Is this keyword cannibalization?

[Sika22]

I have a product page and our home page ranked for the same keyword.

On August 6th the product page was ranked #14 then plummeted to #60.  On August 13th our home page was in the #2 spot (line just appears out of nowhere) and it is now in the #1 spot.

I also see the same pages appearing for some keywords ranked in multiple positions then plummeting and one coming back up.  I'm having a hard time understanding how the Keyword tool in Moz is reporting exactly.  Thanks!

To add to this: From Oct 8th to the 15th we jumped up from #60 to #16 for one keyword and then by Oct. 22nd are back down to #60.  I have a huge spike on the 15th.  Wondering if that had anything to do with any algorithm updates?

[webmethod]

SearchMetrics would be a good place to start - you won't get individual keyword historic performance but it will show your website's overall SEO visibility over time. Particularly useful for tying in with Google algorithmic updates.

George

[Sika22]

Thanks everyone.  I have to report on keyword progress and just noticed those things and wanted to be sure it was ok.  I'm having a hard time reporting on the progress of keywords as I can only go back to August in Moz.  If anyone has any other suggestions for a way to see historical progress I'm all ears.  Thanks!

[webmethod]

Hi Sika,

What you're seeing isn't anything to be concerned about, and Moosa has already answered the cannibalisation part. I'd advise against tracking positions for individual keywords using a single tool from one week to the next. If you imagine there's a natural fluctuation of rankings and Moz is taking individual snapshots that might be up one day and down the next so they're only really meaningful when tracked over a longer period of time. You're also not taking into account the long tail - bunches of keywords that are similar which may not be fluctuating nearly as much as the one you're tracking.

The real indicator of where you rank should be the organic traffic to the page. I doubt that traffic will be fluctuating even nearly as much as the positions for the few keywords you are looking at.

As for algorithmic negative impact - you would probably see significant drops across multiple tracked keywords if this was the case - and those drops would be sustained until you diagnosed and fixed the problem.

Regards,

George

[MoosaHemani]

The situation you have mentioned didn’t really sound much terrifying and I think two pages if naturally targeting the same keyword should not be a problem. By definition this is exactly for Keyword Cannibalization is!

Keyword cannibalization (no matter how awfully terrifying it may sound) is a widely-spread website internal information structure problem that occurs when multiple subpages are (heavily) targeting one and the same key term.

Hope this helps!