Keyword cannibalization occurs when many pages within the website have the same keywords. For example, if you use keywords “piano”, “digital piano” on every page too many times, you may run into lower rankings.
Web crawlers do not understand what page on the website is actually relevant to the particular search: they are not humans and can not analyze the text as well as humans can. Therefore, they may find many pages relevant and either rank low all of them or rank high something irrelevant. Users will see irrelevant content and bounce back which will lower your rank either way.
In order to detect whether your pages cannibalize keywords, you can type a brand name and a specific keyword. If you see old or irrelevant pages rank high, it is a clear sign of keyword cannibalization.
Ways to Avoid Keywords Cannibalization
- merging content in one page (for example, putting best and worst SEO tools in one article rather than in two different ones)
- hiding old content from searches if you have an updated version of an entry
- editing keywords and remove irrelevant or too general ones
- using more specific keywords
