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dynamic contentKeyword cannibalization happens when marketers target the same keyword across multiple competing pages of their web property. When two pages rank for the same keywords, the resulting traffic your audience generates is divided between the two pages. With less organic traffic, Google may consider the page not as relevant for the keyword. In turn, this can decrease the pages’ overall rankings in search results.Dive into this lesson to:
  • Identify potential keyword cannibalization
  • Take your next steps after identifying possible rank cannibalization
🚨Note: Please make sure to click the “start course” button at the bottom of the course and the “complete course” button at the end to get credit for completing the course 🚨
Conductor customers: Review this lesson in our Community
It’s vital for organic marketers to know when multiple pages on their site rank for the same keyword. Knowing this can identify your pages that compete with each other to hurt the site’s overall organic performance. (For a more in-depth dive into keyword cannibalization, check out this post on Conductor’s blog.)It’s not always bad for multiple pages to rank for the same keyword. Consider the following examples:
  • If you have multiple high-ranking pages, your ranks aren’t being hurt by both pages targeting the same keyword.
  • You might expect multiple pages on your site to rank for your branded keywords.
  • You might rank for multiple result types (not just traditional “blue links”).
If any of these are the case for a particular keyword, you probably do not need to take any action to “fix” it.You can use the No. of Results column in the Keywords report to easily identify keyword cannibalization.
  1. In Conductor, go to Keywords ↗️.
  2. At the top of the report, switch True Rank to Standard Rank. This will ignore universal result types so you can see keywords where cannibalization is more likely.
  3. Click the Find Cannibalization preset view.
  4. Look at the values in the No. of Results column. The higher the number, the more pages on your web property rank for the keyword, which could indicate cannibalization.
  5. Click keywords to see which pages are ranking for them and where they appear on results pages.
What’s next?Use what you learn from your ranking pages to decide what to do next. Is it cannibalization or do you just dominate the SERP? Not sure how to proceed? Continue to the next lesson.
Conductor customers: Review this lesson in our Community
We’ve covered keyword cannibalization—what it is, why it’s important to avoid, and how to identify it in the previous lesson. But once you know how to look for it with Conductor, what then? How do you know if multiple ranking pages are really cannibalizing each other or just taking up good real estate on SERPs?One way to do this is by looking more closely at your rank content for a keyword—and seeing how the different pages perform over time.You can use the Keyword Details report to look at your ranks for a specific keyword over time. With that information, you can better assess whether your multiple ranking pages are actually hurting your overall performance for the keyword.
  1. In Keywords↗️, click a keyword that has potential cannibalization to go to the Keyword Details report.
  2. Set your date picker to report on at least 4 weeks in the past through your most recent time period.
  3. In the Rank Over Time graph, click the You option to see all of your pages ranking for this keyword.
  4. Look to see whether your ranking pages consistently hold their ranks or whether they trade places relative to one another. Volatility here may indicate that Google is not sure which page should be your highest-ranking, and therefore most relevant. Consider whether all of your pages need to be indexed or whether you can prevent rank cannibalization in other ways. Some questions to ask:
  • Do both pages need to be indexed?
  • Can you eliminate one or more to prevent cannibalization?
  • Is there a business reason that requires multiple pages that should rank for the same keyword?
What’s next?Based on your investigation, consider optimizing your content for unique keywords to differentiate the pages.
Conductor customers: Review this lesson in our Community
You have completed this course! To keep learning more workflows, check out our additional courses.