Preventing Keyword Cannibalization

What is Keyword Cannibalization?

Keyword cannibalization entails having numerous pages on your website optimized for identical or similar keywords, compelling those pages to impact SERPs negatively.

People think that the more pages you have that communicate about your services or products using similar keywords, the greater you'll enhance your rankings for that keyword. They believe the more pages target the identical keyword, it'll compel Google to choose those keywords and enhance your rankings.

Well, that isn't the case.

When it involves keyword cannibalization, Google looks at the intent behind the keyword usage instead of its usage itself.


How to Prevent Keyword Cannibalization

“Prevention is usually better than cure”.

Detecting keyword cannibalization and fixing it, as we’ve already seen, is possible, however, it is usually better to prevent the hassle than to remedy it.

Let us see some ways of doing it -

1. Hone your targeted keyword strategy

Creating a focused keyword strategy, which removes competition and undesirable overlap, is one of the finest strategies to avoid keyword cannibalization. In a nutshell, this involves optimizing numerous pages for numerous keywords and search queries.


2.  Keep tabs on your keyword rankings and performance

It is not sufficient to simply have a keyword strategy. You have to additionally track the performance of the keywords you want to work with overtime as soon as you have recognized them. Tracking keyword statistics on an ordinary basis assists you to determine which keywords are ranking, which have an excessive amount of competition, which are liable to cannibalization, and which require quality tuning.


3. Focus more on creating quality content first

When marketing teams develop more focus on optimizing keywords than developing quality content around vital themes, the probabilities of the occurrence of keyword cannibalization will become high. If you are chasing keywords, there is a very good opportunity you’ll overlook content themes and their quality, which could prevent your progress in the direction of your marketing objectives. Rather than devoting all your resources to keyword research, make it a part of your marketing method to pay attention to relevant topics and quality content.


4. Perform Content Audits regularly

Once you have created a good keyword strategy, set up tracking tools, and increased your awareness on audience interest topics, your final responsibility is to do regular content audits to make sure that what you are posting stays relevant to your readers’ interests and marketing objectives. Certain subjects may become inappropriate with time, while a few may also turn out to be outdated. Even the statistics have a tendency to change. Your topics and keywords, therefore, have to meet your marketing goals in a well-timed manner, and that calls for regular content audits.