Avoid Keyword Self-Cannibalization

[seomoz59]

Hi I'm a little bit confused about my on page report. I prepared 2 version of on page seo report for the same targeted keyword and the same URL, but one of the url with www. and the other without it. In the one that i entered the URL with www. the report came with warning about the "Avoid Keyword Self-Cannibalization" we suggest staying away from linking internally to another page with the target keyword(s) as the exact anchor text. As I see on my webpage there is no anchor text at all pointing to another internal page using the targeted keyword. I'm sure that I didn't use my targeted keyword with any link . Thanks in advance for anyone If can help or explain what is that ? If I have to write the URL and the keyword no problem for me. Thanks

[Mark_Jay_Apsey_Jr.]

Imnotsure I understand what you are asking. I think you are creating an issue with www.yoursite.com and your site.com y the virtue of the fact that it is diving your SERP value by having two places where SEo/Link juice is attached to it. You should only have one "home page" url....redirect the other one to your home page and then sod the analysis.....

Does this help. If so show me the thumbs up!!!!!!!

[Dr-Pete]

Are you saying you created separate campaigns for both the "www" and non-www versions of the site here on SEOmoz (or somewhere else, like Google Webmaster Tools)? I guess the first question would be if these look like duplicates - not sure why you're reporting on them separately.

[seomoz59]

Hi

Thanks for reply

Here is the question again because I don't understand the answer.

I prepared on page report for my site home page twice using this link:

http://pro.seomoz.org/tools/on-page-keyword-optimization

"www" and non-www versions

the two reports were different from each other  because one of them came with warning about the "Avoid Keyword Self-Cannibalization" we suggest staying away from linking internally to another page with the target keyword(s) as the exact anchor text.

At this point I'm sure that I didn't use my targeted keyword with any link pointing to internal , so why this warning?

Thanks for Dr. Peter J. Meyers  &  Mark Apsey

[Dr-Pete]

It looks like you've got both the "www" and non-www versions being indexed by Google, so you need to solve that problem first. You could either add canonical tags for each page or 301-redirect one version to the other. These sitewide duplicates are going to cause you problems down the road.

I think you also may be overdoing it with putting the entire 5-word name of your site at the beginning of every TITLE tag. I'd switch that to the end (except for the home-page). Put the most unique keywords up front.

Solve the www vs. non-www issue first, though. That could run you into a bunch of weird problems going forward and dilute your ranking ability.

[pickaweb]

Let me clarify. On our site we use full path urls for our internal linking. The seomoz on page report has a problem with full path links because it gives you the Self-Cannibalization error. If i then change those links to relative path rather than full path there is no Self-Cannibalization error. So there is either an issue with full path internal linking or there is an issue with the on page report tool. If anyone could help that would be great. Thank you.

[Dr-Pete]

I'm only seeing Google index the "www" versions at the moment, except for 1 or 2 exceptions. When you used full paths, were they identical to your canonical URLs? In other words, if Google is indexing the "www" version (which they are), the full path should be "www." Otherwise, you'd be potentially creating internal duplicates.