Keyword cannibalization
-
I ran the SEOMoz onpage diagnostic, and i got an alert for keyword cannibalization. My taxonomy is:
www.mysite.com/category (category page)
www.mysite.com/category/category-keyword (supporting page)
Links will be exact match in the primary navigation.
www.mysite.com anchor text "category" => www.mysite.com/category
www.mysite.com anchor text "category keyword" => www.mysite.com/category/category-keyword
www.mysite.com/category anchor text "category keyword" => www.mysite.com/category/category-keyword
and example would be /IT-support linking with anchor text "IT Support Servers" => /IT-Support/IT-Support-Servers
I'm not going to have a cannibalization problem, am I?
-
Hi Rahul, you shouldn't have any cannibalization issue, but the high repetition of a keyword of you category may led google to sometimes show your category keyword page instead of the category one if it's capable to achieve enough value.
As an example looking at the /IT-Support/IT-Support-Servers page why not making that
/IT-Support/Servers
in that sense you won't be repeating so much your keywords there, which is less spammy, shorter and cleaner both for google and for users.
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
-
Ecommerce store on subdomain - danger of keyword cannibalization?
Hi all, Scenario: Ecommerce website selling a food product has their store on a subdomain (store.website.com). A GOOD chunk of the URLs - primarily parameters - are blocked in Robots.txt. When I search for the products, the main domain ranks almost exclusively, while the store only ranks on deeper SERPs (several pages deep). In the end, only one variation of the product is listed on the main domain (ex: Original Flavor 1oz 24 count), while the store itself obviously has all of them (most of which are blocked by Robots.txt). Can anyone shed a little bit of insight into best practices here? The platform for the store is Shopify if that helps. My suggestion at this point is to recommend they all crawling in the subdomain Robots.txt and canonicalize the parameter pages. As for keywords, my main concern is cannibalization, or rather forcing visitors to take extra steps to get to the store on the subdomain because hardly any of the subdomain pages rank. In a perfect world, they'd have everything on their main domain and no silly subdomain. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alces0 -
How can I target more similar keywords in the most effective way?
Hello Community In my niche there are many keywords that are similar and Im not sure how to go about targeting them. Quick example: buy domain name register domain name register domain and hosting For these 3 keywords I have 1 article that ranks first for the first keyword and 5 and 8 for the other two. If I want to have higher chances of landing a first position for the other 2 keywords, should I write an article for each of them? A specific piece of content designed around each single keyword? My niche is in Italy so don't bother checking on Google 🙂 Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Andrew_IT0 -
Worried about keyword stuffing penalty re: URLs
I've noticed a potential problem with a mult-location business (this is an example URL - not the actual name of the business) I sense this is OK: carsdepots.com/ashford/cars But then I noticed they've added cars to location part of URL in some instances (they have 6 locations in total and have done this with 5 of them): carsdepots.com/birmingham-cars/cars So we have cars in there 3 times (that's the maximum number of times in any URL but it looks a little spammy to me) I am tempted to remove yoga from the location names, or flatten the URL structure completely - your thoughts would be welcome, or perhaps I shouldn't even be worrying?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Keyword not ranking but keyword within a phrase is?
Hi Guys, Google is not indexing the keyword ‘e liquid’ for www.cloudstix.com/e-liquid and it's driving me insane. I cannot understand why, can anyone please shed any light! -On page we have used variations e liquid, e-liquid, eliquid. -The e-liquid product pages are canonicaled to www.cloudstix.com/e-liquid. -3 other pages regarding e liquid were 301 redirected to the page passing good authority. I did this as I believed these pages conflicted as they seemed to target e-liquid. -‘e-liquid’ is being used as an anchor throughout the website pointing to www.cloudstix.com/e-liquid. -The ‘e liquid’ page has generally good authority PA 22, DA26. -The website has good anchor text linking to the site, all relative and e liquid related, along with brand links. Currently the keyword ‘e liquid’ brings up the home page www.cloudstix.com ranked 100+. What’s strange is the other terms relating to 'e liquid' bring up www.cloudstix.com/e-liquid for example: ‘e liquid uk’ ‘the best e liquid’ and ‘e liquid cloudstix’. Any ideas on what the problem may be. Would appreciate any advice on this. Thanks guys! Liam
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | One2OneDigital0 -
Changing keyword target on home page? Will it work?
I have a site that is in the financial services niche and has around 20 pages talking about different services. I want to change the goal of the site and now just target Insurance. The current home page is a simple introduction to the website, I was going to change this to target the insurance keyword and put around 500 words content on the front page. I was also going to change the Page Title, Description and H1 tags too. My question is will the front page then rank for that keyword once google recrawls the site? Could I damage the PR of the site or any other factors from changing the front page. Here are some stats about the site 11 years old PR 3 Page Mozrank 5.58 Page Moztrust 5.61 Domain Mozrank 2.29 Domain Moztrust 3.17 Thanks for your help guys
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnPeters0 -
Improving keyword stuffing and site menu
I'm doing some work on http://flyawaysimulation.com/ and would like some tips to avoid keyword stuffing for the term "flight simulator" on this page. Currently, there are about 42 occurrences of the term "flight simulator" on this page - which is above the SEOmoz 15 term recommended limit. However, looking at the page - they have used the term fairly and it doesn't appear that "inappropriate". Could you guys have a look and let me know your thoughts? What can be done? Where can the repetitions be removed from without hurting internal SEO? Also, from an SEO standpoint how could we improve the site menu? For example, if the word "downloads" were removed from the Downloads-->FSX Downloads, FS2004 Downloads, X-Plane Downloads menu (for example just FSX, FS2004, X-Plane) to remove repetition of the phrase - would engines understand that those are "Downloads" because of it being under the "Downloads" drop down list? Your thoughts, suggestions and ideas are greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Peter2640 -
Shortening Keywords in a title tag
in my title tag i want to have: 3D Renders of Office Refurbishment & Interior Design Kent | Complete Group which unfortunatly is longer than 70 characters, however, to make it fit in 70 characters i could put: 3D Renders of Office Refurb & Interior Design Kent | Complete Group Notice that refurbishment has been changed to refurb, would this be ok for SEO purposes?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CompleteOffice0 -
Should I build links to the home page or a url containing the keyword?
I run an IT company and the company name does not contain the key word I am trying to rank on. I also have a bunch of pages with page rank that containing the actual keywords, for example: http://www.mycompanyname.com/tech-support/locations/brighton My target keyword is "Tech Support Brighton" My Home page is PR4 and my location based pages are PR3. My plan was to build 3 or 4 location pages for the locations we provide tech support for and target location based keyword Anchor text to these URL's e.g "Tech Support Brighton" and then for the home page build links that have the anchor text "Tech Support". Does this sound sane? Many Thanks, K
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOKeith0