Keyword Cannibalization?
-
I am not quite sure I totally understand the concept of keyword cannibalization. I have seen the SEO Moz Snowboard example... I tried to apply the concept but the on-page ranking sees a category page of mine with KW cannibalization. By the way, I still get an A for the targeted KW.
I have an e-commerce site, one category page targets 'wool sweaters' and a product page for example is : 'chunky-knit wool turtleneck sweater' (there are 8 products total in this category all are flagged Cannibalizers). I didn't think KWC would be an issue...ranking seems to be effected judging ranking for other category pages w/o KW cannibalization issues.
So, my question I guess is KW cannibalization really a big deal? What is taken into account when judging KW cannibalization. Title Tags? URLs?
Thanks in advance
-
thanks Takeshi really useful reply, but i would like to advise Eric, that he should not need to assign category canonical link tag in product pages as product has its own somehow authority.
If want to prioritize category page then you need to improve overall on-site with regard to increase more importance than product page for that specific search terms or phrases. -
Correct except for the nofollows. You almost never want to use nofollow links pointing to your own site. And try to put as much of the content you have on your product pages onto the category page.
-
So, suposing that I want to rank my category page and not my product page, You guys think that any of the follow measures are reasonable?
-
use a canonical tag in my product page pointing to my category page,
-
use nofollows links from my category page to my product pages and do the inverse concerning my product pages.
-
atribute a higher priority to my category page in my sitemap.
hugs,
-
-
Great, thanks a lot. That makes sense as to why I can get an on-page 'A' score yet ultimately could be doing more harm than good.
-
Keyword cannibalization in a nutshell: Google only shows 1 result from your site for any given query (unless it thinks you're REALLY relevant). That means you want the page that shows up to be the one with the greatest relevance and conversion potential. If you have multiple pages that target the same keyword, Google could end up confused and display the non-optimal page over your desired landing page.
Title tag, url, and on-page content all play a role in keyword cannibalization.
It's only a problem if you're finding that the non-optimal page is ranking over your optimal one. For example, if your category page ('wool sweaters') is outranking your product page ('knit wool turtleneck sweater') for the search team "knit wool turtleneck sweater", then you have a problem. In that case, make sure you improve your internal & external linking to the product page, and make sure it has higher quality, targeted content than the category 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
-
Keyword rich domain name and page title
Hi guys, First of all, I must say I love this community, and that SEO is great and at time fascinating :d Ok my question now is, I have this domain which is keyword rich, later I noticed Google changed my pages title into something else but similar, also added my domain name (mysite.com) in the titles. Google had taken some of his auto-title-suggestions from inside my pages, later i changed them and saw google changed the titles too accordingly, nice work google ) So I figured this tile name changing is because my domain is already keyword rich, right? so the best practice is, I create a more unique descriptive title + my domain name at the end of the title. (And for homepage, domain name .com at the beginning in the title. What do you think? Thanks for your thoughts!
Technical SEO | | mdmoz0 -
Targeting multiple keywords with index page
Quick keyword question.... I just started working with a client that is ranking fairly well for a number of keywords with his index page. Right now he has a bunch of duplicate titles, descriptions, etc across the entire site. There are 5 different keywords in the title of the index page alone. I am wondering if it OK to target 3 different keywords with the index page? Or, if I should cut it down to 1. Think blue widget, red widget, and widget making machines. I want each of the individual keywords to improve but don't want to lose what I have either. Any ideas? THANKS!!!!
Technical SEO | | SixTwoInteractive0 -
Lost ranking for top keyword
For the last 3 months we've been working on www.UneekJewelry.com to get it rank for "unique engagement rings" and got it to position 14 but since September 18th, 2012 that all changed. The website no longer ranks for our money keyword not even in the top 500. We haven't been building exact match keywords but using more phrase match and I can't tell if its because we don't have enough exact match or something else. We have been working on trying to figure out what the issue is as they still rank for other keywords like "unique engagement rings in los angeles", therefore we don't know if this is a keyword penalty or glitch in Google, can anyone give us any insight on what could cause such a drop in those specific keywords for our site. Most of the link building we have done for this client is from in content blogs. The only blog we were suspicious of we removed the article from that blog two days ago. The ranking have not come back. This was the last blog that the exact match keyword was used where we removed the article from: http://colorfuljewelry.blogspot.com/ Thanks,
Technical SEO | | harrykabadaian0 -
Advice and Opinions Required Regarding creating new pages for similar keywords
We are currently in the process of creating new pages for keywords very similar to our main landing pages. Example: Page 1.) "Family Holiday in {Location}" Page 2.) "Family Vacation in {Location}" Page 3.) "Family get-away in {location}" All 3 keywords are currently optimised for the 1st page "Family Holidays in {Location}" but was wondering if there is any benefit or if its worth creating sub pages for these alternative keywords. I personally don't think we should do this as Google will know to rank our main page for secondary/synonym keywords via on page seo and links with anchor text, but can you foresee any negative aspects if we went ahead and created these children pages being linked to from the top level keyword's page? Or do we continue optimising our main landing page for related/synonym keywords? Thanks in Advance GREG
Technical SEO | | AndreVanKets0 -
Can I optimize two different pages with very similar keywords without hurting SEO?
Hi there, I have often heard that you cannot have multiple pages rank for the same keyword. My question here is more about long tail keywords who have the same keyword phrase repeated on different pages. For Example: I have two webpages with different content. I want to have one page (Homepage) rank for the more generic term such as "innovation management" and another supporting page rank for "innovation management software". Will Google see these two different webpages as competing? Should I avoid repeating the more general term in the phrase? Has anyone ever seen your SEO results decline when doing this? I don't believe this is duplicate content since the pages hold completely different copy and assets but I am not sure if the repeating phrase in the title tags will flag anything to the search engines.
Technical SEO | | Scratch_MM0 -
Google Webmaster Tools: Keywords
Hi SEOmozzers! I'm the Dr./owner/in-house SEO for my eye care practice. The URL is www.ofallonfamilyeyecare.com. Our practice is in O'Fallon, MO. Since I'm an optometrist, my main keywords are "optometrist o'fallon" and "o'fallon optometrist". As I get more familiarity with SEO, Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools, I've discovered the Keywords that Google feels best represent my website. About a week ago I noted Google counted 21 instances of "optometrist" on the 28-30 pages of my website, which ranks as #32 in the most common keywords. #1 is "eye" with 506 instances. Even though 21 occurrences seemed low, I went though every page adding "optometrist" a couple times in the body where it would naturally be appropriate. I also added it to the address shown on the footer of every page. I changed the top navigation option of "meet Dr. Hegyi" to "our optometrist". I must have added at least 4 occurrences to every page on my site, and submitted for a re-crawl. I even tried to scale back the "eye" occurrences on a few pages. Today I see that Google has re-crawled the site and the keywords have been updated. "Optometrist has DROPPED from #32 to #33. Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions why I'm not seeing increased occurrence in Googles eyes? I realize this may not be a big factor in SERPs, but every bit of on-page optimization helps. Or is this too minor of an issue to sweat? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | JosephHegyi0 -
Domain Masking with New Keyword-Rich Domains
Hello, friends. We have an ecommerce site and we also own several keyword-rich domains but haven't done anything with them yet. Is there any value in using domain masking to point them to either product pages or special landing pages on our primary ecommerce site? Here's an example: Primary site is widgetzone.com Keyword rich URL is acmewidget.com (which is totally blank and isn't indexed) It could point to our category page for Acme Widgets: widgetzone.com/category/acme-widgets or it could point to a new landing page: widgetzone.com/acme-widgets My concern is that because the keyword-rich URL hasn't been utilized at all there's really no point in redirecting it. I'm of the mind that it's either going to be ineffective at best or a duplicate content issue at worst. What do you guys think? As a follow-up, if we don't redirect these domains, what should we do with them? Just try to sell them off rather than create totally new sites?
Technical SEO | | jbreeden0