Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Keyword cannibalization - blog posts vs. site content
-
As an example, I am trying to rank for the term "ice cream". I have site content pages that relate to "chocolate ice cream", "vanilla ice cream", etc.These content pages have been SEO optimized using best practices.
Would I be ruining my SEO work if I begin to publish blog posts for the same keywords that my content pages target? Am I basically forced to find alternative keywords and only target one page per keyword?
-
Gotta disagree with this one. Creating high quality blog content with the same keywords you are targeting on your products page can be a good strategy. The blog post will add more content related to your keyword on your site, increasing relevancy. It's also a lot easier to build links to a blog than a product page.
Just make sure to link from the blog post to the product page, and the product page can get a boost. If you rank really high in Google, you could even get 2 listings for that keyword. If for some reason the blog content outranks the product page, you can just take that same content and throw it on the product page with a canonical from the blog post. If all else fails, you can 301 redirect it.
-
Ice cream is a broad and deep topic and you could write a lot of blog posts without running out of unique material. Every blog post that you write should be about a topic that is different from anything else that is already on your site and be interesting, informative and perhaps humorous as well.
If your site (and pages) are powerful enough google will display two, three or more of your pages in the top ten.
I spend a lot of time writing content that most people would consider to be cannibalizing - and it brings in a lot of longtail traffic and takes traffic away from my competitors. I do it intentionally. There's no sin about it.
-
I understand. So basically my evergreen content page can be domain.com/chocolate-ice-cream (targeting "chocolate ice cream")
My blog post page can then be domain.com/blog/top-10-chocolate-ice-creams, which is in effect targeting for "Top 10 Chocolate Ice Creams". Additionally, within the post it would be ideal to reference and link to the evergreen content page as is appropriate.
This method would in effect be targeting the keywords:
- chocolate ice cream
- Top 10 Chocolate Ice Creams
By doing so this will help the site rank for these 2 terms, and overall for the head term Chocolate Ice Creams.
-
Hello,
By creating blog posts on the content your trying to rank for is a very smart move, actually, if it is done right. When your writing a blog post on Vanilla Ice Cream, every time you write about a page that relates on other content on your website, for example, if you mentioned ice cream, place a link there to your ice cream page. Also, with blogs, a very powerful tool is to have a "related posts" section, not only does this help build an internal linking structure, it also can interest readers to read other articles or content on your website.
Remember not to go overboard with focusing on keywords, you need to make sure that your website is friendly to the readers. If you are forcing yourself to change the structure of the content to change the keywords your optimizing for, it may lose it's readability. Google, along with many other search engines have put a lot of time into semantic cues, so they may infer that even though your not using the same keyword (something like Popsicle instead of ice pop), they can infer that your referring to the same thing.
My recommendation is to place a link on the blog post to the page you want to rank, and you should be okay,
Hope this helps
Zach
-
Would I be ruining my SEO work if I begin to publish blog posts for the same keywords that my content pages target? Am I basically forced to find alternative keywords and only target one page per keyword?
In short, yes.
When Google provides search results they need to search trillions of pages to determine which result is most likely to satisfy a user's query. One of the key components of their algorithm is relevancy. If you have a page titled "chocolate ice cream" and then a blog article with the same title, which result should be returned to a user who searches in Google for "chocolate ice cream"?
If you offer multiple pages with the same keyword focus you run into an issue called cannibalization. You can solve that issue by narrowing the focus of one of the pages. For example, the main page on your site is what I would refer to as "evergreen" content. 10 years from now someone can read that page and the information is likely still valid. Your blog often offers fresh content which is more time sensitive. Some possible topics for an article:
Top 10 Chocolate Ice Creams in the world
Lowest Calorie Chocolate Ice Cream
Chocolate Ice Cream Recipes
I would also recommend being very careful when providing content on two similar keywords. It takes a level of expertise to do it in such a way that it adds value to your site. One helpful step is to use anchor text. If you write an article on "Chocolate Ice Cream Recipes" then one time in the article when you refer to "Chocolate Ice Cream" present it as an anchor link to your main page.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Keywords problems
Hello,
Keyword Research | | Gabijaurbs
I am having a problem while I am searching for keywords - it just says "Getting serp analysis failed. Please retry your search or refresh this page" on all browsers I try it on. Hard reloaded too and still not working. Could you help me with this?
Best regards, Gabija0 -
The same keyword on multiple pages, but not all (combined with other relevant keywords) for products.
Hi Guys, I want to get an opinion/advice on this. My client has a site that have all their products (I am working on expanding the product descriptions, benefits and how they differ from each other) listed and I just want to know if I can use the term 'gear oil' for example on multiple pages as one of the keywords. The product range (among others like transmission fluid and anti-freeze) is gear oil (with the different types of gear oils available described) and I can't really change what the product is. I do have different variations (such as gear lubricant, automotive gear lubricant, car gear oil etc.) but will it do damage if I use the same keyword (like gear oil) on multiple pages (along with another relevant keyword that does not involve the words gear oil)? Any help on this will be greatly appreciated!
Keyword Research | | annabel.schoeman0 -
Why does this keyword have much greater volume in Bing Keyword Research Tool than Google AdWords Keyword Planner?
I'm using the Google AdWords keyword planner and Bing Webmaster Keyword Research tool. For both, I'm trying to get accurate search volume for the exact term "advertising sales". Over the last thirty days, Bing reports a volume of 5,988. Google's average monthly search volume is 880. Given the market share Google has, I would expect a much higher volume, especially when compared to Bing. Can you offer some ideas of why this might be happening?
Keyword Research | | Kevin_P0 -
Longtail keyword definition seems fuzzy?
So we all know about longtail keyword vs. short tail. However, it seems that the definition is a bit inconsistant. Some people say longtail keywords are keywords that get very low amounts of traffic, others that they are key phrases with 2 or more words. And others add to this that they have high conversion rate but describe specific features, product, service, model # etc. In an ideal model I suppose all of these things would be true. As keyword length increases, traffic tends to decrease, keyword is more specific pointing at features, model#, specific product etc and therefore the conversion rate is a bit higher as well. However, the data isn't a perfect curve. I will see keywords that get 18,000 searches but have 4 words. And then I will see single word key phrases that get <10 -20 searches a month. What am I to consider these? Its like they fit half the criteria. Any comments on this would be helpful and appreciated. I suppose the real question I am after is - it seems like the real definition of a long tail keyword cant be any of the above traits of a long tail keyword. How do you really define a long tail keyword in all circumstances (without it being this subjective idealized definition based on a perfect model) and where would the keyword circumstances (lots of words but high traffic, and low traffic but 1 word) fall in the graph? Center?
Keyword Research | | eastco0 -
Bulk keyword competition tool?
The SEOmoz Keyword Difficulty tool is great, but the 5 keyword limit is too small. I need a tool that will allow checking the organic competition level of 100's of keywords (to help in selecting blog topics). Anyone know of such a tool?
Keyword Research | | AdamThompson1 -
Keyword Research (dash or no dash)
I have a client that has been optimizing for "print and apply" for the past 5 months. Yesterday they decided it was more grammatically correct to use "print-and-apply." There question to me was "is this going to effect our SEO?" So... I checked the difficulty using the keyword analysis tool, both keywords had the same broad/exact adwords traffic as well as difficulty percentage. When reviewing the top 25 listings for each keyword it looks like the same sites rank in the SERPs between 1-8 and then after that it is completely different. So, is there a better keyword to target? Are these two keywords different enough to truly have separate search results?
Keyword Research | | kchandler
The top 8 results didn't even target "print-and-apply" in there content or title tags... Thanks for the input/discussion - Kyle0 -
Should we change our site domain name to include our keyword?
Our niche has one keyword phrase that is much, much more active than any other comparable phrase. Let's call that phrase "math problems". Within this phrase, the "math" is absolutely the most important keyword, as it is also used in every spin-off search phrase, like "math answers", "math practice", etc. We've had our domain since 1996, and is currently the company name - "Rocketproblems.com". Over the last year (2010-2011) our SERPs have steadily dropped to the point where we're not getting a sustainable level of business from organic search, whereas in 2009 we were doing fantastic. However, we've also had "Rocketmathproblems.com" since about 2000, just gathering dust. What I've noticed from the top search results is that nearly every domain has either "math" or "math problems" in its URL. Do you think it's worth it to switch to the keyword-rich URL? It is a bit more verbose, and the "Rocketmathproblems.com" v.s. "Rocketproblems.com" example perfectly captures the different feeling. My inclination is that SEO is only becoming more competitive, and if we aren't getting worthwhile business from organic search at the moment then we should bite the bullet and make the switch for the future, along with ramping up our content generation. However, I also noticed that in late 2009 a previous webmaster switched to "Rogermath.com" but switched back within a month when our SERP for the key phrase was a page lower - I gleaned this from a Moz Juicy Keywords Report :). Thoughts?
Keyword Research | | ACann0 -
Choosing keywords for similar products on an ecommerce site
In the case of an e-commerce website, can you optimize multiple pages using the same keyword ‘root’ but including different long-tail variances of that ‘root’? For example, say I’m optimizing for a site that sells wallpaper. I found search traffic for the keyword “buy wallpaper online,” but no traffic for “Blue Tinted Wallpaper” (or its variants) and no taffic for “Yellow Plaid Wallpaper” (or its variants). Could I effectively optimize both of these pages using the root “Buy wallpaper online”, yet distinguish the pages by using long-tail variants such as “Buy Blue Tinted Wallpaper Online” and “Buy Yellow plaid Wallpaper Online”? Any examples of this you can point to?
Keyword Research | | EricVallee340