in the following ways:
- It reduces the conversion rate on your website.
- It depicts poor content quality.
- It results in diminishing the page authority.
- It leads to poor link-building strategy.
How to Identify Content Cannibalization?
Content cannibalization is hard to identify. However, you can identify it significantly using the right strategies and correct tools. One of the most common methods of detecting and avoiding keyword cannibalization is creating a spreadsheet containing all the keywords. We have also mentioned some effective online tools that can help you identify keyword cannibalization issues on your website:
- Google Search Console
Google Search Console is one of the best methods of detecting cannibalized content for various types of websites. Register your website on Google Search Console and follow the given steps to check for content cannibalization issues:
- Login to your Google Search Console account and select the website that you want to check for content cannibalization.
- Search the keywords that you suspect to be cannibalized in the “search results” section available under the “Performances” menu available on the left side panel of the screen.
- Finally, click on “Pages” to get the list of pages or blog posts that are using common keywords for Google rankings.
- SEOTesting
SEOTesting is an online SEO tool that generates reports based on Google Search Console Data. It allows you to generate content cannibalization reports to help you check all the pages of your website through the following simple steps:
- First of all, create your account on SEOTesting and add your website.
- Connect your account with Google Search Console.
- Go to the reports section and request a Cannibalization report.
- Website Search Widget
You can also use your website’s search widget to identify content cannibalization. Before uploading a new page, ensure to search for the main keyword in the search widget. It will help you identify whether it appears on any other page or not.
Apart from the above-mentioned methods, you can try multiple online tools for duplicate content detection. We have mentioned some commonly used content cannibalization checker tools below:
- Keylogs Keyword Cannibalization Checker
- SEMrush Position Tracking Tool
- Moz Keyword Explorer
- SEOScount Cannibalization Checker
- Jetoctopus
How to Fix Content Cannibalization?
Once you have detected the pages that are using the same keyword for Google ranking, you can proceed toward fixing the issue. You might see instant results and wild traffic after fixing keyword duplication. Here are a few simple tricks that can save you against the negative impacts of content cannibalization:
- Update Internal Links
Internal links play a major role in generating site traffic and Google ranking. Poor internal linking strategy is one of the most common reasons for cannibalization. It is often seen that the website owner links two different pages to the same anchor text, which confuses the search engine to recognize the exact search results.
You need to update the internal links or anchor text on the cannibalized pages to fix the issues of content duplication.
- Use 301 Redirects
301 redirects also play a major role in fixing cannibalization issues. 301 redirect refers to the movement of a website from one URL to another. You need to follow a detailed procedure to ensure that your audience is redirected to the right destination. It is one of the most common methods that are used when a page is permanently moved/removed from a website. It passes all the ranking rights and authority of the old URL to the new URL.
- Fix On-Page SEO
Fixing On-Page SEO can also help in getting rid of the negative impacts of content cannibalization. On-Page SEO contains the following segments:
- Meta title
- Meta Description
- Target keywords
- Search intent
Updating target keywords and search intent helps the search engine to generate traffic according to the target audience. It improves the website’s Google ranking and helps in earning organic traffic.
Conclusion
Cannibalized content is problematic for website owners as this can reduce SERPs and affect the website’s ranking on Google. Fixing content cannibalization can improve your content rankings and provide your audience with more relevant content to satisfy their needs. We hope that this guide has helped you identify and fix content cannibalization on your website.
After experiencing the negative impacts of duplicate content, you should be more careful while selecting the topics and keywords of your content. You need to keep the following things in mind to avoid content cannibalization issues in the future:
- Ensure to conduct proper research while selecting the topic and preparing your keyword list.
- Use keyword mapping and clustering techniques to prevent keyword duplication issues.
- Conduct a content audit regularly to avoid low-quality content and identify content duplication issues.
To learn more about content cannibalization get an appointment with the best SEO expert in Bangladesh.