Jason Hello, I have a question about keyword cannibalization. My wife's business website is ranking 2 separate pages for the same keywords. One is a supporting page and the other is the home page. I'd rather the home page rank. I already added the canonical from the supporting page. Not sure if this will be enough. The supporting page is actually ranking a little better for those keywords. Should I 301 the supporting page, or wait to see if the canonical link works? (I am a small biz owner and not a FT Search Engine Optimization (SEO), by the way). Any advice would be appreciated. 🙂 5 👍🏽513 💬🗨📰👈
Morgan Enjoy the win Jason. Lori Appleman 🎓 I would never canonicalize to the homepage. If your homepage is the page you wished to rank, it should have better representation of the topic the keyword is for. Google is ranking the other page because they deem it valuable. Frankly when 2 pages rank like this you've now commanded 2 of 10 slots on the 1st page. I would not do anything to block that. Would you really prefer they rank one of your competitors in that slot instead? Jason ✍️ » Lori Appleman Neither are on page one, that's the issue. Need to get one or both there. Jason ✍️ Made changes last night. They're both at top of page 2, now. 🤯👍🏽2 Dave As a general rule, there's almost always some keyword cannibalization. It's certainly possible to make changes to either page to emphasize it over the other but before doing that: which page is driving more engagement and conversions for you?
Jason ✍️ » Dave Home page is definitely getting more conversions.
Kathy Jason, Are we talking about the DJ business? I hope you don't mind me asking but you will get so much more helpful advice if we know what the business is. Is that ok? Whether or not that's the case, I can use it as an example for the advice I'd like to share. A DJ's primary business is weddings, correct? And so I can see on this site https://www.austinbestdjs.com/ that you've made a concerted effort to sell your wedding DJ business on the home page which is understandable. And then you also have a wedding DJ service page. If you were my client, I'd do things differently. I'd optimize the home page just for Austin DJ because you're going to get all kinds of audiences coming to that page and you need to speak and sell to them all. Optimize too much for weddings and you run the risk of turning the others away. Another reason I'd do this is because you can convert your wedding DJ visitors much better on a dedicated page where you can speak to them and only them directly. All the pictures will be weddings, the value propositions will be for weddings, etc. You can't do that on your home page. What should happen quite naturally then is your wedding page will bring in those wedding queries, and the home page will bring in the more generic searches. That doesn't always happen though, but if you design your home page correctly, i.e. to speak to all audiences including the wedding one, it won't matter. They'll find their way to the wedding page. Couple of other pieces of advice, but only if this really is your business. If it's not, hopefully others can benefit. 1. I don't know who you are. What is your business name? You should be building a brand. How will others refer you if you don't? And that brand is so important for building relationships with your customers and with those who don't know you from Adam and happened to find you in search. Personalization and branding is missing on your site. Secondly, put the customer first. You are overly concerned with pleasing Google at the expense of the customer. You can actually please both! But put the customer first, then apply your SEO with what you've got. Finally, check out this tool. https://www.brightlocal.com/local-search-results-checker/ I ran a couple of searches, on Austin DJ and on Austin Wedding DJ. In both cases that site is #1 in Maps and 3 or 3 in organic. But I only see the home page. You're there in Austin, I assume, so maybe this is incorrect, but make sure you're searching incognito so Google is not giving you biased results. But let's assume what I'm seeing is right. What do you do now if you want to follow my advice and optimize the home for general DJ searches only and try to get Google to pull up the wedding page for those searches. This can be a little risky and you could get a little set back, but it will eventually kick in assuming everything else is right. But that would only be in organic. You're probably getting most of your clicks in the Maps anyway, so you may notice no difference in clicks. In short, customer first! Google second! Hope this helps! 💟👍🏽5
Jason ✍️ » Kathy Thanks for all the info. I actually do have a separate wedding page. The brand is literally "Austin's Best DJs." 😁 This is actually for a totally different site (my wife's business). https://atxtraumatherapycenter.com is the page. "therapists in Austin" is the keyword. ATXTRAUMATHERAPYCENTER.COM Therapists In Austin: Counselors | Psychotherapy | Austin Trauma Therapy Center Kathy » Jason On my phone now. I'll check in a bit. What's the 2nd page you're concerned about? Jason ✍️ » Kathy It's a blog post that my wife wrote. It's literally called "how to find a therapist in Austin." I had no idea she wrote it until recently LOL Jason ✍️ » Kathy I messaged you. 🙂 Kathy » Jason Hmmm. Didn't see it. I'll look. Kathy » Jason Yipes. I don't blame you for being concerned. It's not just that it will cannibalize your ranking, it could cannibalize her clients – exactly the concern I expressed below. Jason ✍️ » Kathy It's in your messages (messenger or inbox). Kathy » Jason Ok, here's the deal. You've got what's called "indented results." Many times, this is coveted. In your case, I don't think so. It's a perfect example of how a little bit of knowledge can be dangerous. And it is a perfect example of the concern I expressed in my other comment. It can be working against you! Your wife is actually teaching people how to find someone other than her. That's especially true because there is no sales pitch for her own services. You can't assume they will know to look right on that site, and your wife didn't give them any reason to believe they've landed in the right place and their search is over. Can she add some conversion copy to that page? Yes, sure. But be careful. You'll be contradicting the title that brought them there in the first place, and may appear like an untrustworthy vulture. 😉 So, here's what I recommend: Start out saying something like, "I'm a therapist in Austin so why do I have this page to help you find one? Because I'm the first to admit I may not be right for you. I specialize in trauma and take clients who have …. If that's not you, Austin has many other therapists to choose from. So how do you even begin your search?" And then continue on but add a section (and make it your first section) on finding a therapist who specializes on their need – trauma, family, couples, depression, etc. The other option is take the word Austin off that page entirely. But why when that page is already giving you visibility in the SERPs with an audience you care about? You just need to get it to convert for you. Back to your question, is this cannibalizing off the home page? No. You just have more Search Engine Optimization (SEO) work to do to get to page 1. I have a couple of therapist clients. Tons of competition. It's work, but you're on the right track. On another note, you have a related post called "Trauma Therapist in Austin" that redirects to the post in question. Why don't you just remove that one? Jason ✍️ » Kathy I'll private message you.
Rienzi Mosqueda You would call this a positive cannibalism either bec the competing pages on the Search Engine Result Page (SERP) are weak or there are no matching pages strong enough. If you really wanted to: – remove internal/external links anchor text/phrase going to your home page that's related or closely relevant to the target keyword. – remove outgoing internal/external links on the page that's related or closely relevant to the target keyword. Then push all those links to the target page. Either way, I would not worry too much. Buth Keyword cannibalization is SEO myth. Stop doing these weird things and hurt SEO of your wife's business site.
Jason ✍️ » Buth I didn't do it. Just trying to fix it.
Vijay enjoy the keyword cannabalization… Its a SEO myth… expect double amount of conversions from both the pages.. Kathy Those of you who are saying it's a myth and enjoy it, while there is some or a lot of truth to that, having two pages showing up for the same keywords can absolutely be a problem, or if not a big problem, it can be a disadvantage. That's because Google may be showing a page that is less likely to convert. Jason thinks it's a problem because he wants only the home page to show up. I have to ask why? Because he doesn't think the other page is good enough? The answer is fix the page, then enjoy having both rank for the same keywords – but that depends! Maybe that page was never meant to bring that audience in and there is nothing he can do to make it right. Then his concern is warranted. Ever hear of bounce rate? 😉 Jason just shared the site. Now we can figure out what two pages he's talking about. And, Jason, final thought. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) should never be a standalone exercise you do to your site. Marketing, brand messaging, copy, conversion optimization, and more all need to work together. So never try to solve an SEO problem with only an SEO solution. Aayush Canonicalization isn't the best option, best thing to do would be optimizing the anchor texts and internal link structure of the pages to its targeted keywords. Schieler Mew 👑🎩 Hey there, You need to identify if the topics are close enough to rank on Page 1 for both of them. You can do so by using this tool and looking at Page 1's overlap rate. After you run the two keywords, let us know how many URLS are the same in the SERPs for each page. If it's 4 or more, you can probably combine to a singular page/topic! https://kazanseo.com/repeated-urls Kazan SEO – Content Optimization App 👍🏽💟3
Dave » Schieler Mew Good point. I'd rather see a client have one page of Google page 1 than two pages on Google page 2. Schieler Mew 👑🎩 » Dave Same. Page 2 is where you hide dead bodies. 🤭4
