Keyword research is not a whim of SEO specialists. On the contrary, defining keywords for each page of your site puts you one step ahead in positioning yourself in search engines. But what happens when you repeat the terms in more than one URL? This is a problem that few pay attention to from the beginning because they do not know the effects of keyword cannibalization .
What is keyword cannibalization?
If you are not familiar with this concept, we will clarify what it is about. Keyword cannibalization consists of using the same keyword or phrase on several pages within the same website.
Sometimes it happens due to ignorance or errors in content planning. Other times, however, it is applied with the intention of having the largest number of pages positioned under that term.
However, those who do this are making one of the SEO mistakes that must be avoided. Having multiple pages with the same keyword is making them compete with each other.
So, when the search engine receives a query for that term, it is not able brazil telegram phone numbers to recognize which of the pages best answers the user's search. As a result, it may display the least important one.
If this happens, your site's SEO will suffer. Those pages, in particular, will have low authority and conversions will be reduced.
Imagine you have two pages optimized for “kambucha tea.” One is about the benefits of the drink, and the other is a product page. If the search engine decides to show the page about the benefits of kambucha to a user who wants to buy the product, they won’t click on your page. And if they do, they will leave your site because it’s not what they’re looking for.
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You would be losing visits, conversions and risking increasing the bounce rate.
You should be careful when several pages on your website talk about the same topic so as not to repeat keywords. One way to avoid this is to use long-tail keywords .
Keyword cannibalization also frequently occurs on similar product pages. In this case, what you need to do is indicate what the canonical URL is.
Effects of keyword cannibalization
Have you noticed that certain pages you are interested in are not attracting the traffic you expected? Or that their position in the results page is fluctuating? These are signs that there is something wrong with SEO and it is likely a case of keyword cannibalization.
Cannibalization can have negative effects on your site. Below are some of the consequences of optimizing multiple pages on a domain with the same keyword.
Less traffic to the site
If there are two or more pages on your site competing for a spot in the search engine rankings, your traffic will be reduced. This is where traffic will be split between URLs optimized for the same keyword .
Because of this, pages don't achieve the conversions they would if they received all the traffic.
Conversions are reduced
SEO cannibalization will cause you to lose potential customers because the traffic does not reach the appropriate page. This is what we discussed with the “kambucha tea” example. If the product page were optimized with another keyword such as “buy cheap kambucha tea” it would be easier for the search engine to differentiate it from the blog article.
When using the same keyword on multiple pages, the chances of ranking the less relevant URL are high.
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Higher value pages are not ranked
And if they do rank, they are left behind by another page that is not very relevant to the purpose of the keyword.
What happens is that Google bots and other search engines have to interpret the content and choose which page to show for the user's search. But if you use the same keyword on several pages, they can get confused and show one that doesn't meet the search intent.
As a result, the most important URL will be relegated in the SERPs, while the lower-value URL will be ranked higher.
Decreases the authority of the pages
When competing for the same keyword, pages lose strength, clicks are distributed among the URLs involved and authority is also divided. This could be avoided if you chose a single keyword for each page or if you concentrated the important information on just one, without dividing the content.
Less inbound links
The chances of pages receiving external links decrease. This is because it affects the user experience on your website. As we explained before, the user is likely to arrive at a page that does not interest them in the content; therefore, they will leave the site.
Likewise, it may happen that the content of a page optimized for a keyword is not related to the topic. There are still those who engage in this type of practice without considering the consequences such as the effects of keyword cannibalization. Doing so will affect the reputation of the site.