Potential Keyword Cannibalisation

[National-Homebuyers]

Hi,

I am concerned that our website's rankings are currently being affected by KW cannibalisation. We don't rank too badly for our target keywords but they could, of course, be better, especially as the niche is very competitive!

One thing that is bothering me is that our internal pages do not rank well for these KWs and instead it is the homepage appearing in the rankings. This is despite the fact that the internal pages are optimised for the different keywords. Basically the HP is also targeting these same keywords and I was wondering if this is affecting our rankings overall?

I am not keen to risk changing the homepage in case our rankings suffer massively and we drop out of Google completely. If anyone could offer some advice then that would be great.

Is it simply a case of trying to get external links pointing to these internal pages? Would internal linking to them prove effective as well?

Cheers

Tom

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi Tom,

Internal linking is hugely powerful when done correctly. I would most certainly look at this as a way to guide Google to key pages, but it doesn't mean that every page must have a link to another internal page, as this can also work against you.

Basically the HP is also targeting these same keywords and I was wondering if this is affecting our rankings overall

Yes, this can cause issues. I would never suggest that any two pages duplicates, not just the homepage.

It can help to also get links to inner pages as this allows page rank to be topped up from a different point.

But be careful how keywords are used throughout the site. Pull all pages into a spreadsheet along with the page title so ou can see how this is used and if there are any that are very similar and if others need changing to be more targeted.

Have a read of this from Rand too...
https://moz.com/blog/keyword-targeting-density-and-cannibalization-whiteboard-friday

-Andy

[Linda-Vassily]

Often a homepage ranks better than internal pages for the reason you suggest, more links (and probably other things). And yes, internal linking can help.

Does it make sense to link to one of your internal pages from your home page? You are talking about the blue widgets, so you link to the blue-widget page?

If you are worried about tanking all of your ranking, pick just one of the keywords you think is being cannibalized and try working on only that one at first.