Help on Avoid Keyword Self-Cannibalization

[deporvillage]

i ran the on page test and i got the avoid keyword self-canabilzation alert

one example is for http://www.deporvillage.com/shimano

maybe is because a'm not a native speaking english person but i do not understand what it exactly means

the targeted keyword for this page is shimano and the alert i got for the links like the one below that i have in my page

http://www.deporvillage.com/ciclismo/zapatillas-shimano which has a anchor text like zapatillas ciclismo shimano

[DeptAgency]

Rand has said the following about it in his blog:

....Keyword self-cannibalization - the practice of heavily targeting the same keyword phrase on multiple pages of a site....

Having multiple pages for one keyword or phrase is not ideal since this means you are competing with yourself. All the backlinks, content, internal linkjuice etc. is devided over multiple pages instead of concentrating it on one page.

Ofcourse, if these pages are on position one and two in the SERP this situation is perfectly fine. However, if they hold position 11 and 15 the combined force of these two pages may be enough to rank 5th or 6th. That would generate a lot more traffic since results after postion 10 generate virtually no traffic.

I hope this helps!

Greets,

Sven Witteveen
Expand Online

[deporvillage]

thanks expand online team, but i wonder why is considering it self canibalization if there are different keywords

shimano is pointing to http://www.deporvillage.com/shimano

and zapatillas ciclismo shimano (shimano cycling shoes) to http://www.deporvillage.com/ciclismo/zapatillas-shimano

there are different keywords so they might have different url's no?

[DeptAgency]

I did a quick check on both pages:

http://www.deporvillage.com/ciclismo/zapatillas-shimano
and
http://www.deporvillage.com/shimano

Both get an A for on-page optimization for the word: shimano. Also on the page /shimano there are 41 instances of the word ciclismo. You might want to avoid this word on the general /shimano page if you have a separate landing page for 'zapatillas ciclismo shimano'.

However, generally speaking there isn't much to worry about if you do not in fact rank with both pages for one keyword.

Sven Witteveen
Expand Online

[deporvillage]

thanks sven. so do you recommend me to do any action like delete some ciclismo instances on the shimano pages?

x

[DeptAgency]

Indeed!

In case of problematic keyword selfcannibalization you can choose from two options:

1. Combine two landing pages into one of the two, and deleting (or noindex) the other one.
2. Avoid overlap as much as possible by making sure the exact query you want to rank for on page A does not appear on page B (and vice versa).

I think it depends on the situation whether you want to go for option 1 or 2. In your case it seems pretty much okay, but to be sure you could cut down on the word ciclismo on the general shimano page.

Best of luck!

Sven Witteveen

Expand Online

[Dr-Pete]

I think Sven's essentially correct, although I suspect the word "Shimano" is what we're flagging. You've got the main Shimano page that splits out into sub-pages, and every link for the sub-pages has "Shimano" in the anchor text. The problem is that it IS keyword cannibalization, in a sense, and yet it also makes perfect sense in this situation.

I think this is pretty common in search pages, and probably isn't a big issue. Honestly, internal search pages and Google don't always get along in general, so it can be tricky. You could draw "Shimano" out into a header and then not use it in every piece of anchor text (it could start to look excessive), but practically speaking, I doubt it's going to have much impact either way.