Keyword Cannibalization: What It Is, When to Worry, and How to Fix It

0:00There's this thing in search engine optimization called keyword cannibalization. Scary term that SEOs throw around. So, in this episode of the podcast, I'm going to share what it is, why it's important, when to worry about it, when not to worry about it, and how to fix it. That's what I got for you. Let's

0:19start. What it is, this is what it is. It's when you have multiple pages or brand assets competing for the same keywords, the same search terms, the same things that people put into Google. So, for example, you have five pages on your site all targeting the keyword carpet cleaning services Bronx, or you have one page on your site, one IG reel, and two exposts targeting the keyword running shoes for flat feet. Those are examples of keyword cannibalization. And this matters because searchers might not

0:54get your best content for that keyword. So for those five pages all targeting the keyword carpet cleaning services Bronx, the one that would convert visitors the best is not showing number one. In fact, one of your worst pages is showing number one. So that's an example of keyword cannibalization. or you have the IG reel ranking number one for running shoes for flat feet instead of the bottom offunnel SEO landing page that you made targeting that same keyword. And as a result of these things, as a as a result of your less ideal content showing up number one for these keywords, you are making less money and Google is crawling your worst

1:37content more. So, your best stuff isn't getting crawled enough. So, that's what it is. and why it matters. Here's the thing though, most people don't need to worry about it. If you have a small site with not that many pages, you don't need to worry about it. That's a lot of people who are doing SEO. They have small sites, they don't have that many pages. You don't need to worry about it then. And actually, what about user generated content? You actually should be trying to cannibalize your keywords

2:06with multimedia userenerated content. You should be trying to have your IG reel outrank your bottom offunnel SEO landing page. And the reason for that is it might not be obvious. Actually, it's probably not. But the thing is, user generated content is getting boosted a ton. And there are many keywords where user generated content easily outranks the normal web results, the normal website results. So it might as well be your brand that is outranking your own page with usergenerated content video or tweets or LinkedIn posts rather than a competitor brand. And even if the competitor is not making the user generated content, you can still have your video ranking number one and your

2:50website ranking number two. And that happens all the time. So you might as well be the one winning with that user generated content rather than competitors. But if you have a small site, don't worry about keyword cannibalization. Now, if you have a large site or you have a terrible piece of user generated content ranking number

3:10one, that is when you start to worry. That is when you got to do something. So, here is what to do. If you have a website, you do something that is called keyword arbitration. And you map out which of your pages are ranking for which keywords and which pages should be ranking instead. So hopefully you're tracking your target keywords with an SEO tool. This will show you what pages are ranking for which keywords. Or you can just search your site into any SEO tool and it'll show you those smaller volume keywords, lower volume target keywords may not come up. But that's what you do to find out which pages are

3:48ranking for which keywords. and then take your keyword list of your pages and which keywords they are targeting and then compare what's actually ranking with what you want to be ranking. You when you are putting up your SEO pages and posts targeting keywords, you should have all of that stored in Excel documents or Google Sheets. So you compare what is actually ranking with what should be ranking. And here's what you do with your website. This is what you do with your site once you have mapped out what is ranking and what should be ranking. So you can no index the bad content and that is not

4:27recommended. Not recommended at all. It's one option that some people say it's a lot better to instead improve the page that is actually ranking. The page or post that is actually ranking. Improve it so that it converts. So that it converts more. Some people would say you should improve your ideal page that is not ranking. But I say focus on the page that is actually ranking because it's already ranking. It's easier to optimize for what is already ranking

4:54than to push another page to outrank it. If you have two pieces of content that are near duplicates, you can also use the canonical tag. And then when it comes to userenerated content, if you have a non ideal piece of UGC that is ranking, very simple, make new UGC. Make new userenerated content. User generated content is prioritized by freshness all the time. All the time I see that. In fact, multiple times on this show I have shared how I have targeted a keyword with a YouTube short, an Instagram reel or a Tik Tok and the next day that piece of content was ranking number one even

5:34above other user generated content that was tweeting it. So you might have a YouTube video that is ranking number one for your target keyword. You can put out a YouTube short, an IG reel, a Tik Tok, and then that ranks number one above it the next day. It's not always prioritized by freshness. There's other ranking signals, but freshness is a big one. This is a way of making sure that you get more conversions from your SEO efforts, and I think we all love that. I want to tell you one more thing. I tell you one more thing. Listen, listen, listen. A life is a terrible thing to

6:09waste. Time is a terrible thing to waste. If you feel like you are wasting your time manually doing different SEO experiments to figure out what's important and what's not important, what sticks and what doesn't stick. Listen, I have a shortcut for you. That shortcut is my 13 and 1/2 hour SEO course, compact keywords. It took me 10 years to figure out what's important and more critically what is not. So you don't waste time on things that don't get conversions and instead you focus on the SEO that actually gets you customers. If you haven't checked it out, the video at the top of compact keywords.com explains it a lot more. And that is all for

6:50episode 740 of my daily digital marketing show. This is 740 days in a row of the Edward Show. No days missed. No days missed. Thank you all so much for watching. Thank you so much for listening. I will talk to you again tomorrow.