Phoenix Website Design – 5 Tips to Avoid Keyword Cannibalization
In Keyword Cannibalization and its Negative Effects, I tackled the negative effects of keyword cannibalization and indicated 6 reasons why you should NOT practice it. For this blog post, I will continue and discuss the ways to fix the issue.
What are ways to fix for keyword cannibalization?
How to Correctly Address Keyword Cannibalization?
Just to be clear, there’s no one sure way to solve it. The solution totally rests on the root cause. Below, I will share to you 5 possible ways to address the problem of keyword cannibalization.
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Revamp the website.
First, you need to create an authoritative page. The goal here is to sharpen the QUALITY of the page. Thus, never go for the QUANTITY and lead users to different variations of a page.
Be sure that no 2 pages will aim for the same keyword. To start off, try to create a spreadsheet and list all your prospect links & keywords.
For instance, if you sell clothing for women, then, you could create pages for “activewear”, “jackets”, “dresses” and so on. All these pages could redirect back to the main clothing page.
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Create a landing page for all the product pages.
You might have the pages for the specific clothing, but you haven’t merged it yet! Thus, you may need a landing page that has all the links to the different product pages.
In the example given, each page will have a unique keyword because one page will be focused on “jackets” while another page will be solely about “dresses.”
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Merge similar content pages.
In the same clothing example, try your best to group similar terms together. For example, under “dresses”, you can add the following: Casual, Cocktail & Party, Work, Maxi, and many others. All these classifications listed can be categorized under dresses. So, you won’t have to create multiple pages ranking for “dresses.”
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Use other keywords.
Once you have those pages under one umbrella, it’s easy to plan your keywords. The page on Casual can aim for “casual dress”; the Maxi page can rank for “Maxi dress”; and so on. Hence, all your pages won’t have to compete for “dresses.”
At the end of the day, SEO isn’t just about the technical stuff. You need to take time planning your strategy because there will be details that sophisticated SEO tools won’t tell you. More on: The Things That SEO Tools Will NOT Tell You (Part 1) and The Things That SEO Tools Will NOT Tell You (Part 2).
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Use permanent redirects.
For websites, usually, there are 2 type of page redirection. One is a temporary redirect while the other permanent redirect. The users will clearly see these two. However, for search engines, there’s clearly a distinction. A 301 redirect is classified under permanent redirection.
How is this helpful? By using 301 redirects, you get to merge all your similar content by linking all your less relevant pages to only one distinct and authoritative page. More on: What You Need to Know About 301 Redirect
Wrapping up!
Unfortunately, keyword cannibalization is still common nowadays. For some people, they fail to optimize their website through Google’s guidelines. It is important to understand “QUALITY” the Google way! If you found out that keyword cannibalization is present within your site, you can still undo the damage. Never lose hope because it ain’t perennial.
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