In the world of SEO, cannibalization is when multiple pages on your site target the same or very similar keywords. As a result, your content competes against itself. Rather than increasing a site’s authority for a topic, cannibal content reduces it.
The best way to minimize cannibalization is to ensure each indexable page on your site targets a unique keyword and search intent. But with tends or even hundreds of pages, it can be challenging to keep it all straight. That’s where strategy and best practices come in. Avoiding cannibal or competing content requires a two-pronged approach: First, fixing it on existing pages, then using strategic tactics to prevent it in the future.
In this blog, I’ll cover how we do both at Eight Oh Two. But first, let’s look at why cannibalization occurs and how it hurts SEO.
Why Does Cannibalization Occur?
Several things can cause content cannibalization, but the most common culprit is a lack of planning and strategy. Say, for example, that your brand wants to increase authority on how to fold a fitted sheet. Instead of determining whether there is existing content targeting this keyword that could be updated or improved, you might choose to write a completely new piece. Now, there are two pieces on folding sheets—one new, and one old—and search engines won’t necessarily know which to prioritize.
Confusion or lack of clarity around a page’s search intent can also lead to cannibal content. You can have two pages that target or rank for the same keyword, as long as the intent is different. For example, both a duvet cover category page and a blog post about how to choose a duvet cover presumably target—and may rank for—the keyword duvet cover. But if content for the category page targets transactional intent and the blog is informational, cannibalization is less of a concern.
How Cannibal Content Hurts SEO Rankings
John Mueller, Search Advocate for Google, summarized in an SEO office hours session the dangers of competing content: when you have “multiple pages that are ranking for the same query with the same intent, you are essentially diluting the value of content that you’re providing.” Cannibal content can significantly impact site performance in several ways:
- Cannibalization dilutes the value of your content. Rather than assigning all that value to a single piece of content, Google splits it between all potential pieces, reducing the effectiveness or visibility of each.
- With multiple pages ranking for the same or similar terms with identical intent, Google doesn’t know which to prioritize, leading to fluctuations in rankings, consistently lower rankings, or divided traffic.
- Users may land on less relevant pages that fail to address the appropriate search intent or provide inexact answers to their queries, increasing bounce rates and reducing time on page—two factors that impact how search engines surface content.
- Posting similar content across multiple URLs means link equity is spread out among those pages, diminishing your site authority and weakening your backlink profile.
How To Identify Cannibal Content
You can’t fix something that you don’t know is broken, and cannibal content can quietly kill performance. If your content isn’t ranking for target keywords, it may be time to conduct an audit and see whether cannibalization—or other common SEO mistakes—are to blame.
How To Audit Your Content Audit for Cannibalization
For many of our clients, we audit our category and content pages on an annual, monthly, or even ongoing basis to ensure that we are targeting the right keywords with the right pages, avoiding unintended internal competition.
To audit content to identify cannibalization, start by compiling a list of all target keywords across your site. Then, you can use a tool like SEMRush or Conductor to identify pages ranking for the same keyword; you can also use Google Search Console to perform the task manually.
An important caveat: Just because multiple pages rank for the same keyword does not mean they’re cannibalizing each other. If one is on the first page and the other on the eighth, they’re not actually competing. A quick way to identify this is to check Search Console. If one page dominates in clicks and impressions—like in the example below—the others probably aren’t competing.
Four Ways To Fix Cannibal Content
Once you have identified pages that rank for the same keyword, you can fix cannibalization in SEO by consolidating content, redirecting outdated pages, or reoptimizing for new intent, or updating internal links. Evaluate each page for overall performance, overlapping intent, and similarities in content, titles, meta descriptions, and headers. Then, get to work combatting cannibalization in these ways:
- Consolidate: Consolidate competing or overlapping content into a single, comprehensive piece.
- Redirect: Use a 301 redirect to pass traffic and link equity from weaker pages to better-performing URLs, or from old URLs to the new and stronger consolidated piece.
- Update: Reoptimize the lower-performing content to target a new, distinct keyword or a different search intent.
- Link: Replace internal links to the lower-ranking page with links to the stronger page, helping users and search engines understand which content is most relevant—then guide them there.
How To Avoid Cannibal Content: Plan and Strategize
Strategy and planning are essential to preventing cannibal content on your site. Once you’ve addressed existing issues by consolidating, redirecting, updating, or re-linking, you’ll want to be strategic with how you plan and schedule content moving forward.
Keyword Mapping
Keyword mapping is the process of taking those target keywords you listed above and assigning each one to a unique page. There are many ways to do this, including through those tools we mentioned above, but my favorite way is the easiest: a spreadsheet.
Keyword mapping and content mapping are similar, but distinct, tasks. Content mapping entails mapping content to different stages of your customers’ journey based on their unique needs. This allows you to target the same keywords with unique search intents, avoiding cannibalization.
Follow these steps to build a content keyword map:
- Identify core topics and keywords for your site’s category and content pages.
- Create a spreadsheet that lists all indexable URLs in one column.
- Add columns for target keywords, monthly search volume (MSV) and secondary terms.
- Using the list of topics and keywords you created above, map a single target keyword to each page, avoiding overlap.
Keyword Mapping Tip: Use short-tail keywords for pillar pages (ie., dog beds) and long-tail keywords for category pages (chew-proof dog beds), product pages (Large Best Ever® Chew-Proof Dog Bed), and content (how to choose a dog bed).
Once you have your keyword map, use it. Monitor your performance for keywords. Check back regularly for performance. Are the intended pages ranking for the target keywords? If not, analyze both the ranking and non-ranking page to determine why one might be ranking over the other, and adjust as necessary using the strategies we discussed above.
Plan Smarter To Prevent Future Cannibalization
Developing a content calendar helps SEO professionals maintain a publishing cadence and proactively avoid cannibalization. Just like your keyword map, your content calendar should act as a living document—one that is updated regularly and referenced often—and each topic should have a unique target keyword associated with it.
To achieve this, I do the following before committing to any new piece of content:
- Cross-reference the target keyword in the map.
- Search the site using a site:yourdomain.com [keyword] query.
If existing content surfaces in either place, I either rework the topic to target a long-tail variation of the same term or reframe it to target an unaddressed search intent. If a category page already ranks for the transactional term “down comforter,” I brainstorm topics targeting different search intents and long-tail variations of the term “down comforter,” such as “what to know before buying a comforter,” “the best down comforters for summer,” “down comforter care guide,” and so on.
Creating content clusters like this reinforces authority, increases internal linking opportunities (allowing you to signal to search engines the relative importance of certain pages), and strategically addresses key customer queries—without creating unintended competition.
Avoiding cannibal content requires a commitment to technical SEO best practices and a prioritization of thoughtful content planning. With the right approach, you can publish with confidence knowing that each piece of content you create strengthens your site rather than competing against it from within.
Want smarter content, minus the internal competition? Let’s talk. At Eight Oh Two, our SEO copywriters are well-versed in fixing and preventing cannibalization. We’ll help you revamp your strategy to create a content that ranks—and stays ranked.
