Keyword cannibalization can negatively impact your website’s organic search performance.
But catching and fixing this issue can have the opposite effect.
Case in point: Two of our articles on Backlinko had cannibalization issues. So, we consolidated them with a 301 redirect.
And saw a 466% increase in clicks year over year.
Cannibalized pages undermine your SEO efforts. And may not appear in the top spots—no matter how good they are.
Don’t lose that precious real estate on organic search.
In this guide, I’ll teach you how to identify and resolve keyword cannibalization issues. So you can improve your rankings and the user experience.
I’ve also created a free keyword cannibalization tracker to help you along the way. It’s a simple tool for logging issues, tracking fixes, and measuring results.
What Is Keyword Cannibalization?
Keyword cannibalization is an SEO issue that happens when multiple pages on your website target the same or similar keywords and fulfill a similar search intent.
The result?
Search engines see these pages competing against each other for search engine rankings.
Ultimately, this dilutes your website’s ability to rank effectively for targeted keywords.
Keyword cannibalization can hurt your site’s organic performance because it:
Reduces search visibility and organic traffic, which can affect conversions
Dilutes ranking potential by distributing authority signals between these pages
Frustrates users with similar information or duplicate content spread across multiple pages
Let’s take a deeper look at the cannibalization example from our site—that we mentioned earlier.
We had two older articles on the same topic: the best free and paid SEO tools.
The oldest article targeted “SEO tools” and featured an extensive (albeit overwhelming) list of options:
The more recent article targeted “best free SEO tools.” And featured a shorter (but still significant) number of tools.
Both pieces targeted queries related to SEO tools and fulfilled a similar search intent (people exploring SEO tools).
But they were getting significantly different results.
We researched both articles and noticed that the “free SEO tools” article received notably more impressions and clicks.
The uneven distribution of traffic indicated cannibalization.
It was also clear that the format of the older “SEO tools” article was no longer resonating with our audience. The lengthy list of tools was overwhelming, which is another reason why the competing article received more clicks.
So, we decided a 301 redirect was in order.
After consolidating the URLs, it didn’t take long to see an improvement. In the eight-week period following the launch, traffic increased by 466% compared to the previous year.
This impressive increase was low effort for our team but high impact for our site.
In fact, we’re still seeing a net increase over time by simply redirecting an underperforming page.
What Keyword Cannibalization Is Not
Let’s recap. Keyword cannibalization happens when two or more pages:
Target the same keyword(s)
Fulfill the same or similar search intent
But what if these pages target hundreds of keywords and only a few terms overlap? Or if pages targeting similar keywords cater to different search intents?
In such cases, keyword cannibalization is less likely to be a significant issue. But we recommend regularly monitoring these pages for optimal search performance.
For example, the wellness site Health has multiple pages for the keyword “protein powder.”
On a closer look, each page fulfills a different search intent and targets various keywords:
Can Protein Powder Make You Gain Weight?: Serves an informational intent with factual details about consuming protein powder. And targets keywords like protein powder and weight gain.
The 11 Best Tasting Protein Shakes: Serves a transactional intent with a list of products and targets keywords like protein shakes and protein supplements
Is Protein Good for You?: Serves an informational intent with a nutritional breakdown of protein powder. Targets keywords like plant-based protein and protein powder nutrition.
So, even if these pages don’t appear in the search results for “protein powder,” it’s likely not due to keyword cannibalization. Because other pages target and rank for various keywords related to “protein powder.”
Put simply, all these pages don’t fight each other for search traffic.
Instead, they enhance the site’s search visibility for a broader set of keywords. That’s why it’s not a case of keyword cannibalization.
What Causes Keyword Cannibalization?
Keyword cannibalization doesn’t happen overnight.
It’s the result of deeper issues in how you plan, structure, and optimize content.
Most cases can be connected to a few interrelated reasons:
Poor Keyword Mapping and Content Planning
Keyword mapping is the process of assigning specific keywords to every page on your website.
As a result, you can optimize pages for their target queries and ensure that each page fulfills a unique search intent.
Without a clear keyword map, you risk:
Writing redundant content across several pages
Creating multiple pages that unknowingly target the same terms
Confusing search engines with inconsistent internal links and anchor texts
Take Wayfair’s case as an example.
The furniture brand targets the term “patio furniture” on multiple landing pages.
This keyword overlap creates internal competition, making it harder for Google to confidently rank any one page.
The bottom line: If you’re not actively mapping your keywords to URLs, you are likely to see cannibalization at some point.
Lack of Content Focus and Team Alignment
Even with a solid content strategy, cannibalization can creep in during execution.
This often happens when teams plan new topics in isolation without checking existing content or assets created for other channels.
When you move fast without proper alignment, you risk creating repetitive content.
For example, Storylane, a demo creation platform, published an ultimate guide on presales.
They then followed up with another how-to post on the same topic.
The first post is comprehensive, but it’s slightly dated. The second is more tactical and current.
But since both target the same intent, the latest post cannibalizes and outranks the older one (which doesn’t currently rank on page 1).
The result: Two pages that cannibalize each other’s organic visibility, confuse search engines, and fragment link equity.
Overcomplicated Site Architecture and Duplicate URL Paths
Sometimes, cannibalization is a result of your site architecture or CMS elements.
For example, paginated series or faceted navigation can generate hundreds of duplicate pages.
Let’s say your ecommerce store sells rugs, and the category page includes filters for size, color, and material.
Each filter combination (like mystore.com/rugs?color=brown) generates a crawlable URL.
This could result in hundreds of nearly identical pages competing for the same keywords.
If these variants are crawlable and indexable, they compete with each other, confusing search engines about which pages to prioritize.
When multiple pages compete for the same keyword, it becomes difficult for search engines to figure out the most relevant page that should be ranking higher for this keyword.
This can result in lower search rankings and reduced visibility for all relevant pages.
Search engines rank pages based on authority signals, like backlinks, content quality, user experience, and more.
In cases of keyword cannibalization, these authority signals are divided between multiple pages. That means you have several low-authority pages rather than one highly authoritative page.
This distributed authority makes it difficult for your pages to outrank other high-authority pages in the search results.
For example, the following article by MoEngage ranks outside the top 10 results for the keyword “email marketing tactics.”
The article is well structured and has actionable tips, expert insights, and a webinar.
But doesn’t currently rank among the top search results.
This might be because the website has multiple pages optimized for the same keyword and search intent. Causing authority to be distributed across several pages targeting the same keyword.
And potentially leading to lower rankings.
Distributed Internal Links
Internal links distribute authority across different pages on your website.
When keyword cannibalization happens, internal links are spread across multiple pages.
Instead of linking to one page for relevant anchor text across your site, you have to selectively link different pages in every location.
For example, let’s consider a project management SaaS company with multiple pages for the keyword “task management.”
Blog post A: www.manageprojects.com/blog/task-management-tips
Blog post B: www.manageprojects.com/blog/task-management-advice
Instead of creating multiple internal links for one page with the anchor text of “task management,” you’d need to distribute internal links across all three pages.
This fragmented linking structure can reduce each page’s authority and relevance signals.
Users also rely on internal links to find relevant pieces of content on a site.
Linking different pages with similar anchor text can confuse users or lead them to pages that don’t satisfy their search intent.
Poor Conversion Rates
Keyword cannibalization can hurt your website’s user experience.
Multiple pages created for the same or similar topic can overwhelm users.
They won’t know which one contains the most up-to-date or comprehensive information. And not every visitor will have the time or patience to read each page to find out.
This can also diminish their trust in your content’s quality.
For example, Scribe, a documentation tool, has created multiple articles and pages about writing and building SOPs.
These articles present handy tips and offer a wide selection of templates, helping readers get started quickly.
But since these pages cover very similar topics, readers may be confused about which page has the best information.
Wasted Crawl Budget
Search engines allocate a limited budget to crawl your website. When you have several instances of keyword cannibalization, you waste this crawl budget on similar pages around the same keyword rather than focusing on unique content.
Wasting your crawl budget can prevent search engines from indexing more important pages and negatively impact search rankings.
When Cannibalization Is Not Problematic
Keyword cannibalization doesn’t hurt your organic search performance when you create multiple pages for the following reasons:
Different Locations
If you create multiple pages targeting the same keyword(s) and different locations, these pages shouldn’t cannibalize each other because they’re geared to different audiences.
Ensure each page’s content is unique to avoid duplicate content issues.
For example, this furniture rental company has created several service pages with the same keywords for multiple locations.
Varied Search Intents
You shouldn’t face a cannibalization issue if each page fulfills a unique search intent.
This means you can create multiple pages covering similar topics but varied search intents.
For example, Nuclino has several pages for the keyword “project management software.”
Each page focuses on a different search intent, such as game development, planning, creative management, and more.
Some pages have a transactional intent, while others have an informational intent.
How to Identify Cannibalization Issues
When left unchecked, keyword cannibalization can become a roadblock for your SEO strategy.
Let’s learn different ways of actively identifying keyword cannibalization issues.
Helpful resource: Download our free keyword cannibalization tracker to follow along with the steps below. Use it to log affected pages, track fixes, and document outcomes as you resolve each issue.
Google Search Console
Google Search Console (GSC) is a free tool to stay on top of your SEO health and identify cannibalization issues.
Sign into your GSC account and go to “Search Results” under the “Performance” section.
You’ll see a list of keywords that have brought impressions and clicks to your site. Click on any of these keywords to see impressions and clicks specifically for this keyword.
Pro tip: If you can’t find the keyword you want to analyze, click on “+ New” and “Query.” Then, add the keyword(s) you’re looking for and hit “Apply.”
Go to the “PAGES” tab to find the pages associated with this keyword.
If you find more than one page listed for a query, it could be a cannibalization issue.
Evaluate each page’s monthly traffic and search rankings to see if they’re cannibalizing each other.
For example, in this scenario, the first article is doing well, while the other articles aren’t performing great.
Review each page’s intent to determine if there’s a cannibalization issue.
You can also check the average position for these pages. Dropping or fluctuating positions is a sign of cannibalization because search engines are likely switching the rankings for these pages.
Find cannibalization issues?
Add the target keyword and URL to your tracker.
Then, note how the page is performing (poor, average, or good) in the “Performance” column.
Enter your website domain and click “Set up tracking” to get started.
Then, add the location where you want to monitor your performance and choose other parameters like search engine, device, and language.
Click “Continue To Keywords” when you’re done.
This is where you can add your target keywords by:
Manually pasting keywords in the box
Using “Import from…” to add from Google Analytics
Getting keyword suggestions from Semrush
Once you’ve added all keywords, hit “Add keywords to campaign” and “Start Tracking.”
The report may take some time to populate.
When it’s ready, head to the “Cannibalization” tab.
Here, you’ll find cannibalized pages that rank for the same keywords as one or more pages.
Add the keywords and URLs to your tracker if you find any issues.
Click on the “Keywords” section for a breakdown of cannibalized pages by keyword.
When you expand the results for a specific keyword, you can see rankings for individual pages associated with this keyword.
The graph also shows the varying search volume for this keyword over time.
To accurately identify cannibalizing pages, review pages for each keyword and look at their search performance over the past few months.
Check whether any pages rank in the top positions and review each page’s monthly traffic.
If the search performance doesn’t look great, meaning low/fluctuating rankings and dipping traffic, you may be facing a cannibalization issue.
Site Search
You can also use a Google Site Search to identify cannibalization issues.
Use the search operator “site:[domain]” with any keyword to find all pages targeting this keyword.
Here’s how it works for the craft site Gathered:
A site search will show all the pages containing even a single mention of the keyword you’ve searched for. This means you’ll need to manually review the list to identify relevant pages covering the same topic.
Then, review each of these pages to see if there’s a keyword and search intent overlap. And add the URLs to your tracker if you haven’t already.
5 Ways to Fix Keyword Cannibalization
The diagnosis is in: Your website has cannibalizing pages.
Navigational intent: Show up for a branded keyword
How to Differentiate Each Page’s Intent
To better understand this solution, let’s consider that you have an ecommerce store selling footwear.
You’ve created multiple pages for the keyword “running shoes,” all targeting commercial intent.
Instead of merging these pages into one, you can differentiate each page with a unique search intent.
Here’s a real-life example of Allbirds doing this right.
The footwear brand has three pages targeting the keyword “running shoes” with different intents:
Informational blog post: Shares tips and a tutorial for washing your running shoes
Transactional landing page: Rounds up the four best beginner-friendly products
Commercial landing page: Lists multiple products in this category
The major heavy lifting here is defining a unique intent for each page and creating insightful content to fulfill this intent.
Pro tip: You can also optimize each page for multiple variations of the primary keyword. Use long-tail keywords, modifiers, and semantic variations to capture the specific intent.
The tool evaluates your pages against many benchmarks to present specific ideas for optimization.
In this example, the tool recommends adding semantic keywords and obtaining more backlinks to improve my page’s competitiveness in search results.
3. Optimize Internal Links for High-Impact Pages
Best used when: Internal links are unintentionally boosting the wrong page for a target keyword
Internal links explain your site’s structure to search engines. The placement of these links tells search engines which pages are more and less important.
You can strategically use internal linking to increase the page authority for any cannibalized pages.
Here’s how:
Identify the most important page from all the ones facing cannibalization for a keyword
Add links to the important page from all the less important pages. This will tell search engines which page is the most relevant to rank for a keyword.
Use descriptive anchor text to provide more context about the linked page
Remove internal links to other pages with similar anchor text to prevent any confusion
We’re doing this for two Backlinko articles, which both rank for the keyword “backlinks.”
To achieve the featured snippet, we’re optimizing the internal linking structure to enhance each page’s authority.
And we’re revising the content to target different search intents on both pages.
4. Add a Canonical Tag to Prioritize a Page
Best used when: Similar pages exist for UX or tracking reasons, but only one should rank
You might find duplicate content across cannibalized pages for many reasons:
An ecommerce store can have multiple product variants
A service-based business can have several location-based pages
In such scenarios, you can use canonical tags to inform search engines about the preferred page to index and rank.
A canonical tag is an HTML element used to tell search engines which version of a page you prefer ranking when there are multiple versions of this page.
Here’s an example of what these tags look like:
To add canonical tags to your pages, open a page’s code. Then, go to the <head>
section of the code and add rel=“canonical” followed by the URL.
For example, if you have two articles on “How to Create a GPT” and “How to Make a GPT Quickly” with similar content, you can add a canonical tag to any one of these articles.
This tag essentially tells search engines to consolidate ranking signals like backlinks and authority to the canonical URL instead of confusing it with duplicate pages.
As a result, search engines may prioritize the page with this tag and rank it above other pages targeting the same keyword.
But it’s best to revamp the content on these pages to prevent Google and other search engines from penalizing duplicate content.
5. Restructure the Site to Remove Cannibalized Pages
Best used when: Poor content hierarchy leads to cannibalization issues
Removing or deleting pages isn’t an ideal solution for keyword cannibalization.
When you remove an indexed page, you lose all its backlinks and link juice. This means the authority this page passed on to other internally linked pages will also be lost.
It can also create broken links since the page doesn’t exist anymore.
Only remove pages that no longer add value to your site. Otherwise, set up 301 redirects to guide visitors to a different page.
How to Prevent Keyword Cannibalization
Keyword cannibalization can gradually eat away organic traffic and reduce search visibility before you get to the bottom of the problem.
The more content you create, the higher the likelihood of cannibalization.
But you can prevent these issues by following a few best practices for all new and existing pages.
Create Keyword Clusters and Maps
For starters, create keyword clusters and map keywords for all website pages to avoid unknowingly targeting the same terms on multiple pages.
Maintain a living master sheet with a keyword-to-URL map to keep everyone in the loop, plan new content, and prevent overlaps.
It’s equally important to define a unique search intent for every page, especially if you want to target similar keywords from different angles.
Before creating a new page, ask yourself: What unique problem does this page solve, and what should readers take away from it?
Pages with similar keywords can coexist if they clearly fulfill different goals.
Pro tip: A good content brief can prevent cannibalization issues from the start. Include detailed insights, such as target keywords, goals, and user intent, for each page. This will give writers enough clarity to avoid creating similar content.
Use Internal Links to Reinforce Important Pages
Stay on top of your internal linking structure to build authority for every page and prevent confusion for search engines.
When multiple pages receive links with the same anchor text, you risk sending mixed signals about which one is more important.
Use distinct and descriptive anchor texts when linking to every page, especially the ones targeting similar terms.
Automate the Process with SEO Tools
Manual checks work, but they don’t scale.
Utilize SEO and site audit tools to monitor your rankings and identify potential cannibalization.
Google Search Console, Ahrefs, Semrush, and Sitebulb are helpful for identifying duplicate content and potential cannibalization.
Many also offer weekly or monthly reports, allowing you to catch overlapping keywords before they impact your performance.
Fix Cannibalization to Enhance Your Search Performance
Keyword cannibalization can be a common challenge as your site grows and you create pages around similar topics.
But with careful planning and regular audits, you can avoid this problem in the future.
The key?
Mapping your keywords with intention from the start.
Read our keyword mapping guide to learn how to strategically select and organize your keywords to improve your rankings. And provide a better experience for your audience.
Backlinko is owned by Semrush. We’re still obsessed with bringing you world-class SEO insights, backed by hands-on experience. Unless otherwise noted, this content was written by either an employee or paid contractor of Semrush Inc.
