Detecting and correcting query cannibalisation

Duplicate keywords cause relevance to be blurred, site ranking to deteriorate, behavioural aspects to become worse and site traffic to drop. The central problem with keyword cannibalisation on different pages is that it is difficult to identify them.

Finding cannibalized pages

Based on whether your site is large or not, you have different options for detecting duplicate keywords:

1. Manually check the site with a search engine operator. Enter the keyword or phrase and the site:domain into the search engine. Definitely on the cannibalization of keywords will indicate the fact that in the search results several pages of the web resource, which closes a single query of the user. Look through the first two or three pages of results and look for duplicate pages.
2. Check the “Google server console”. In the webmaster console you can see the analytics on intents. In the “Efficiency” subsection, add a new keyword and select “Pages” in the page that appears. This will show you which pages are ranking for the same intent.
3. Use a program such as Screaming Frog, Xenu. Before parsing the site, you can use the settings, indicating there the need to track duplicate content and indicate the percentage of duplication. Once the analysis is done, Screaming Frog will display all the pages you need to take a closer look at and scrutinize in the Content subsection.

Correcting duplicate keywords

1. Merge pages. If you have two or three “bad” pages, it is better to have one large, where you fully respond to the visitor’s content. Combine the content of the various pages into one and add content, if necessary. Remove any duplicates. Do not forget to redirect (301 redirect) to the page you have chosen as the main.
2. Delete the pages. If information from cannibalized pages doesn’t interest your users, delete them, leaving the most important one.
3. Save the pages and remove duplicate requests. Sometimes two pages get a good influx of visitors, but they may be competing with each other for some intents. In this situation, it is better not to get rid of pages competing for the same queries, but you need to choose a landing page and optimize it further by increasing the number of keywords by placing relevant pages and video content.

For other pages, on the contrary, it is necessary to reduce the relevance, reduce the number of keywords or optimise for keywords with lower frequency. Link mass should be distributed on the target pages, make sure to check the anchor links. In addition, it is recommended to check the internal linking and link to the landing page from a “bad” page.

Summary

The presence of keyphrase cannibalization is quite a serious and unpleasant problem for website owners. Because they are determined with great difficulty, you need to more carefully collect and cluster the semantic core, form the structure of the web resource and work out the path of the visitor to the pages.