How To Identify & Fix Content Cannibalization Issue - Part 2
4. Jetoctopus: Jetoctopus is a cloud-based web crawler tool, that also provides a “Cannibalization report“. This tool is another easy to use tool, and here is how you can use it:
Create an account on Jetoctopus
Add your website
Connect with Google search console
Under GSC keywords > Cannibalization you can request for cannibalization report
5. Ahrefs:
Ahrefs is another popular SEO tool that lets you see if more than one pages is trying to rank for the same keyword. You can use the Google sheet provided by them to create a quick report of all pages impacted with Keyword cannibalization.
5. Google Search console I saved the best for the last, and this one works for all types of websites. You could use Google search console to diagnose the cannibalization issue.
Login to Google search console
Select your domain and click on Performance > Search results
Search for keyword that you suspect is affected by cannablization
Click on pages, and you will have a list of pages that are trying to rank for the common keyword.
Now, based on research, you can decide how do you want to proceed with fixing this issue.
There might be more tools to identify Keyword cannibalization, so far I have found these tools to be the best.
How to fix the cannibalized content issues for SEO?
Once you have a list of pages that are competing for same keywords, the real work starts here.
Tip:
Start with fixing the most obvious cannibalized content. Usually, you would see an immediate impact in overall search engine ranking, and search traffic.
Be ready for wild traffic and ranking move for the next few days (While you fix your website), but if you are doing it right, you will be seeing the great results in months to come.
There are a few actions you could take at this stage to recover from cannibalization SEO penalty.
1. Fix On page SEO:
Often fixing on page SEO stuff such as:
Meta title
Meta description
Remove Keyword
Changing search intent
Helps in giving clear message to search engine about your target keywords. Internal link plays a major role, and something I have discussed in depth in the next section.
This is also a good time to start using any on-page SEO tools like SEMRush writing assistant, Frase or similar tools to optimize your pages based on real-world SEO data.
2. Update internal links:
A lot of time keyword cannibalization happens due to poor internal linking structure. It is common to see, a webmaster linking two different pages with the same anchor text, and this is by far one of the common reasons for cannibalization on older websites. What you could do here is, go through all the internal links of 2 cannibalized pages, and fix the internal anchor texts.
I have used extensively used this plugin called “WP Link Status” to find anchor text to any pages on my website.
Create an account on Jetoctopus
Add your website
Connect with Google search console
Under GSC keywords > Cannibalization you can request for cannibalization report
5. Ahrefs:
Ahrefs is another popular SEO tool that lets you see if more than one pages is trying to rank for the same keyword. You can use the Google sheet provided by them to create a quick report of all pages impacted with Keyword cannibalization.
5. Google Search console I saved the best for the last, and this one works for all types of websites. You could use Google search console to diagnose the cannibalization issue.
Login to Google search console
Select your domain and click on Performance > Search results
Search for keyword that you suspect is affected by cannablization
Click on pages, and you will have a list of pages that are trying to rank for the common keyword.
Now, based on research, you can decide how do you want to proceed with fixing this issue.
There might be more tools to identify Keyword cannibalization, so far I have found these tools to be the best.
How to fix the cannibalized content issues for SEO?
Once you have a list of pages that are competing for same keywords, the real work starts here.
Tip:
Start with fixing the most obvious cannibalized content. Usually, you would see an immediate impact in overall search engine ranking, and search traffic.
Be ready for wild traffic and ranking move for the next few days (While you fix your website), but if you are doing it right, you will be seeing the great results in months to come.
There are a few actions you could take at this stage to recover from cannibalization SEO penalty.
1. Fix On page SEO:
Often fixing on page SEO stuff such as:
Meta title
Meta description
Remove Keyword
Changing search intent
Helps in giving clear message to search engine about your target keywords. Internal link plays a major role, and something I have discussed in depth in the next section.
This is also a good time to start using any on-page SEO tools like SEMRush writing assistant, Frase or similar tools to optimize your pages based on real-world SEO data.
2. Update internal links:
A lot of time keyword cannibalization happens due to poor internal linking structure. It is common to see, a webmaster linking two different pages with the same anchor text, and this is by far one of the common reasons for cannibalization on older websites. What you could do here is, go through all the internal links of 2 cannibalized pages, and fix the internal anchor texts.
I have used extensively used this plugin called “WP Link Status” to find anchor text to any pages on my website.
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