Ahrefs Com Blog Keyword Cannibalization

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TECHNICAL SEO
How to Find and Fix Keyword

Cannibalization Issues (in
Seconds)
Joshua Hardwick Updated: November 5, 2020 English
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If you’ve been running your website for a few years, you’ll likely have
multiple pages/posts targeting the same topic or keyword. This is bad. Or
is it?
For example, Google the phrase “SEO freelancing.”
There are two different posts from Ahrefs’ blog in positions #7 and #8:
SIDENOTE. These rankings fluctuate regularly, so don’t be surprised if things look slightly different for
you in the SERPs.
This is because we’re targeting, and ranking for the same keywords with both pages.
But more SERP real estate like this is a good thing, right?
So why is this (potentially) an issue?
Two words: keyword cannibalization.
What is keyword
cannibalization? (and why is it
an issue?)
Keyword cannibalization is when a single website (e.g. ahrefs.com) unintentionally targets
the same keyword across multiple posts or pages.
Many SEOs believe that this “confuses” Google.
Image taken from diggitymarketing.com
In other words, they believe that it becomes dif cult for Google to decipher which page
(if any) should rank for a particular keyword. As a result, sometimes neither page will
rank for the target keyword.
This is usually incorrect.
I’ll let Patrick Stox, a columnist at Search Engine Land, explain why:
I’ve heard arguments where people say having multiple pages for the same term
somehow confuses search engines. This whole idea is preposterous. Search engines
know what is on individual web pages. Other people think there are times when Google
shows the wrong page for a search term, but that’s not right, either. What you consider
your best, most relevant page for a query may not be what the search engines deem to
be most relevant. Search intent is critical here. If your page doesn’t have relevant
information or is surrounded by informational “how to” articles or pages from
Wikipedia, there is a high likelihood your pages aren’t going to show.
Patrick Stox SEL
Like Patrick says, Google is smart. It almost always understands what your page is about
and whether or not it matches searcher intent for a particular query.
This is why you can’t force product pages to rank for informational queries.
For example, take a look at the SERPs for the query “best business card ideas”. Every
result in the top 10 is a listicle-style blog post. There are no product pages.
This comes down to searcher intent; people who are searching for this term don’t want to
see product pages.
But this doesn’t mean that keyword cannibalization isn’t an issue…
Here are two reasons why it is:
1. It can cause an UNDESIRABLE page to

rank above a DESIRABLE page (i.e., the one
you really want to rank)
Google the phrase “competitor backlink analysis.”
You will see these two posts ranking in positions #6 and #7:
Google believes that both of these are relevant results for that particular search term.
And they’re right, kind of.
The issue is that the result in position #6 was published 4+ years ago.
And thus, it contains a ton of screenshots showing a very old Ahrefs UI.
SIDENOTE. It’s also a pretty short post. (1278 words, to be exact). Now, word count is rarely the best
judge of quality. But for comparison, most of our recently published in-depth posts easily run
2K+ words.
But the result in position #7 is a much more in-depth post that we published in 2017.
It’s more up-to-date and offers better advice.
We, therefore, would prefer this page to rank highest.
So in effect, we’re “cannibalizing” our search traf c.
If the page in position #6 didn’t exist, chances are the page currently in #7 would rank in
its place.
And this isn’t just an issue with out-of-date content, either.
Here are a couple of other reasons YOU may want one page to rank over another:
1. Higher conversion rate: You have two blog posts about a similar topic (e.g., “how to
lose weight”, and “10 weight loss tips for men”). One of the blog posts features a
post-speci c lead magnet, and it converts like crazy. The other blog post doesn’t. So
which page would you prefer ranked for the term “how to lose weight”? It’s the one
that converts visitors into leads, right?
2. Higher profit margins: You have two similar products on your website. Let’s go with
something dull and boring, like socks. Both products cost the consumer roughly the
same price—$5. But one of the products is your brand, and the other is sold by a
third-party (on your website). Which product page would you prefer to rank for “buy
socks for $5”? It’s the own brand product because this makes you more money (due
to higher margins).
But there’s another, more important reason to avoid keyword cannibalization…
2. It can effectively drag down your

rankings for both pages
In the example above, we have two similar pages ranking in positions #6 and #7.
But why aren’t either of these pages ranking in position #1?
Well, there could be any number of reasons.
BUT…it could be due to the dilution of links (and content).
Let me explain.
The number (and quality) of backlinks pointing to a page is a signi cant “ranking factor”.
I mean, just look at any top 10 ranking page for any keyword with search volume. There
will almost always be a good number of inbound links pointing to the page.
TIP: USE SERP OVERVIEW IN KEYWORDS EXPLORER TO CHECK THE NUMBER

OF REF. DOMAINS FOR THE TOP 10 RANKING PAGES
Go to Keywords Explorer, enter any keyword, then scroll down to the SERP
Overview.
This displays the top-10 ranking pages in Google for that query. And it also
shows the number of referring domains pointing towards each page.
You can see that each of the top-10 ranking pages for “competitor backlink
analysis” have quite a few backlinks.
This means we’ll probably need the same, if not more backlinks pointing to our
page to beat these results in the SERPs.
But if you have two similar pages, any inbound links are effectively split between those
two pages.
For example, here’s the backlink pro le for our SSL study:
And here’s the backlink pro le for our HTTP vs. HTTPS for SEO guide:
Both of these pages rank for “SSL SEO”. The rst in position #9. And the latter in position
#10.
So what’s the issue?
Well, imagine if the combined number of referring domains (164 + 129 = 293) all pointed
to a single page; that page would almost certainly rank higher than position #9 or #10. It
might even break the top 3.
And this isn’t the only issue.
Content dilution can also be a problem.
For example, we have a few blog posts on the topic of “broken link building.”
Each of these posts contains some valuable information. But none of them offer an
industry-leading resource.
In essence, one potentially great post has been diluted across three mediocre posts.
And because of this, none of these posts attract many backlinks.
SIDENOTE. We’re currently working on consolidating and refreshing these posts into one. So this may
no longer be an issue by the time you read this article.
Having said this, one of these posts does currently rank in the top 3 for “broken link
building”.
But if we consolidated all of the great advice across all three posts into one epic post, it
would likely be more of a “linkable asset” than any of our current three posts.
And if more people were to link to it, it would probably rank higher—maybe even #1.
The Caveat to the Rule: When
Keyword Cannibalization Isn’t
An Issue
If you rank in positions #1 and #2 for the same keyword, and you’re holding those
positions long-term, then you don’t need to worry about keyword cannibalization.
Example:
Bodybuilding.com currently holds the #1 and #2 spot for “back and bicep workout.”
They’ve also held both of these positions consistently for 6+ months.
So why would they want to “solve” this issue?
They wouldn’t.
In fact, not only are they ranking in the two positions with the highest CTR. But in doing
so, they’re also effectively lowering the number of clicks to competing sites.
They would only want to “ x” this issue if the page ranking in position #1 was somehow
performing worse than the page in position #2. E.g., if the conversion rate on the top
ranking page was lower than on the other page, or if the bounce rate was unusually high—
for whatever reason—on the top ranking page.
But as Google takes user engagement signals (e.g., bounce rate, dwell time, etc.) into
account when ranking pages, chances are this isn’t the case anyway.
How to Identify Keyword

Cannibalization Issues (in
SECONDS)
Here’s the good news:
I’ve simpli ed and automated the process of identifying keyword cannibalization issues
in Google Sheets. (Keep reading for the spreadsheet link.)
But rst, let’s take a look at the tedious and time-consuming process most people use:
1. Paste website into Site Explorer;
2. Go to the Organic Keywords report;
3. Export all keywords to CSV (note: it will also make life easier if you delete any
irrelevant data/columns);
4. Open the CSV in Excel (or Google Sheets). Then sort the keywords A‑Z;
5. Manually sift through the file and highlight all duplicate keywords;
It’s that last part of the process that’s the most time-consuming.
It isn’t too bad if your site only ranks for a handful of keywords. But if you’re ranking for
thousands of keywords, it can take hours.
So if you want to automate this process, make a copy of this Google sheet: download it
here.
IMPORTANT: MAKE A COPY OF THE GOOGLE SHEET… DON’T REQUEST ACCESS

TO THE ORIGINAL!
To do this, hit File > Make a copy…
Give the template a name, choose where you want to save it (on your Drive),
then hit OK.
You will now have a fully-editable copy of the le on your Google Drive.
Please do not request edit access to the original document. We cannot grant this
permission as it will destroy the original template for everyone else.
Plus, it sends me annoying email noti cations. So please don’t do it! 🙂
Here’s how to use it:
How to Find Keyword Cannibalization Issues with Ahrefs an

How to Find Keyword Cannibalization Issues with Ahrefs an…
an…
Watch later Share
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For those of you who prefer to read, here’s a written walkthrough:
1. Export Organic Keywords from Ahrefs’

Site Explorer
First things rst, you need to nd all of the keywords your site ranks for using Ahrefs’ Site
Explorer.
You can do this using the Organic Keywords report.
Next, hit the SERP features lter and exclude all SERP features where your site is
featured.
Then export the report and download the CSV.
2. Import the data (from the downloaded
CSV) into the Keyword Cannibalization
Finder Tool
Open your copy of the Google Sheet. Then navigate to the sheet titled “1. Ahrefs KW
Export” (you will probably be on this sheet by default, but it’s worth double-checking).
Make sure cell A1 is selected—just click it once with your cursor.
Go to File > Import.
Then upload the CSV export of the Organic Keywords report.
You should then see a pop-up—make sure to select the option to “replace data at
selected cell.” Leave all other options as they are by default.
Hit “Import data”.
3. Done!
That’s it—just navigate to the “results” tab to see the results.
You should see something like this:
As you can see, it only pulls through terms with more than one page in the SERPs (i.e.,
potential keyword cannibalization issues).
SIDENOTE. This is pretty accurate. But it’s not 100% foolproof. There is the occasional false positive
(e.g., HTTP and HTTPs version of a page).
It tells you the keyword (column 1), current ranking position (column 2), search volume
(column 3), and URLs (column 4).
No need to spend hours sifting through thousands of URLs—it’s all automated! 🙂
But now that you’ve identi ed the cannibalization issues, how do you x them?
How to Fix Content

Cannibalization Issues (hint: you
don’t ALWAYS need to)
Like I said above, there isn’t always a need to “ x” keyword cannibalization issues.
You should use the advice above and judge whether or not a “ x” is needed on a case by
case basis.
But when the “issue” does need to be solved, how do you do it?
Here are your options:
Option 1. De-optimise
This is the best option when you have a page ranking for a bunch of keywords (and thus
receiving lots of organic search traf c). But you’d prefer that it didn’t rank for (at least)
one keyword because it’s “cannibalizing” another page.
You don’t want to delete the page because it still brings a lot of organic search traf c
from other keywords.
And you don’t want to redirect it because the page is still valuable.
So again, the best option here is to try to de-optimize that page for that speci c keyword.
Here’s how to do that:

1. De-optimise the content itself: Look through the content and remove any references to
that undesirable keyword. This won’t usually make a huge difference (Google doesn’t
just rely on exact keywords, after all) but it won’t hurt.
2. Change any internal links (especially those with keyword-rich anchors): If you have any
internal links pointing to the undesirable page, it might be worth either swapping out
the destination of the links to that of the desired page, nofollowing them, or removing
them entirely. Links with keyword-rich anchors are the top-priority here, as any links
containing the undesirable keyword in the anchor text may be helping the undesirable
page to rank for that keyword, so change the anchors to something else.
3. Request any anchored inbound links (from external sites) be changed: Along with
internal links, it’s worth checking if any external inbound links point to that particular
page using undesirable keywords. You can use the Anchors report in Ahrefs’ Site
Explorer to nd these. Note: This can be quite dif cult to do in some cases, as you
have to contact the linking sites and request that they change the link—some sites
won’t do this (or they’ll just remove your link altogether).
Option 2. Merge
This is the best option when you have two very similar pages that are already ranking for
the same keyword.
Example:
On the Ahrefs’ blog, we have two posts that rank for the term “SEO freelancing”.
There’s this one:
And this one:
Both contain good advice on the same topic. So we don’t want to delete either of them.
They also both have a few inbound links, which are valuable.
So the best option here would be to merge the two resources into one “master” resource.
Then 301 the other page, or both of them, to the new URL.
Doing this will preserve the “link juice.” And because all links are now effectively pointing
at a single page (rather than two), we may even rank higher for “SEO freelancing” and
other related terms.
Option 3. Delete
This is the best way forward when:
1. You have a low-quality page potentially “cannibalizing” (i.e., stealing traf c from) a
similar but better page;

2. That page doesn’t offer any value whatsoever to your visitors.
But before you hit the delete button, always make sure to check whether the page has
any inbound links.
USE AHREFS’ SITE EXPLORER TO CHECK INBOUND LINKS BEFORE DELETING

A PAGE
Go to Site Explorer, enter the URL, then check the number of inbound links.
You can see that the page above has 17 backlinks from 16 referring domains, for
example. 🙂
If it does, you can still delete it. But you should always add a 301 redirect from that page
to a similar one (or to the homepage if that makes sense).
If there are no inbound links at all, you can just delete it without worry.
Option 4. Noindex
This works best for pages that are useful for your visitors (so you want to keep them). But
you want to make sure that they don’t rank in the search engines and potentially
cannibalize another page.
Blog category pages usually fall into this bucket.
Example:
On the Ahrefs’ blog, one of our blog categories is “link building”.
You can still access this page. But it’s no-indexed…therefore it won’t show up in the
search results.
We did this for two reasons:
1. To avoid (potential) cannibalization issues: We have a huge link building guide. And we
want that to rank for terms like “link building.” We don’t want our blog category page
to rank for such keywords. (Yes the chance of this is very slim, but there’s still no
harm in making sure).
2. To avoid people landing on this page: Blog category pages are useful for navigating a
website. But they’re not so useful as landing pages directly from the SERPs. In fact, if
you searched for “link building” and the #1 result was our link building blog category
page, you would probably hit the back button asap.
Those two reasons are why we noindex all of our blog category pages. And most blogs do
the same.
Option 5. Canonicalize
A canonical tag (rel=“canonical”) is a snippet of HTML code that defines the main version
for duplicate, near-duplicate and similar pages. In other words, if you have the same or
similar content available under different URLs, you can use canonical tags to specify
which version is the main one and thus, should be indexed.
This is the best option to use when you have two similar pages that you need to keep
(because they’re both useful for your visitors), but you want search engines to rank one of
these pages over the other.
Here’s what a canonical tag looks like:
<link rel="canonical" href="https://ahrefs.com/blog/sept-2017/” />
FURTHER READING
Canonical Tags: A Simple Guide for Beginners
How to avoid cannibalization

issues in future
It can be a pain to solve keyword cannibalization issues that have built up over time.
That’s why the best option is to try to avoid them in the rst place.
Luckily, doing this is quite straightforward. You just need to follow this process whenever
you’re planning to publish a new page or blog post:
First, head over to Google and do a “site: search + your target keyword.
For example, if you were planning to publish a blog post about “link building,” this would
be your search:
Then check out the results.
If you spot a page/post that looks to be targeting this keyword already, you may want to
rethink your target keyword for the new page/post.
SIDENOTE. You can check if that page/post is ranking for this keyword by googling the actual keyword
and checking the SERPs. Or you can add that keyword to Ahrefs’ Rank Tracker—this will show you
the position in which you currently rank.
Otherwise, go ahead and optimize for that keyword.
Final Thoughts
Keyword cannibalization is a hot topic in the SEO world.
Some SEOs think it’s a big issue, while others don’t believe it’s an issue at all (due to the
fact that Google does a pretty good job at understanding searcher intent).
But we think it can be an issue. And we believe you should keep an eye on this and x
issues as they arise.
And with our keyword cannibalization nder tool (in Google Sheets), it should be easier
and quicker than ever to nd and diagnose cannibalization issues.
Let us know your thoughts on the issue of keyword cannibalization in the comments. 🙂
  
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Article by:
Joshua Hardwick
Head of Content @ Ahrefs (or, in plain English, I'm the guy
responsible for ensuring that every blog post we publish is
EPIC).
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Brought to you by Ahrefs, a data-driven marketing toolset

powered by a huge index of backlinks, keywords and content

How to Find and Fix Keyword

For example, Google the phrase “SEO freelancing.”

So why is this (potentially) an issue?

Two words: keyword cannibalization.

Many SEOs believe that this “confuses” Google.

Image taken from diggitymarketing.com

Patrick Stox SEL

But this doesn’t mean that keyword cannibalization isn’t an issue…

1. It can cause an UNDESIRABLE page to

The issue is that the result in position #6 was published 4+ years ago.

It’s more up-to-date and offers better advice.

We, therefore, would prefer this page to rank highest.

So in effect, we’re “cannibalizing” our search traf c.

And this isn’t just an issue with out-of-date content, either.

But there’s another, more important reason to avoid keyword cannibalization…

2. It can effectively drag down your

But why aren’t either of these pages ranking in position #1?

Well, there could be any number of reasons.

BUT…it could be due to the dilution of links (and content).

TIP: USE SERP OVERVIEW IN KEYWORDS EXPLORER TO CHECK THE NUMBER

And this isn’t the only issue.

Content dilution can also be a problem.

In essence, one potentially great post has been diluted across three mediocre posts.

And because of this, none of these posts attract many backlinks.

How to Identify Keyword

IMPORTANT: MAKE A COPY OF THE GOOGLE SHEET… DON’T REQUEST ACCESS

To do this, hit File > Make a copy…

Plus, it sends me annoying email noti cations. So please don’t do it! 🙂

Here’s how to use it:

How to Find Keyword Cannibalization Issues with Ahrefs an

For those of you who prefer to read, here’s a written walkthrough:

1. Export Organic Keywords from Ahrefs’

You can do this using the Organic Keywords report.

Make sure cell A1 is selected—just click it once with your cursor.

Go to File > Import.

You should see something like this:

No need to spend hours sifting through thousands of URLs—it’s all automated! 🙂

How to Fix Content

Here are your options:

Here’s how to do that:

There’s this one:

And this one:

Then 301 the other page, or both of them, to the new URL.

similar but better page;

USE AHREFS’ SITE EXPLORER TO CHECK INBOUND LINKS BEFORE DELETING

Blog category pages usually fall into this bucket.

On the Ahrefs’ blog, one of our blog categories is “link building”.

We did this for two reasons:

Here’s what a canonical tag looks like:

<link rel="canonical" href="https://ahrefs.com/blog/sept-2017/” />

How to avoid cannibalization

Then check out the results.

Otherwise, go ahead and optimize for that keyword.

Linking websites 181

Enter your email

Pick a Language Keywords Explorer

Website Authority Checker Keyword Research Guide

Keyword Rank Checker Long-Tail Keywords Guide

Broken Link Checker Complete Link Building Guide

SERP Checker On-Page SEO Guide

12 Actionable SEO Tips

Blogger Outreach Guide