Content Cannibalism Question with example

[BeytzNet]

Hi,

Since I love writing and I write a lot I always find myself worried about ruining for my self with Content Cannibalism.

Yesterday, while looking to learn about diamonds I encountered a highly ranked website that has two pages ranking high on the first page simultaneously (4th and 5th) - I never noticed it before with Google.

The term I googled was "vvs diamonds" and the two pages were: http://bit.ly/1N51HpQ and http://bit.ly/1JefWYS

Two questions:

1. Does that happen often with Google (presenting two lines from the same site on first page)?

2. Would it be better practice for the writer to combine them? - creating a one more powerful page...

Thanks

[UmarKhan]

Hey,

I agree, this site could combine these both pages not only to rank better but to get a very good response from users and attract links. I am not sure but seems they might did it intentionally to rank better on different keywords. Though, the idea is bit old but it's still working

I suppose that in this scenario, when Google (presenting two lines from the same site on first page) is easy to outrank at least one result by producing something more powerful and interesting. I did that in past once and it's worked out.

Umar

[RuthBurrReedy]

Google will frequently rank two pages from the same site in the same SERP if they feel that both pages serve the user intent of the query. Often this will happen, as is the case with these two pages, when they are two pages that are on the same topic, but answer slightly different questions - either of which could be what the user is really asking, if that makes sense. In your example, the two pages that Google is serving up are answering closely related, but slightly different questions: "What is VVS diamond clarity" and "what is the difference between VS and VVS diamond clarity."

It might be advisable for this site to combine the two pages, if (for example) the wrong page was ranking for the query or one page was getting all the traffic and the other wasn't getting any. Another solution would to make them more different from each other, rather than tackling two long-tail variations on the same overall topic.

I would not recommend creating two pages on long-tail variations of the same topic on purpose to try to lock down two spots in a SERP; your time would likely be better spent researching what specific long-tail topics people are searching on, and creating content to serve those users' needs. Umar does have a good point that a SERP with two results from the same domain often present an opportunity to take one of those spots.