Keyword cannibalization: when your pages compete with each other

Picture a building firm in Sant Cugat with three pages about bathroom renovations: the service page, a blog post from two years ago about what it costs and a page made for a spring campaign. Someone searching for “bathroom renovation in Sant Cugat” finds none of the three on the first page. Search Console shows that, for that search, sometimes the blog post appears, sometimes the campaign page and hardly ever the service page, which is the one with the form. That is keyword cannibalization: your own pages taking each other's place.

What keyword cannibalization is

You have keyword cannibalization when two or more pages on the same website try to rank for the same search and meet the same need. Instead of one strong page, you have several half-finished ones: the links you earn are split between them, each text falls short and Google has to choose which one to show.

And it will not show them all. In its guide to Google Search ranking systems, Google explains that its site diversity system means its top results generally won't show more than two pages from the same site, so that no single site dominates a search. Having five pages on the same subject does not give you five chances. At most it gives you two, and usually only one shows up.

Google does not punish a website for having similar pages. Its SEO starter guide says that duplicate content is not a violation of its spam policies, although it can make for a bad user experience and lead search engines to waste crawling time. What you lose is strength: what could add up on one page gets split across several.

How you notice it

The same signs turn up on site after site:

• The page that ranks is not the one you want. You search for your service and an old blog post appears, with no prices and no contact button.
• Your position goes up and down for no obvious reason. One week you are fifth, the next you are fourteenth, and each time with a different URL.
• Several pages with almost identical titles. “Bathroom renovations”, “Complete bathroom renovation”, “Renovating your bathroom: prices”. If you struggle to explain how they differ, so will Google.
• None of them gets past page two for a search where your business ought to be near the top.

How to find keyword cannibalization in Search Console

Google's free tool for your website has what you need in the Performance report. If you have never opened it, start with our guide to Google Search Console. Then:

Pick a long period. The last three months, or six if your site gets few visits, so there is enough data.

Filter by the search you care about. Add a query filter with the keywords, for example “bathroom renovation”, and switch to the Pages tab.

Count the URLs. If two or more have impressions for that search and none stands out, you have a case. If one takes almost everything and the other barely appears, there is not much to fix.

Try it the other way round. Filter by a page and look at the Queries tab to see which searches it shows up for. Sometimes you find a blog post appearing in searches from people who want to hire someone, and those belong to the service page.

A detail from the Search Console help pages: if two of your pages appear in the same search, they count as a single impression in the chart, while the Pages tab shows each one separately.

When it is not cannibalization

Two pages sharing words does not mean they compete. What matters is what the person searching wants:

• “How much does a bathroom renovation cost” is searched by someone doing research, and “bathroom renovation in Sant Cugat” by someone who wants a quote. A blog post for the first search and the service page for the second can live side by side, as long as the post links to the service.
• A bathroom renovation page and a kitchen renovation page are different services, even if both say “renovation”.
• If two of your pages appear together near the top for the same search, there is nothing to fix: you take two places instead of one.

Pages for each town, the most common case

It is a temptation for almost every business that covers a wide area: one page for “plumber in Girona”, another for “plumber in Salt” and another for “plumber in Figueres”, with the same text and the town name swapped. As well as competing with each other, they look a lot like what Google describes as spam. In its spam policies, the examples of doorway abuse include having multiple pages targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page, and creating substantially similar pages that are closer to search results than to a clearly defined, browseable hierarchy. Under keyword stuffing it also lists blocks of text that list the cities a page is trying to rank for.

A page per town makes sense when you have something specific to say about each place: jobs you have done there, how long it takes you to get there or what changes from one town to the next. If you do not, one page per service that explains the area you cover is better, written naturally rather than as a list of towns.

How to fix keyword cannibalization

There are three ways out, depending on the case. None of them starts with deleting pages.

Merge and redirect

If two pages say almost the same thing, combine the best of both into the one with more visits or more links and redirect the other with a 301 redirect. In its guide to consolidating duplicate URLs, Google says a redirect is a strong signal that the target should become the canonical page, the one it shows in results. That way you keep the links that pointed to the old page and nobody who follows them lands on a 404 error.

Give each page its own job

If both pages have a reason to exist, separate their roles. In the renovation example, the blog post can focus on what a bathroom renovation costs and end with a link to the service page. The service page is the one that talks about Sant Cugat, timings and quotes. Internal links, with text that says where they lead, help Google understand which page is the main one for each subject; we explain how in internal linking.

Mark the canonical page

When near-identical versions of a page have to exist, such as a product page in two colours or a URL with campaign parameters, the rel="canonical" tag tells Google which one is the main one. Google treats it as a strong signal, like a redirect, and advises against using noindex to stop a page being chosen as canonical, because that removes it from Search altogether.

Before you touch anything

• Note what each page brings in: clicks, impressions and the searches it appears for.
• Check which links it gets. The Links report in Search Console shows the pages on your site that are most linked from other websites. The one with the most is usually the one to keep.
• Make a list of redirects: which old URL goes to which new URL, one by one. Do not send them all to the home page: someone arriving from an old link was looking for that page, not your home page.
• Update your internal links so they point to the page you keep. Google recommends linking to the canonical URL rather than the duplicate.
• Update your sitemap so it lists the right page and not the redirected one.

Then give it a few weeks and go back to the Performance report with the same filter. If it has worked, you will see a single URL for that search.

Stop it happening again

Before publishing, check whether you already have it

Before you write a blog post or create a new page, look for one that already answers the same thing. If there is one, expanding it often pays off more than starting from scratch. More posts do not help if they tread on each other.

A search map against keyword cannibalization

A spreadsheet with two columns is enough: each important search and the page that handles it. One search, one page. When a new idea comes up and the search already has a page, the idea goes to that page. In our Web articles service, before writing we look at what people search for in your sector and your area, and every text carries its keyword in the headline and the headings, with internal links to your service pages. That way each post pushes towards the page that sells instead of taking its place.

If you want us to look at your website

Reviewing your website's structure, errors and indexing is part of our SEO service. It comes with a fixed quote in writing, after a first conversation with no commitment.

If you also want new content every month without one post taking another's place, the Presence plans go from €400 a month, with three articles a month on your website and three on your Google Business Profile, to €1,500. Your Website, with ten subpages and one article a month, costs €200. All plus VAT and with no lock-in; see our prices.

Send us a link to your website and the search you would like to rank for, and we will tell you whether you have pages treading on each other. You can also write to us through the contact form.