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Hey Antony! I checked out your account and can't replicate the issue that you're seeing. I think you're talking about running an On-Page report for a URL/keyword combination. As far as I could tell, the only type of cannibalization you could get a warning for is keyword self-cannibalization, where it looks like keywords are being targeted for multiple pages instead of a single page on your site. As you probably read, we suggest staying away from linking internally to another page with the target keyword(s) as the exact anchor text, as well. We should be crawling a full path URL in the same way we crawl a relative URL, so if it's changing solely based on you modifying the URL in your search, I'll need to see what's going on. Can you either post an example of the URLs and keywords you're seeing this for or send that information over to help (help@seomoz.org)? The more information and screenshots you can send, the better. Thanks Antony!

For SEO, it all depends on how you code it. If you want the landing page to have the SEO, you need to make sure the content is on that landing page, not a separate page being called. Lightboxes typically are coded all on the same page. Definitely pay attention to user experience stuff, like page speed and compatibility with different browsers. Page speed: customers expect your site to load in less than 2 seconds and will (on average) have an abandon rate of 40% if it takes 3 seconds to load your page. For compatibility, make sure to check out your analytics to see what devices/browsers the bulk of your customers are coming in on and test those.

John, Every page stands on its own merits, for ranking. except that external factors help. =  the power of the links that point to it =  the text in the link (at least until google decides to change that) So your site as a whole can help a little, depending on many things, including the proximity to your powerful pages and what the links on those pages say about the toy soldiers page. If the text of the link says "check out our stuff" and links to the toy soldiers page, that definitely won't help. But nothing (much) will help if the page isn't solidly about the keyword.

Its thin as a % of all the pages on your site. If your ratio of thin to thick content is wrong, you can get hit. So a thin homepage is no problem if the rest of your site has good content

There are words you could remove or swap for ones that have more semantic meaning. eg /product - what does that mean? It could be anything Are the same products listed in more than one category? That could cause problems with duplicattion.. it may be best to have a category structure domain.com/category-name/subcategory-name but then for a product: domain.com/product-title

I would - optimise your chosen page for the keyword you wish it to rank for. Check this page manually against you chosen keyword and fix any problems etc. Once you've done this your on-page grade isn't going to change. Once you've got the page sorted think about your site architecture and internal site links. Then you can start looking at the off-site stuff like link building etc. What the on-page report is great for, is finding pages that are ranking (but not as high as they might) for particular keywords. Some simple on-page optimisation and you can gain a ranking position or two. Can make quite a difference if you get a page up a couple of positions onto page 1 or into the top 3.

I can't quite anser how google uses it, but after looking at this recently, I was suprised at the large portion of the adult workforce has a reltivly low reading comprehension. Make sure your target audiance can read your content, then worry about google second. You might find that this alone restricts you to the point where theres not enough wiggle room to worry about the score.

Thank you Bryan. These are links on my site in old stories. Some aren't links, as in the example above, they are just plain text - no anchor tag. Some are anchor links, to website are now defunct Some are anchor links to websites that have now been parked Some are anchor links to websites that have now been taken over by unrelated people. So my aim is to clean them all up, but I'll do the most damaging ones first, because there are a lot of pages.

People SCAN the SERPs.  They don't read every single word of each and every title. So, if you want them to read yours you better make it something other than a reallylongtonguetwisterwithapipeandcaboose If I thought that most people are searchin' for "Dorothy Shoes" ... and some might include "Wizard of Oz" then I would have those in the title and not much else. You don't need "girls" because very few boys are searching.  And very few people are going to use "deluxe".  Drop the pipe and the repetition. ... and if these shoes are the "ruby slippers" you better get that in there... Dorothy Shoes: Ruby Slippers from the Wizard of Oz

I'm not sure there's anything else to be worried about. Matt Cutts made a video and it's pretty short on the matter.

That's a great way to find blog ideas and kudos to you for doing the hard work of guest posting Syndication has its place... look at AP news for example. Spinning is a whole other issue and is absolutely duplicate content and should be shamed.

Hi JP, Thanks for the response. I understand the concept of 'silo-ing' which does make the navigation better, but I feel that doesn't take away the spammy effect. Perhaps I don't fully understand it, but I believe in my case it would be like this Database solutions->Access->ms access programmer->ms access programmer in San Francisco Database solutions->Access->ms access programmer->ms access programmer in Los Angeles Database solutions->Access->ms access consultant then pages on the same level would then link to one another correct ie consultant and programmer or San Fran and Los Angeles? I understand about the cannobilization of keywords ie target one or two keywords per page per site so they don't compete with one another. That makes sense. The thing I don't understand about these methods is that:  wouldn't they all have the same sort of content (almost duplicate)? What use is it to the user to navigate all these pages? Or the point is for them to land in them (landing page) and hopefully get a conversion? Is the method solely as workaround to target different keywords while minimizing the spammy effect? Can you provide an example of how you use 'silo-ing'? Is your content extremely similar? or do you tailor each page for the keyword?

We tag near-duplicates in the system, so I think you've got a combination of factors: (1) There's only one post on some of the tag pages. (2) The posts don't have a lot of text, so the "snippet" duplicates about 1/3 to 1/2 of it. (3) The navigation/code is pretty heavy, compared to content. Once those tag pages have more posts/snippets, I don't think you'll see problems. Be careful, as you grow, with how many tags you create. Tag searches can start to look a bit thin, and you may want to exclude them (or some of them) from the search index down the road. For now, I think you're probably ok. Once those tags have 3-4 snippets on them, the pages should look a lot better.