Help on Avoid Keyword Self-Cannibalization
-
i ran the on page test and i got the avoid keyword self-canabilzation alert
one example is for http://www.deporvillage.com/shimano
maybe is because a'm not a native speaking english person but i do not understand what it exactly means
the targeted keyword for this page is shimano and the alert i got for the links like the one below that i have in my page
http://www.deporvillage.com/ciclismo/zapatillas-shimano which has a anchor text like zapatillas ciclismo shimano
-
I think Sven's essentially correct, although I suspect the word "Shimano" is what we're flagging. You've got the main Shimano page that splits out into sub-pages, and every link for the sub-pages has "Shimano" in the anchor text. The problem is that it IS keyword cannibalization, in a sense, and yet it also makes perfect sense in this situation.
I think this is pretty common in search pages, and probably isn't a big issue. Honestly, internal search pages and Google don't always get along in general, so it can be tricky. You could draw "Shimano" out into a header and then not use it in every piece of anchor text (it could start to look excessive), but practically speaking, I doubt it's going to have much impact either way.
-
Indeed!
In case of problematic keyword selfcannibalization you can choose from two options:
- Combine two landing pages into one of the two, and deleting (or noindex) the other one.
- Avoid overlap as much as possible by making sure the exact query you want to rank for on page A does not appear on page B (and vice versa).
I think it depends on the situation whether you want to go for option 1 or 2. In your case it seems pretty much okay, but to be sure you could cut down on the word ciclismo on the general shimano page.
Best of luck!
Sven Witteveen
Expand Online
-
thanks sven. so do you recommend me to do any action like delete some ciclismo instances on the shimano pages?
x
-
I did a quick check on both pages:
http://www.deporvillage.com/ciclismo/zapatillas-shimano
and
http://www.deporvillage.com/shimanoBoth get an A for on-page optimization for the word: shimano. Also on the page /shimano there are 41 instances of the word ciclismo. You might want to avoid this word on the general /shimano page if you have a separate landing page for 'zapatillas ciclismo shimano'.
However, generally speaking there isn't much to worry about if you do not in fact rank with both pages for one keyword.
Sven Witteveen
Expand Online -
thanks expand online team, but i wonder why is considering it self canibalization if there are different keywords
shimano is pointing to http://www.deporvillage.com/shimano
and zapatillas ciclismo shimano (shimano cycling shoes) to http://www.deporvillage.com/ciclismo/zapatillas-shimano
there are different keywords so they might have different url's no?
-
Rand has said the following about it in his blog:
....Keyword self-cannibalization - the practice of heavily targeting the same keyword phrase on multiple pages of a site....
Having multiple pages for one keyword or phrase is not ideal since this means you are competing with yourself. All the backlinks, content, internal linkjuice etc. is devided over multiple pages instead of concentrating it on one page.
Ofcourse, if these pages are on position one and two in the SERP this situation is perfectly fine. However, if they hold position 11 and 15 the combined force of these two pages may be enough to rank 5th or 6th. That would generate a lot more traffic since results after postion 10 generate virtually no traffic.
I hope this helps!
Greets,
Sven Witteveen
Expand Online
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
-
Are Pages that have High Traffic and High Bounce Rates helpful?
I work as a marketing director for a small law firm. I had some basic SEO experience prior to joining the firm but I'm still building my knowledge base. I'm working to take over where the previous web developer left off and improve the site. The previous firm had developed pages for the law firm featuring yearly car crash statistics, statistics for bike crashes, etc. These pages get a good amount of hits but people quickly jump off the pages, and most are not even located in a region where they could potentially become a client. I feel like they added the pages to show the client that there was an increase in search traffic. However, 100% of the traffic bounces quickly after viewing the statistics pages. Does a page that has a decent amount of hits, but doesn't lead to conversions and has a nearly 100% bounce rate worth keeping around? My thought is, I would like to remove these pages that do not actually attract potential clients and reduce the overall bounce rate of the site. I don't want to take actions to remove the page without throwing this question out to more experienced people.
On-Page Optimization | | Champlain_Valley_Law1 -
I have seen zero movement in my Google keyword rankings.
I have seen zero movement in my Google keyword rankings, but I have seen movement on the other search engines. I must be doing something wrong. Any tips?
On-Page Optimization | | LindaWolfe0 -
Advice with keywords - category - Forum
Hiya guys Everyone has been really good to me on here, just wanted a bit of advice with the keywords on my forum. my website is a nightlife forum for the UK, each city has its own section. Each section has a eg: _What's on in Birmingham? Club Nights, Upcoming Events, Promotions _ as the Title category, Should I drop the Club Nights, Upcoming Events, Promotions and put that in the description of the forum. So it'll just be What's on in Birmingham? with a description Find Club night information, Upcoming events and pr............. eg Just wondering if it was to stop searches been made, like, Club nights in Birmingham etc. from being targeted. Your thoughts please guys Thanks for reading Lukescotty
On-Page Optimization | | Lukescotty0 -
Canonical tag help
Hi, We have a product which is marketed by affiliates . Affiliates send referrals to our sale page by adding their affiliate IDs to our product page like http://www.mysite.com/products.php?ref= 12345. We want to avoid the content duplication impression to Google by using canonical tags but we are not clear about its use. Should we use it on http://www.mysite.com/products.php ( actual page) or we should create temporary pages for each referral id i.e http://www.mysite.com/products.php?ref= 12345 and then add canonical tags to all those pages linking to proper page i.e http://www.mysite.com/products.php ? Thanks, shaz
On-Page Optimization | | shaz_lhr0 -
Keyword self cannibalization
Hello, I'm confused about the recommendations for avoiding keyword self cannibalization. I have a niche blog and some of my sticky posts on the homepage contain my site's main keyword in their title. For example, say if my homepage has "dog training" as it's main keyword, then there are going to be links to more longtail pages with titles such as "dog training London", "dog training Liverpool" etc. When I do this SeoMoz's on-page optimization tool tells me that this is keyword self cannibalization. I am building links to the inner pages using the longtail keywords only. 1. Do I need to rename pages with just "london" and "liverpool" etc and remove "dog training" from those links? 2. What is the best thing to do in this situation? Thanks, Kevin
On-Page Optimization | | KMack0 -
301 redirect and then keywords in URL
Hi, Matt Cutts says that 301 redirects, including the ones on internal pages, causes the loss of a little bit of link juice. But also, I know that keywords in the URL are very important. On our site, we've got unoptimized URLs (few keywords) in the internal pages. Is it worth doing a 301 redirect in order to optimize the URLs for each main page. 301 redirects are the only way we can do it on our premade cart For example (just an example) say our main (1 of the 4) keywords for the page is "brown shoes". I'm wondering if I should redirect something like shoes.com/shoecolors.html to shoes.com/brown-shoes.html In other words, with the loss of juice would we come out ahead? In what instances would we come out ahead?
On-Page Optimization | | BobGW0 -
SEO Titles and Keyword Density
Hey guys, I'm doing some on page SEO for a few clients and I've always wondered about this question. I have read tons of articles on the perfect <title>tag, but they don't often mention this.</p> <p>So my titles, like most others follow this format:</p> <p>Keyword 1 | Keyword 2 - Company</p> <p>So say for example I am trying to rank for 'life insurance' and 'life insurance quote' for 'axa sunlife'.</p> <p>It's my assumption that the title should be:</p> <p>Life Insurance Quote - Axa Sunlife</p> <p>rather than:</p> <p>Life Insurance | Life Insurance Quote - Axa Sunlife</p> <p>Am I right in thinking that putting it twice has no added value, and could in fact have an adverse effect?</p> <p>Thanks,</p> <p>Lewis.</p> <p> </p></title>
On-Page Optimization | | SEOMyGod0 -
When the keyword rankings trend south…?
So for the past 3 or 4 weeks or so I’ve been making some on page tweaks for keywords that we should rank for, implementing all the keyword recommendations, and getting “A’s” in the report card for page optimization in the Pro tool, and also doing things like fixing a bunch of 404’s that I found ….so I thought I was doing a bang up job… My rankings for some keywords were generally trending (slowly) in the right direction, but this morning I see that 2 important keywords that I had been working hard on, and which had trended from around 40 to in the high 20’s in rankings, has now dropped out of top 50 altogether…. I’m a little dispirited, and now wondering if I did something wrong? Any thoughts or recommendations? Is it normal just to drop out of top 50 when you were in the 20's or 30's? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | inhouseninja0