How to best correct cannibalization?
-
I apologize if this has already been answered, but after reading several posts on cannibalization, I can't seem to find what I am looking for.
The site in question is www.urbanitystudios.com and in particular the term "western wedding invitation". We rank in the top 30 for this term in Google, but Google has indexed a particular product, versus our western wedding invitation collection page.
The product that is indexed for this term:
http://www.urbanitystudios.com/Designs/western-wedding-invitations-p-1527.html
The page that we would rather be indexed:
http://www.urbanitystudios.com/Designs/western-wedding-invitations-c-95_179_181.html
After running an onpage report in SEOmoz tools for the collection page, we recieve an A grade, but get a warning on the cannibalization line item. As you can see, we name each product within that collection as "Western Wedding Invitation-x" (and have done this for other product categories...not good). After a good head slap, we realized that we are confusing Google as to what should be the main page.
If we rename our products, the product's URL will change-Do we do a 301 for those products?
If we rename our products, do we take out the words "Western Wedding Invitation" entirely or can we say "x-Western Wedding Invitation"?
Or. because cannibalization is deemed a "low priority" in the reports, do we let things be and work on getting links to the collections page vs the individual product?
Any insight would be most appreciated.
-
The idea behind cannibalization is you do not want multiple pages on your site discussing the exact same topic. If the same topic needs to be discussed, then some slant on the topic should be established so search engines and users can differentiate between the two pages. Instead of making a second "Wedding Invitations" page you could focus on "2012 Wedding Invitations" or "10 Best Wedding Invitations".
This is where I pause for a moment and confess my ignorance. I have no idea what a "cupcake invitation" is, and my mother and sister aren't available to help. I google'd it and still am not quite clear on the concept. What's missing is the wikipedia page, which is a GREAT opportunity for you! Go to wikipedia, create a quality "cupcake invitation page" and include 2 links to your site, but try to include links to other high quality sites which discuss the topic as well. If you don't already have such a page on your site, you may want to make a "Man's Guide to Invitations". It can be a simple, one page article to help those who are not familiar with the terms and etiquette get by. Alternatively a glossary page could be offered. Make sure the page you link to from wikipedia is a very high quality page, preferable without ads and a "buy now" focus.
For this reply please allow me to replace the "cupcake invitation" with "wedding invitation". Using that category, you have some products such as "pink-plaid".
For your first question, it is up to you how to combine the category and product. The normal URL presentation would be category first followed by product such as /wedding-invitations/pink-plaid. That type of setup is generally easy to implement and well understood by users. You can create alterations but they often don't scale so well to other categories.
For your second question, I would suggest including the category name in the H1 tag. A "pink plaid" page in and of itself does not hold a lot of meaning. I presume you could have wedding invitations, baby announcements and other categories with a "pink plaid" page. You need to differentiate them by adding the category name such as "Pink Plaid Wedding Invitations".
-
After reading your post and processing through the information we have started to change some of our keyword phrases within our category pages. However, we now have run up against a possible issue of more cannibalization items. I will try to explain what we think will happen if we do the following:
We created a category called Cupcake Invitations and have optimized the page for that keyword phrase. We have placed five products within this category and are very unclear as to how we should name each product. We would like to do one of two things (or whatever would work best). One idea would be to adjust their names so their URL contains “cupcake invitations”. The reason for this is because if we don’t add in “cupcake invitations” to our product name, our URL would look like this:
http://www.urbanitystudios.com/Designs/pink-plaid-p-####.html instead of
http://www.urbanitystudios.com/Designs/pink-plaid-cupcake-invitations-p-####.html
Question #1-Add the category name to the end of the product name?
Would we serve or hinder ourselves to name the product something like “pink plaid cupcake invitation” (which would be an H3 on the category page of “Cupcake Invitations”)i.e.. we think we would serve ourselves that if someone searches for “cupcake invitation” in say Googlebase, these products would show up. But would we hinder ourselves if we name all five products with some “product-name-cupcake-invitation” will we not run into keyword stuffing and cannibalization among the product pages? Especially when we grow that category with more cupcake themed products?
Question #2-If no, add the category name as an H1 on the individual product page? We have seen many top ranking competitors in our field use this strategy.
We would name the product just “pink plaid” so that on the “cupcake invitations” page, the link “pink plaid” isn’t confusing or cannibalizing. Then, on the actual product page pull in the category name of “cupcake invitations” (H1) next to the product name (H2).
Clear as mud? I am probably making this much harder than it actually is, but any clarification would help. Thank you!
-
Yes. It is enough to differentiate by adding a single work like "Wheat" or "Wanted Sign" to the phrase.
A word of caution. When using two phrases on your site where Phrase A is a subset of Phrase B, it is very important to ensure your Title, Header Tag, ALT tags, Content and Internal Linking all support this effort.
Phrase A "Country Wedding Invitation". Page Title "Country Wedding Invitation", H1 tag "Country Wedding Invitations", use the term at least twice in content with the first use in the first sentence, and then one time on this page offer an anchor text link to Page B such as "If you liked this page you may want to check out our Country Wedding Invitation - Wheat page" where the "Country Wedding Invitation - Wheat" is an anchor text link to that page.
The Phrase B page is treated exactly the same but replace "Country Wedding Invitation" with "Country Wedding Invitation - Wheat".
Don't forget to adjust ALT tags too. It would be helpful if at least some external links used this keyword as well. This is the hard part about your chosen phrase. It is likely people will link with "Western Wedding Invitation" to the "Wheat" page instead of "Western Wedding Invitation - Wheat". Ideally whatever you name your product needs to be something users will accept and use.
-
Thank you very much for the response. One reason we named our products "Western Wedding Invitations" and "Western Wedding Invitation-Wheat" is because of Google base---thought that would return good results (which for product 1527 it has). Could we not change the name so drastically to "Country Wedding Invitations" but instead to "Western Wedding Invitation-Wanted Sign" or something like that? Is that enough of a differentiation from Western Wedding Invitations? Thanks so much.
-
Hi Meghann.
Your two pages represent a classic case of keyphrase cannibalization.
The page title of each page is identical: Western Wedding Invitations by UrbanityStudios
The H1 tag of each page is almost identical: Western Wedding Invitations - 1527a
The URL of each page is almost identical: http://www.urbanitystudios.com/Designs/western-wedding-invitations-p-1527.html
To fix this issue, the first suggestion is to understand each page of your site should ideally target one keyphrase. That phrase (or a very close variation) should be used in the page title, h1 tag and content. If that same phrase is used elsewhere on your site, it should ideally be an anchor text link to the correct page.
Based on your question the root cause of the issue is you have two products named "Western Wedding Invitations". Even though each product has a different id number, there is not enough differentiation to help any search engine understand your wishes.
To fix the problem, keep the name on the page you wish to be indexed and change the product name for the other page. Perhaps "Country Wedding Invitation" could work? For the purposes of this reply I'll use that as an example.
Change your product name to Country Wedding Invitation. You stated that change would cause the URL to change automatically. Next, change the page title, h1 tag, content, alt tags, etc. to support the new name. 301 redirect the old URL to the new one. Once Google crawls your site it will recognize the change and fix the problem. Your results may bounce around a bit for a month, but then they should settle down.
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
-
What is the best way to handle annual events on a website?
Every year our company has a user conference with between 300 - 400 attendees. I've just begun giving the event more of a presence on our website. I'm wondering, what is the best way to handle highlights from previous years? Would it be to create an archive (e.g. www.companyname.com/eventname/2015) while constantly updating the main landing page to promote the current event? We also use an event website (cvent) to handle our registrations. So once we have an agenda for the current years event I do a temporary redirect from the main landing page to the registration website. I don't really like this practice and I feel like it might be better to keep all of the info on the main domain. Wondering if anybody has any opinions or feedback on that process as well. Just looking for best practices or what others have done and have had success with.
Web Design | | Brando161 -
Lots of Listing Pages with Thin Content on Real Estate Web Site-Best to Set them to No-Index?
Greetings Moz Community: As a commercial real estate broker in Manhattan I run a web site with over 600 pages. Basically the pages are organized in the following categories: 1. Neighborhoods (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/neighborhoods/midtown-manhattan) 25 PAGES Low bounce rate 2. Types of Space (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/commercial-space/loft-space)
Web Design | | Kingalan1
15 PAGES Low bounce rate. 3. Blog (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/blog/how-long-does-leasing-process-take
30 PAGES Medium/high bounce rate 4. Services (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/brokerage-services/relocate-to-new-office-space) High bounce rate
3 PAGES 5. About Us (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/about-us/what-we-do
4 PAGES High bounce rate 6. Listings (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/listings/305-fifth-avenue-office-suite-1340sf)
300 PAGES High bounce rate (65%), thin content 7. Buildings (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/928-broadway
300 PAGES Very high bounce rate (exceeding 75%) Most of the listing pages do not have more than 100 words. My SEO firm is advising me to set them "No-Index, Follow". They believe the thin content could be hurting me. Is this an acceptable strategy? I am concerned that when Google detects 300 pages set to "No-Follow" they could interpret this as the site seeking to hide something and penalize us. Also, the building pages have a low click thru rate. Would it make sense to set them to "No-Follow" as well? Basically, would it increase authority in Google's eyes if we set pages that have thin content and/or low click thru rates to "No-Follow"? Any harm in doing this for about half the pages on the site? I might add that while I don't suffer from any manual penalty volume has gone down substantially in the last month. We upgraded the site in early June and somehow 175 pages were submitted to Google that should not have been indexed. A removal request has been made for those pages. Prior to that we were hit by Panda in April 2012 with search volume dropping from about 7,000 per month to 3,000 per month. Volume had increased back to 4,500 by April this year only to start tanking again. It was down to 3,600 in June. About 30 toxic links were removed in late April and a disavow file was submitted with Google in late April for removal of links from 80 toxic domains. Thanks in advance for your responses!! Alan0 -
Best practice for product detail when all products are onepage
HI there,
Web Design | | Hephey
I have a page utilizing isotope with multiple products with small text excerpts and when you click an item i opens a detailed view without requiring a new page load. I've read some of the one page posts but can't get my head around what's best SEO wise when dealing with possible duplicate content. I guess one method could be to have the product list with small excerts of text and all the details hidden in some json and then when the user clicks it, it will open the product and fill with details from inline json. The click action is overring the a tag action e.g. with jquery, so the the a tag has a clean url to a proper subpage with meta, h1 and all that stuff so google can follow it. The jquery thing enables the navigation without a page reload and I can update the document url with pushState.
The subpage, if visited directly, includes the same animation stuff as the master but now has h1, p meta specific to that product but still with same effect, navigation and layout as the master page. Does anybody know if there is a better way to do this with one page sites when wanting to seo optimize detailed contents?0 -
Best SEO practice - Umbrella brand with several domains
Hi, we have several blogs and comparison sites on specific topics. All the domains rank on top positions in very competitive niche markets. We think that we can get more profit out of the domains when we put them under an umbrella brand. Customers that visit domain A can then also find products easily on domain B. We see this for example on health.com, with several brands in the top. To maintain or improve our rankings i'm looking for specific information for the link structure. For example, is it better to have the 'about us'/rel=author on each domain, with contributors on that specific domain or is it better to have them all in the (umbrella) brand domain. At the moment we have the structure like this: domainA.com, domainA.com/blog, domainA.com/about-us and domainB.com, domainB.com/blog, domainB.com/about-us. I think to maintain the rankings it is best to keep specific content (like blog/ about us) on the domain. So is it the best to just do side wide links with a logo (like health.com) and what about hosting? We work with wordpress, so all domains will be hosted on one ip? when we use the multiple site option of WP? All information on this topic is more than welcome 🙂
Web Design | | remkoallertz0 -
Best Forum Platform from an SEO perspective
Hi All, I am looking to start a eCommerce business and would like to centre the user engagement of the site around a forum. Can anyone suggest a forum platform that adopts good SEO practice? So far my considerations are; phpBB vBulletin Wordpress with bbPress plugin Wordpress with Tal.ki plugin Anyone used these with great success? Do you have another suggestion? I am simply in the preliminary stage of sourcing something and am eager to here your thoughts... Thanks in advance... Dan
Web Design | | djlaidler0 -
Best Practice issue: Modx vs Wordpress
Lately I've been working a lot with Modx to create a new site for our own firm as well for other projects. But so far I haven't seen the advantages for SEO purposes other then the fact that with ModX you can manage almost everything yourself including snippets etc without to much effort. Wordpress is a known factor for blogging and since the last 2 years or so for websites. My question is: Which platform is better suited for SEO purposes? Which should I invest my time in? ModX or Wordpress? Hope to hear your thought on the matter
Web Design | | JarnoNijzing0 -
Correct Canonical Reference
Aloha, This is probably a noob question, but here we go: I got a CMS e-commerce, which does not allow static "rel=canonical" declaration in the header and can only work with third-party modules (xml packages) that append "rel=canonical" to all pages dynamic pages within the URL. As a result, I have pages I'm declaring incomplete rel="canonical" as such: Instead of: rel="canonical" src="www.domainname.com/category.aspx" I get: rel="canonical" src="/category.aspx" Coincidentally (or not), after the implementation of the canonical tag, pages that were continuously increasing in rankings started dropping, and, within a week, disappeared from the index completely. Could the drop be a result of my canonical links pointing to incomplete URLs? If so, by fixing this issue, do I stand a chance of recovering my pages' SERPs?
Web Design | | dimanyc0 -
Which Shopping Cart is best for SEO? Magento vs. X-Cart
Comparing X-Cart and Magento, which do you think is better for SEO and why? I am leaning towards Magento and wanted to get some opinions?
Web Design | | BlinkWeb0