Cannibalism suggests an individual consuming another individual of the same species. Neither the victim nor the culprit is at a benefit in this case. The same goes for keyword cannibalization.

There are times when a particular site publishes multiple articles on a similar topic. This is not unnatural, nor is it instrumental in creating a critical SEO issue. The problem arises when those articles target the same keyword with the hope that the targeted better-ranked keywords will lead to better ranks.

However, according to some SEO pundits, the stuffing with similar keywords creates confusion for Google. It affects the ranking of either both pages or one of the two.

The notion is not to scare you, but to explain that despite the severity of this issue, the solution is incredibly simple and easily doable.

4 Ways to Fix Keywords Cannibalization

Here are the 4 bullets we promised you. Go on, take your aim!

1. Merge

Merging similar pages into one encyclopaedic page is the easiest and most popular solution in keyword cannibalization 2019. When you blend resources into one master resource, the essence of both pages remains; it is more informative, and proper subheads and bullet points will draw the most relevant traffic. This option is best availed in case both pages bear quality content.

Also, it helps your website manifold. A user clicks on a link and in one place, is able to gather all the information that he/she needs. Therefore, they would be satisfied and might not land or search for some other links to know more about that topic. This will eventually result in an increase in the average session time of your website.

2. Delete

In case of low-quality content for both resources, it is preferable that resources are deleted and started from scrap. This is the best option for this case because as it is, neither of them will provide any quality visitors, nor a relevant chance of a conversion.

For example: You wrote two different contents, but due to lack of time, were not able to properly research the given topic. This might result in you creating content which lacks proper details and information and might not answer the queries of users. Therefore, users will find it irrelevant, and quickly swap to other sites. As a result, you will see an increase in bounce rates, and a decrease in the ranking of your website.

3. No index

This runs valid in the case of blogs. It is beneficial if it ensures that it does not rank in search engines at all. The page will bear immense potential to clients and yet will not cannibalize another page with a similar keyword.

4. De-optimise

De-optimising content is the last resort that one can fall back to for keyword cannibalization if none of the above three is possible. The process includes three ways:

  1. Removing any keyword reference that exists in that content.
  2. A change in anchored inbound links will ensure that the attention, and hence, the ranking attracted by previous inbound links stays unique on one of the pages.
  3. Changing the keyword-enriched internal links for the less-desired page.

Keyword cannibalization has the potential to negatively impact the ranking of not one but two resource pages simultaneously. Hence, the a need for a deeper intruding look into this matter.

Thus, by now you must have understood what keyword cannibalization means, and how can it affect the ranking of your website or webpage adversely. So, to avoid such hassles, follow the aforementioned ways to keep yourself safe from such practices!