#SEO

Cannibalization
Issues in SEO
HOW TO
Identify &
Eliminate

Full Guide
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Do you have multiple pages

on your website ranking for
the same keyword?

When you have multiple

pages ranking for the same
keyword, you force your
pages to compete with each
other.

And you ruin your SEO

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WHAT IS
KEYWORD
CANNIBALIZATION
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Keyword cannibalization is when

multiple pages on a website target
the same or similar keywords and
compete against each other to hurt
the site’s organic performance.

So is it bad?
YES!

How can you fix that?

LET ME SHOW YOU
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1 STEP
YOU NEED TO FIND
CANNIBALIZATIONS
You can use 1 of these 5 methods
1. Google Spreadsheet
2. Google Search Console
3. SemRush
4. Ahrefs
5. Check SERP
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Method #1 [Spreadsheet]
You need to create a Spreadsheet
that lists all of your site’s important
URLs (preferably ALL URLs) and
their associated keywords.
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Once you’ve listed your URLs and

their keywords, run down the list
and look for any duplicate entries
in the "Keywords" column.

If you spot any – especially across

main pages – you’re probably
suffering from keyword
cannibalization.
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Method #2 [Search Console]

Open GSC and add query that you
want to check. Choose "PAGES"
tab below the graph
query

pages
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If more than one URL earns clicks

and impressions, this could be a
sign of keyword cannibalization.

Manually analyze the pages to see

whether they have overlapping
search intent. Then implement the
appropriate solution.
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Method #3 [Semrush]
Go to "Position tracking" and set
up tracking

Enter the location you would like to

track rankings in.
Now, add your target keywords.
Use the “Import from…” button
to add keywords from Google Analytics.
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Click “Add keywords to campaign”

and “Start Tracking.”

Your project is now ready.

Go to the “Cannibalization” tab to

see the number of:
Affected keywords: Keywords
that have more than one page
ranking in the top 100
Cannibal pages: URLs that
share a keyword ranking with
another URL (or more)
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Method #4 [Ahrefs]
This works best when you want to
check for cannibalization issues for
a specific keyword.

Here’s how to it in Ahrefs Site

Explorer:
1. Enter your domain
2. Go to the Organic keywords
report
3. Filter for the keyword you want
to investigate
4. Click the ranking history
dropdown
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You'll see something like this:

If you see more than 1 URL here -

you might have cannibalization
issues.
So check those URLs to see if they
have very similar content.
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Method #5 [Check SERP]

Find overlapping pages the manual
way by searching your site via
Google.

The “site:[domain]” filters for

results from your domain.

Use it in combination with a

keyword to find related pages.

Like this:
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site: URL keyword

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2 STEP
YOU NEED TO FIX
CANNIBALIZATIONS
There are a few different ways
to do that
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The most popular way to fix that

is to merge cannibalizing pages.

Thanks Ahrefs
for this image
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Also you can:

Delete cannibalizing pages

301 redirect all cannibalizing

pages to the main one

Use canonical tags if you need

all pages to be live

Deoptimize cannibalizing
pages or optimize them for
different main keyword

Noindex cannibalizing pages

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And that's it!

Use this guide

to find and fix cannibalizations
and make sure that all your pages
try to rank for unique and
different keywords.

1 keyword = 1 page

G o l d e n r u l e
 #SEO DMYTRO KLIMCHUK

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