How to Identify and Fix Content Cannibalization
Content cannibalization is a common issue in SEO, where multiple pages on a website compete for the same keywords, leading to a decrease in organic traffic and revenue. It’s a "microplastic of SEO," and it’s crucial to detect and fix it to improve the website’s performance.
How to Think About Content Cannibalization the Right Way
Before diving into the workflow, it’s essential to understand that content cannibalization is not just about keyword competition, but about user intent. It’s a moving target, and it exists on a spectrum. A page can compete with another page or several pages, with an intent overlap from 10% to 100%. It’s hard to say exactly how much overlap is fine without looking at outcomes and context.
How to Spot Content Cannibalization
Content cannibalization can have one or more of the following symptoms:
- "URL flickering": at least two URLs alternate in ranking for one or more keywords.
- A page loses traffic and/or ranking positions after another one goes live.
- A new page hits a ranking plateau for its main keyword and cannot break into the top 3 positions.
- Google doesn’t index a new page or pages within the same page type.
- Exact duplicate titles appear in Google’s search index.
The Cannibalization Detector Workflow
The Cannibalization Detector workflow consists of five steps:
- Target Content Analysis: Scrape the page, validate and analyze the HTML structure for main content extraction, and clean the article content and generate target embeddings.
- Keyword Analysis: Analyze ranking keywords through Semrush data, filter branded versus non-branded terms, identify SERP overlap with competing URLs, conduct historical ranking analysis, determine page value based on multiple metrics, and analyze position differential changes over time.
- Competing Content Analysis (Iteration Over Competing URLs): Gather additional context for cannibalization by iteratively processing each competing URL in the search results through the previous steps.
- Final Report Generation: Clean up the data and generate an actionable report.
- Try the Automated Content Cannibalization Detector: Try the Cannibalization Detector and check out an example report.
Conclusion
Content cannibalization is a common issue in SEO, and it’s essential to detect and fix it to improve the website’s performance. The Cannibalization Detector workflow is a step-by-step guide to identifying and fixing content cannibalization. By following these steps, you can improve your website’s organic traffic and revenue.
FAQs
Q: What is content cannibalization?
A: Content cannibalization is a common issue in SEO, where multiple pages on a website compete for the same keywords, leading to a decrease in organic traffic and revenue.
Q: How can I detect content cannibalization?
A: You can detect content cannibalization by identifying the symptoms, such as "URL flickering," a page losing traffic and/or ranking positions, and exact duplicate titles appearing in Google’s search index.
Q: How can I fix content cannibalization?
A: You can fix content cannibalization by following the Cannibalization Detector workflow, which consists of five steps: target content analysis, keyword analysis, competing content analysis, final report generation, and trying the automated content cannibalization detector.
Q: What is the Cannibalization Detector?
A: The Cannibalization Detector is an automated workflow that helps detect and fix content cannibalization. It’s a step-by-step guide to identifying and fixing content cannibalization.
