Worried about keyword cannibalization
-
I've been reading a lot about keyword cannibalization and I'm worried that some of my sub pages may be pulling rank from my home page.
If I'm trying to rank my home page for the keyword phrase "blue widget manufacturing" and I have sub pages with the titles "blue manufacturing services", "blue widget enginnering", "medical widget manufacturing" is it possible that those pages could be causing me to commit keyword cannibalization?
I'm looking at a lot of the results for my keyword phrase and they don't seem to have additional pages with similar keyword phrases.
Wondering if I should change my titles so they don't look as optimized.
-
No worries Brandon - best of luck!
-
Thanks for the reply Matt!
I think I may have identified another page on our site that could be optimized for the same keyword phrase, so I made changes to the title and h1 tags along with a review of the content.
I also discovered that on the home page both my h1 and h2 tags were the same. Not sure how much that may of contributed to our recent drop but I'm going to test that out to see if it was an issue.
-
Hi Brandon,
I had something very similar with my site very recently. Our main area of business is to do with French property, and we realised that we have 4 areas of the site all directly targeting the same keywords. Our homepage was by far the strongest on "French Property" keyword historically, but it suddenly started plummeting down the rankings.
Since we have re-targeted the other 3 areas of the site away from "French Property", our homepage has surged back up the rankings, so there is definitely danger in targeting the same keyword on multiple pages/areas.
The difference between your site and mine however, is that we were targeting almost exact matches. You seem to be targeting slightly different keywords, so I would suggest that you are safe, on the whole. I mean, if you're selling Mars bars, it's going to be pretty difficult not to mention Mars bars on almost every page! One thing I would suggest is your homepage will more often than not rank highest for your site's overall area of business, so make sure you homepage is optimised with your most valuable keyword.
I hope that helps!
Matt
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 Themes - What's in a theme?
I recently read the Moz guide for "How To Rank - 25 Step SEO Master Blue Print" and had a question on keyword themes. What is considered a theme? Is there a recommended number of keywords in a theme? For example, if my site is for listing and selling cars, would the following terms fit within the same "car" theme or should the terms be broken out by "cars general" / "car locations" / "car types"? Cars Cars for sale in new york Ford Explorer for sale
Keyword Research | | Emily_A0 -
Do "search keywords" matter?
I've been getting conflicting accounts about this. We aways fill out the Title Tag, Meta Description and Product Tags(<- for internal purposes) but we are concerned about how important the "search keywords" are. We use bigcommerce and they describe their value as this: "the search keywords are optional, but if entered will be used for two things. First, they will be used along with the product name to create meta tags for search engine (I know meta keywords are not important, so is this what they mean?). Second, they will be used to assist people when searching your products. (Also internal, right?)." For all intents and purposes I think it is NOT super important but I wanted to make sure before I let them take a back burner. Thank you for your help in advance!
Keyword Research | | WNL0 -
Branded Keywords
I know branded keywords are variations of your company name. However, my company sell a number of exclusive products that have been trademarked so no other company can use that name. Is that counted as a branded keyword?
Keyword Research | | AAttias0 -
Keyword competitiveness/research
I'm familiar with ranking factors and can get a pretty good idea of whether going for a keyword is realistic by looking at the seomoz keyword difficulty tool. As well as the % score it has a lot of useful information. There was an seomoz article a while ago that detailed how 100 or so experts determine a keyword's competitiveness. Does anybody have the link? Or just as good, any useful guides to interpreting the data to gauge how possible it is to compete? Thanks
Keyword Research | | PTMPercy0 -
Trying to avoid Keyword Cannibalization
I have a navigation menu at the top of my page with drop down menus that lead to different pages of my web site. Very typical navigation. If I have a page that is optimized for a particular keyword, lets say "Awesome Blue Widgets", do I want to remove that link from the navigation menu on the page awesome-blue-widgets.htm since the link uses the keyword phrase "Awesome Blue Widgets'?
Keyword Research | | TRICORSystems0 -
Keyword and Keyphrases
I'm looking to optimise my website for some keywords and keyphrases I'm getting a bit confused on how different pages might compete (or help) each other. As we are an automotive dealer I was thinking about building the hompage around 4 keywords (one for each franchise we represent e.g 'Ford'). These show high local monthly searches and medium competition for just the manufacturer name on its own. Then if someone drills down into a franchise homepage (linked from our homepage e.g. www.ourwebsite.com/ford) I was thinking to optimise the page around e.g. 'Ford Dealer' (which has medium local monthly searches and high competition). Then if someone drills down into a particular model I optimise around that and so on. Question is will I be playing the franchise homepage vs the group homepage (Ford vs Ford Dealer) as I have read here on Keyword Cannibalization? Or will it work together? Alternative I guess is not to focus around a franchise on the group homepage and then only focus on the franchise from the franchise homepage onwards but I feel I would be missing a trick? As a new kid on the block help will be most appreciated.
Keyword Research | | design_man0 -
Optimizing for two nearly identical keywords.
Hi Mozzers, So in one of my campaigns I'm trying to optimize for "Personal Trainer Minneapolis" and "Minneapolis Personal Trainer". Would the best tactic be: Develop and optimize two pages. One for each of these similar keywords. (Clearly not the best UX). or Try to optimize a single page for both. Thanks for your thoughts!
Keyword Research | | JesseCWalker0 -
Keyword Finder
I'm looking for some direction to find better keywords for my sites. Any tips would be appreciated? This question could potentially be too broad.
Keyword Research | | CPP-3601