Two major pages ranking for the same keyword phrase

[Dynata_panel_marketing]

Hola all,

So I'm having an issue where I have two important pages (homepage and page that lists products) that seemingly take turns ranking for an important keyword phrase. One day the homepage is in the top 20, one day the other, one day neither. And it's gone on like this for a couple of months. Both are optimized for keyword phrases that contain a shorter keyword phrase. So for example, let's say the homepage is optimized for: "Get paid to take polls" and the other page is optimized for "Earn cash for paid polls and more." Both contain: "paid polls."

Is there cannibalization happening here?

Should I completely remove "paid polls" from one keyword phrase?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

Roman

[GlobeRunner]

You could, in fact, test whether or not removing the keyword from the page has an effect on it's rankings, but most likely that won't necessarily prove anything. In fact, you may even be more confused, as a page can rank well even if the page doesn't contain the keyword or keyword phrase.

There may be a lot more factoring into these search engine rankings, such as links pointing to the page or the number of social media shares. It could also be related to how often you update certain pages on your site and if you update those pages or not. Another factor could be user engagement on the page, such as how long they spend on the page, bounce rate, or whether or not there are comments (if it's a blog post).

If there's one page that you want to rank (because it happens to convert better for you), then I would focus on link building and social shares.