Content cannibalisation - what is it and what effects does it have?

The term 'content cannibalisation' may seem amusing, but from the point of view of the SEO gives no reason to laugh. This topic is, or should be, very important for all those involved in SEO. Its neglect can negatively affect the instability of positions and, in the worst case, to long-term drops in the SERPs! So what does this phenomenon consist of and how can it be dealt with? Or is cannibalisation not in every case as bad as they tell us? These questions and concerns will be answered in today's article.

Content cannibalisation - definition of the phenomenon

Under the ridiculously and at the same time somewhat frightening name that is "cannibalisation of keywords", hides the situation when more than one subpage of a given domain is optimised for the same keyword and contains similar content. For this reason, when we type this query, phrase in a search engine, one day page A will be visible, and on another day page B will be displayed for the same query. They will be "exchange" place in the search results. Why? Because Google's robots will have a problem determining which is more relevant for a given keyword.

What are the causes of content cannibalisation?

The cause of keyword cannibalisation is usually construction errors and positioning of the website. Mistakes that lead to this phenomenon are, for example:

• optimising several pages for the same keywords,
• creation of very similar content on several pages of a website (duplication),
• lack of a sufficient number of tags and/or categories,
• erroneous, inconsistent internal as well as external linking (e.g. use of the same anchor text - anchor text - for linking different pages).

In the case of blogs, the situation in practice is that, for a given keyword, the following appear interchangeably in the search engine: the category page and the article that belongs to it. In the case of online shops, on the other hand, a product category and a product or similar products may be 'interchangeable'.

Keyword cannibalisation - what is the problem?

We have explained what cannibalisation is and its possible causes. Some of you may now be starting to wonder what the problem is. Why is cannibalisation a problem? Namely, its effects are negative for SEO. You may ask: why? After all, two of your pages are displayed for the same query! This is due to Google's robots getting "lost". Because they do not know which address URL toss to the internet user for a given phrase, it is sometimes the case that a 'weaker' sub-page, i.e. one that does not convert or simply contains outdated content, appears higher in the search results. In such a case, the person coming to your pages will not get what they were looking for, will leave you and will probably not visit the site again. So to summarise - the primary effect of cannibalisation is less traffic from search engines.

Does cannibalisation concern you? How do you check?

Are you beginning to wonder if your site has been affected by the problem of cannibalisation? There is no need to panic. First of all, you should start by investigating whether the situation exists and locating it. Two tools can be helpful in this case: Semstorm and Senuto. Checking the occurrence of cannibalisation by generating a report in Semstorm or Senuto is relatively easy, and both tools are helpful and effective. In a nutshell, the whole process involves exporting the reports to Excel and carefully analysing the reasons for cannibalisation. 

Cannibalisation on my site! What now?

Once you have analysed your site's situation and there is indeed cannibalisation, you should eliminate it as soon as possible. Of course, it is best to have the matter handled by an SEO specialist who has encountered keyword cannibalisation more than once and has experience in dealing with it. The action taken depends on the cause of the problem. A solution in some situations may be to tidy up the structure of categories, tags, etc. Sometimes, however, this is not enough. Sometimes, however, this is not enough.

Here are some tips for dealing with cannibalisation that are worth remembering:

• try to diversify the content - i.e. articles on a similar topic should, for example, focus on different aspects of the issue,
• use rel canonical - The rel canonical tag is used to mark those contents that you want to be indexed by a search engine. Use this method when you cannot remove any of the duplicate content,
• merge content - create one from duplicate content, leave one URL, apply to the rest 301 redirect
• improve internal linking to the correct anchor.

Is cannibalisation always a bad thing?

Although there are instances of harmless or even good cannibalisation, which makes a site settle for several consecutive positions in the top 10, it usually has to be fought against. In most cases, it is the cause of loss of page position and traffic. So if you care about the visibility of your pages, it is essential to explore the topic of cannibalisation and how to deal with it. You can do this on your own or enlist the help of specialists such as team SEOSki!