Keyword Cannibalization?

[IOSC]

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

[Pooja_Chauhan]

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.

[TakeshiYoung]

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.

[ericnsantos]

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,

[IOSC]

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.

[TakeshiYoung]

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.