Keyword cannibalization

[Mat_C]

Hi,

I have two questions regarding keyword cannibalization.

1. I am doing the SEO for a website that sells do-it-yourself packages for heating, bathrooms, ventilation and so on for new houses or for renovations.

The most important pages are the product pages (e.g. example.com/products/bathrooms) but there is also a blog divided into categories per product (e.g. example.com/category/bathrooms). The difference is clear: the product page focuses on the product itself, and the blog category page contains all blog posts relating bathrooms (tips, new materials, new innovations,...).

My question is if the product page and blog category page can compete with each other for the term bathrooms (although they have different content). Does it help or is it enough to direct internal links from separate blog posts to the most important page (being the product page) and back to avoid my category blog page to compete with my product page?

Another possibility would be to use a canonical tag on the category page pointing to the product page, but this actually isn't good practice because it isn't really duplicate content.

Third possibility would be to no index the category page. So what is the best solution of the three?

2. A second example of keyword cannibalization can be category archive pages for webshops. If you have a category page example.com/jeans and a subcategory page example.com/jeans/women, is it useful to optimize on both pages for different terms, being jeans for the first page and jeans for women for the second, or will Google not make this distinction because the keyword are too closely related?

In other words, is it useful to write content specifically for jeans for women and make a landing page for this keyword, or will this page compete with the category page that has been optimized for just the keyword jeans?

In large clothing webshops, you can see for example that there is an optimized page for Nike (content, headings,...) but not for Nike for women or Nike for men. Is this just laziness or is this done exactly to avoid keyword cannibalization?

Looking forward to your comments!

[EGOL]

I am a Cannibal. 

For an important keyword, two pages of substantive, useful and valuable content is better than one.  Both of them will often appear within the SERPs and each of them can be optimized for different keyword variants and different searcher intents.  Develop ways to link these pages to one another in ways that are obvious and usefully presented to the visitor.

All of this substantive, useful and valuable content can show visitors that you are The Man for this product or this product category.

Sometimes I have numerous pages of substantive, useful and valuable content for one keyword.  Sales page, how to use it page, parts and accessories page, maintenance and repair page, comparison of product variants page.  All of these link to each other.  Where competition is moderate to low I can have two or more pages on the first SERP.

There is nothing wrong about being a cannibal if you do it with substantive, useful and valuable content.

Are you trying to run your competitor out of town or are you farting around?

[Mat_C]

Hi,

Thanks for the answer and sorry for the late response.

I understand what you mean, but I still have the following question: there is no possibility to add extra content to the blog category pages, unless through source code. This means I can not add extra text on these pages, so these blog category pages just sum up all the different blog articles of which the titles are H2's. Will these pages ever rank, because it is not really unique content about one subject?

Thanks!